Why do you feel an aversion to faces/eyes?

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Why do you think you feel an aversion towards them? And what sort of aversion is it? Do you feel Disgust? Panic? Slight discomfort? Unease?
Do you wish you could be comfortable looking at them? Do faces and eyes get easier to look at when you're comfortable with the person?

I find it hard to look into some people's eyes at times, mostly if they are within a certain distance of me. But Apart from that I don't really experience this phenomenon- it's an interesting one.

The more comfortable I am with a particular person, the more likely I am to be able to give them my full eye contact. If I don't trust the person, it's harder for me to give eye contact to them. It's a matter of trust, for me.

I think Cockney might be right about the trust thing, as I think it applies to me too.

For instance, I don't really follow fashion or film stars, but every now and again, I find myself confronted with the image of Posh Spice or Paris Hilton on tv or printed medium. I don't know why, as I don't even watch their stuff, but I instinctively feel my hackles raising like a cat's, and hate the expression/essence in their eyes. It doesn't make sense, as everything in me screams out that they're really unattractive and to avoid them, whilst it seems like the world is flocking to praise them and try to be with them.

I don't have too much problem with people's eyes and eye contact in real life nowadays. In practice people don't normally stare into my eyes. However, there is an advert on French TV (Arte) at the moment where a random stranger just stares straight out of the screen without saying a word. This continues for around ten seconds or so and I find it quite intimidating / unnerving. Something about the prolonged stare of a stranger straight into my eyes. I often change the TV channel as a result.

I have extreme anxiety looking at peoples eyes. When I was a teenager I could not really talk if I was making direct eye contact. Sadly? Thru many painful lessons I have learned normal people require eye contact so I learned to make eye contact 33% of the time, although it is still very painful.

For me it's a sensory thing. Eye to eye contact is too intense and overwhelming so I look away a lot.

I've done this too. The tricky bit for me is knowing how long to look someone in the eyes and how frequently; this isn't very natural for me so I have to consciously look at them then away repeatedly. A problem I used to have was knowing where to look - their left eye or their right eye or a soft focus in the general area or look between their eyes. Knowing where to look isn't a problem now though, it seem automatic - in fact I'm not sure any more where I do look.

I sometimes sense I'm making someone uncomfortable because I'm overcompensating and looking into their eyes too long while they are talking. Difficult to get the balance right.

It's too intense. It feels like skydiving or walking a tightrope. Also, looking away is a very reliable, objective thing, whereas eye contact is emotional and subjective.

For me it's just too much information that I can't make sense of. If I'm speaking/listening I find I need to concentrate on that - making sense of a face at the same time would be overload.

Lol. Teachers were complaining that my friend's son was being rude, and not looking at them when they were talking to him. So she coached him to stare at their eyebrows.

The poor boy tried really hard, and concentrated on focusing at their eyebrows. And soon she was getting complaints that he was glaring persistently at them!

I didn't really even know that I was "supposed" to make eye contact until I was an adult.
It was brought up with me once in a while..A girl in high school asked me why I never made eye contact...and really it hadn't occurred to me that I didn't...

I have a strong habit of looking off to the side of a person's head...or looking at a person's face without meeting their gaze...

I have also been subtly accused of lying because of this...a few times.

It is not an aversion to faces that I have..it is the whole face/voice/personality combo thing that trips me up...

If I make direct eye contact for too long, I quickly start to feel overwhelmed and/or drained...

it's hard for me to look in anyone's eyes, even my own mother's for more than a second. to me, eye contact means anger, hostility, and aggression. my father would angrily force me to look him in the eye as a child and i couldn't do it because he had big, blue, scary crazy nazi eyes. then there's the implication of genetic inferiority, feeling like i "have no right" in the eye-contact pecking order because i have brown eyes. and it also means intimacy of a sexual nature, because the only people i can make eye contact with have been boyfriends, so therefore i don't want to imply i'm hitting on someone and have them be offended.

it seems to have different levels and factors. if a person is wearing glasses, i find it easier to maintain eye contact a little longer, because of that barrier. the more female, young, tall or caucasian a person is, the less i am able to make eye contact.

lastly, i don't see what the big deal is about eye contact. it's just an organ.

I don't have so much an aversion to eye contact itself, but nervousness because it can mean things that go over my head. People will think you said something with your eyes or understood something that they said with their eyes, and it can cause big problems if you missed it. I don't know of any other way to avoid that problem besides to not look at their eyes to begin with.
When Kris looks in my eyes it usually means that he is about to announce what color they are at the moment.

I don't really know, I do find it distracting though. Until a few days ago, I thought I did pretty well with eye contract, especially if I tried, but I found out that's not the case. It was weird, because I had no anxiety at the time, during the "interview" and thought I was doing well. My interviewer told me else wise.

That is my deal. If I am talking about or discussing something with someone or others as equals on equal ground and with equal footing, I can be "normal" and make occasional or "appropriate" eye contact. But if anything at all does not seem "equal", I am not likely to make much eye contact at all unless trying to make an appeal either for an answer or to be heard ... and even then, my eyes can sometimes be all over the place. Also, I occasionally try to analyze myself and my eye contact while trying to maintain some, but then I usually get distracted by my doing that and become overwhelmed and either close my eyes (to appear as if concentrating) or just look away altogether. And on top of all of that, there are times I consciously and quite intentionally tightly close my eyes to keep myself from being distracted by anyone else in any way at all.

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Last edited by Willard on 11 Jan 2010, 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.