Eye Contact

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It's not nice of her that she berates you for it. She should support you in this. I think she just wants you to make eye contact like NT people but she handles it in the wrong way.

When I was young I never looked people in the eye but they never berated me for it. That's really rude by my standards.

1. Do you get any weird feelings from eye contact? Are there certain people you find it easier with? Do you have a similar feeling to me?

the reason i dont make eye contact is because i cant look at their face and listen to what theyre saying while theyre talking, i do sometimes feel akward when people stare at me or smile at me, i guess my dad is easier but i still cant make eye contact and listen at the same time.


2. How can I get my mom to understand how I feel? Because I'm at a loss.

well, i dont know how you feel, every person on the spectrum at the different.

3. Do you have your own techniques/tricks to fool people into thinking you're actually looking at them?

i 'tun off' my vision by spacing out and just listening to what a person is saying, or i look behind them or at theyre hair.

Yes, eye contact feels weird like my nerves are tingling.

Get a picture of something your mum really dislikes (huge hairy spiders for example) and hold it up in front of your eyes when she tries to force eye contact. Explain that this is how it feels for you.

My special technique is lip reading. Really concentrate on the shapes the lips form, the teeth, the tongue. People actually think I'm paying attention. Suckers!

Good one!

1. Do you get any weird feelings from eye contact? Are there certain people you find it easier with? Do you have a similar feeling to me?
I find it easier to make eye contact with my siblings or other autistic people. I mean, both my siblings are neurotypical but I guess I feel safe around them. I can also make eye contact with this girl I used to date and she qualifies for similar reasons.
2. How can I get my mom to understand how I feel? Because I'm at a loss.
Beats me. Get my parents to and then you have your answer.
3. Do you have your own techniques/tricks to fool people into thinking you're actually looking at them?
I just plain look away. I can sometimes look at their nose or chin or lips, but I can never seem to make it to the eyes. It just feels like someone just aimed an infrared laser in your eyes.

1. Do you get any weird feelings from eye contact? Are there certain people you find it easier with? Do you have a similar feeling to me?
Yes, yes, and yes. I get weird feelings making eye contact because I feel the person I'm looking is trying to give to me some informations about what he/she is thinking/feeling when we're talking, but I can't read it, so always I look in the eyes I get very confused and weird feelings. D: But is a little easy with family, just a little...
2. How can I get my mom to understand how I feel? Because I'm at a loss.
My family doesn't understand this too, they think is lack of self esteem.
3. Do you have your own techniques/tricks to fool people into thinking you're actually looking at them?
No, I look the hand, the floor, the sky, but never the face. That's why I can remeber the color of the wall, the shoes, everything, but never the face...

Hope your mom understand about how you feel, I'm not expecting anymore people will understand AS.

This.

I have a reflex to avoid eye contact but If I force myself to I find it incredibly difficult to follow the conversation, or think for that matter. It's the same with everybody. I'll usually look quite noticeably away from them or, if i'm trying to cover it up, a their mouth or something.

I get the flight reflex and automatically look away so fast I don't have time to think about it.

Eye contact is unnatural for me, I just look away or past someone or down or whatever on reflex. I have easier time with close family, it doesn't cause me the same anxiety but it just isn't natural to me. My family pretty much all understand I am the way I've always been, I don't really feel I need to explain myself to them. I didn't self diagnose, this is something my family saw before I did.

I can force myself to make some minimal eye contact in 1 and 1 situations without other distractions but it's taxing and harder to follow the conversation and I'll probably stim or something other ways.

Yes - that sounds like me. For my childhood I was rubbish at it a) it felt like someone was able to "see what I was thinking"' b) I couldn't concentrate on what it was I was trying to say when I was trying to maintain it and c) being shy, it was almost a way of pretending others weren't looking at me. Things changed a bit in my twenties - just started "doing it" and it samed to look genuine to other people, even though I was actually looking through them rather than at them, and also went on a presentation skills course at work which involved seeing myself on video and thinking "actually that looks OK" and that gave me some more confidence to keep doing it. Ultimately,I'd still rather not do eye contact, but I've learned techniques so that I can cope with it when its required.

I am 29 and still avoid eye contact. People say look at the bridge of their nose or their eyebrows.

I get a horrible twinge (I think your electric shock analogy is a very close match to what it feels like) whenever I look someone I am not close to in the eyes. But strangely enough I didn't have this problem as much as a child and only started developing when I began attending secondary school.

P.S I particularly hate getting eye contact when I'm not expecting it, for example one time I was staring into space and then realised I had been staring someone across the hallway in the face for the last few seconds .

Here is what I do to imitate eye contact, I pick a point/object behind their head and look at it. If I do make anything remote it is a pure accident and I get so much more uncomfortable.
This has come from a lot of practice to fool the eye contact and it is a lot of conscious thought to perform as well.
I hope that this can be of help to you.

I work in retail too, and so I'm expected to look at customers. But because I'm a cashier in a grocery store, I can put off not making eye contact as being busy -- if I'm running the register, taking money, sacking groceries, I don't really have time for eye contact, right? At least that's the argument I'm going
to use if anyone ever mentions it (I doubt that will happen, but you never know.)

The electric shock description works for me too. I get that initial shock and then I feel this wave of panic wash over me. I've been trying to work on my eye contact lately, because of my job. And what I've found is that some people hold the gaze WAY TOO long. I meet their eyes and then they're like Rasputin -- I can't tear my eyes away from theirs and I get completely weirded out.

Over the years, I've gotten into perfect teeth. The reason is because I notice teeth more often than most people because that's where I look instead of the eyes. So I notice pretty teeth, but I also get exposed to LOTS of funky nasty teeth as well....:p

When I was a kid I had major problems making eye contact. The sentence I dreaded to hear was "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" Adults didn't just look into my soul, they scraped at it with their jagged eyebeams. It felt like assault; it was painful and traumatic and left me shaken. Sometimes I'd be brought to tears, and would need a lot of alone time to recover afterwards.

Decades later I have to say that things have gotten much better. I make normal eye contact with friends and family, I think, and close to normal even with strangers, unless I'm really tired or stressed. At this point if someone complained that I wasn't looking at their eyes enough, I'd be inclined to say "I can look at you or listen to you. Pick one."

3 different situations:

1. A straightforward conversation about practical things, like processing an order or reporting the progress of a project, where the only expectation is information. In this situation, eye contact is fairly benign and easy.

2. A conversation with expectations and potential conflict, even when over practical issues. Eye contact becomes forced, but I do it so it maintains my standing with colleagues/boss.

3. Eye contact with no conversation... big BIG problem.

In a couple of rare moments over my many years, I have been able to enjoy eye contact.