Why do you feel an aversion to faces/eyes?

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I get a feeling of being overwhelmed by the other person's emotions that I can't think, it feels PAINFUL.

I don't make eye contact with people. I feel a bit uneasy sometimes when I do. Though I can make eye contact with my mother. My father, not as much. Though my doctor said I'm gettinig much better, and make more eye contact now.

couldn't you just ask them politely to not touch your face?

I only have a mild aversion against looking directly at a persons eyes, it feels like a repulsion, my eyes bounce off theirs and are repelled like two magnets repelling each other. I don't find eye contact scary or intimidating, but when I talk to people I always look below their eyes, usually at their mouth.

It's too intense. When my eyes meet with someone elses it's like they are looking right into me. It's like they are touching me with their minds without permission.

Panic, discomfort, unease.......

The very first time I ever looked into someone's eyes was when my first therapist, about 2 1/2 years ago, virtually made me look her in the eyes. Before that, I would always look down at myself or at the wall, or somewhere else. Once before that, my one & only "friend" told me that she doesn't like talking to people when they're not looking her in the eyes. From then on, I always tried to at least look at her face when she talked to me. It's been a bit easier since my therapist made me look her in the eyes, but it's still hard. I hate doing it. I can only look a few people in the eyes: my vocational specialist, the therapist I have now, my psychiatrist, & that's about it. I get scared when I look people in the eyes & it becomes even more difficult to talk to them then it already is.

The vulnerability of eyes used to terrify me when younger, that something so crucial to normal human life was nothing more than some jelly. I think this also reminded me somewhat of death, the vulnerability of eyes symbolic of the vulnerability of human life.

Nowadays, I just don't like eye contact with your average person, and I still panic at eye contact from friends. With someone you utterly trust though, it's very easy.

I have always had trouble with eye contact. My discomfort with it comes from my aspergers but i also avoid it because if i look straight into anothers eyes they'll notice that my right eye turns toward my nose a little bit. I once considered removing it but i decided that cross eyed is more attractive than an eye patch. i hope...

My father, too, makes me look in his eyes when he is upset. I find it even more difficult when he does. For me it is just minor discomfort. But I gather it is because my information filter is too strong and I receive no information from the eyes. While this makes social interaction easier, it has led to me reconsidering my diagnosis. But that was quickly resolved because I have PDD-NOS, so it doesn't matter if I don't have social imparment.

It doesn't freak me out to look into people's faces or eyes, as long as they're being reasonably friendly. Just that it doesn't seem to tell me much when I do, and it gets in the way of my working out what they're talking about, so I find myself not bothering. Also I fear that I might end up staring at people and giving the wrong impression. And with people I don't like or trust, I can often barely bring myself to gaze at their faces, unless I'm entering into a conflict with them, in which case I might do it just to show them that I'm not scared of them, and to give them a threat signal.

Some years ago, a partner and I listened to a tape about relationships, and the tape advised couples to keep up the eye contact, so we both tried to do that. But we just forgot very quickly.

I'm not so bad if it's the faces of characters on a DVD. The emotions that their expressions convey are much stronger and simpler than in real life, and nobody knows what part of the screen I'm looking at, so I don't feel in danger of making people feel invaded by staring at them.