Why dont you make eye contact

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I was in a Doctor's waiting room one time and it was packed. So naturally I kinda zoned out and was just letting my mind run free. I guess thirty minutes had gone by and I hear this loud female voice yell, "Why you sweatin me." I came to my senses and realized my eyes had settled on this woman about 5 feet from me. I said, "Pardon?" She said, You been lookin right thru me for a while now." I did not know she had come and sat down while I was in my zone. I told her I was daydreaming and I was not sweating her. LOL

I would guess too overstimulating, and using the correct words is difficult already when relaxed. And I don't look except for a split second once in a while.

I've been actually making a point of noticing my eye contact rate and my feelings about when I do it. I really don't look at people directly hardly at all -- 1/2% of the time MAYBE. And I have plenty of opportunity -- I'm a cashier in a grocery store, and I have 100s of customers a week. The only time I look directly at someone IN THE EYE is when I say "Thank you. Have a good day." And every time I catch someone's eye -- not everyone looks back -- I feel this little electric shock of terror in my chest, and have to immediately look away. But the thing is, I can fake it pretty well. I can either look like I'm busy so I don't have time to look. Or when I do look people "in the face", I'm looking at their mouth or ears or hair, so they THINK I'm looking at them. And when they aren't looking at me, I have no problem looking at their eyes, so I can always claim to know what color their eyes are or whatever.

1 through 4.

Until I was in my 40's
1. I did not know I was not doing it.
2. I did not know people cared about it.

I am a lot better at it in recent years but I wonder if I over compensate and stare to long.

All four of those reasons.

I also need to look away if I need to explain something really complex.

I've even attempted to make eye contact when all of a sudden my eyes would just go to the side. I had no control over making it or not. My eyes simply did not want to look that way.

I also tried to stare at people, and I seem to have no problem doing it, and it makes them uncomfortable, as they told me.

I have developed decent enough eye contact for people to not have complained much about it in recent years. I do tend to look away when I am the one speaking; my eyes go on "idle" as my brain reallocates its resources to turning the words, concepts, and images in my head into speech. Usually, though, I can remind myself to glace at the other person every now and then (though I have been told that this suffers when I am giving an oral presentation, speech, or poetry performance).

As a child, I would often not make eye contact and would sometimes fail to look at the person at all simply because other things in the immediate area were more interesting to look at. I still do this on occasion, but I am much better at reminding myself to look at people when we are conversing.

Eye contact is only uncomfortable for me if the other person is either angry or very upset, in which case it does make me a bit nervous and defensive; usually, eye contact does not have any particular sensation attached to it whatsoever. I also do not have any more of a problem understanding what others are saying when I am making eye contact; my auditory processing does suffer at times, but it is not related to what or who I am looking at.

Just looking someone in the eye is scary, it is like coming in contact with a bear for instance that's how scary it is for me anyway. I have social phobia.

It's hard to listen to them as far as tone, overall facial expression, and body language if I'm looking at their eyes. It doesn't feel natural, and it just doesn't make any sense. I tend to cheat by looking at their mouth if I'm far enough away that it won't be noticed.

Making eye contact unnerves me.

Two reasons:
1) It just doesn't feel good at all when I try to make real eye contact. It feels weird and ultimately I feel very ill- I'm guessing that's probably anxiety but FIIK.

2)I try to fake it by looking at a persons mouth (which consequentlly helps me to understand them better... the combination of listening while looking at a mouth makes it more like reading to me... just listening to speech... I have a hard time understanding and retaining stuff. But if I'm just not all that interested or I flat out forget... I'm staring over their head or at the corner or at something ... So sometimes I just forget to do it...

I voted "it just doesn't feel natural". Not the way NTs do it; for me eye contact should be for special situations and people. I have learned to fake it just right, but would like not to have to bother sometimes.

If the environment is too cluttered and busy I have problems with eye contact. If it's not then I have normal eye contact.

I wasn't sure what to answer. It's not that I have trouble understanding what the other person is saying while making eye contact, it's more like I have trouble understanding what I should say in response while making eye contact.

I can listen to someone for hours and make great eye contact. If you want me to participate, I will either not be looking at you, or watching your mouth.

Looking at someone that I know very well and trust very well is okay.

For any other person it can be difficult because either it feels unnatural or it just slowly ends up getting too intense that I don't know what to do, so I look away. It allows me some breathing space for when I look at them again. I get incredibly hypervigilant over sustained eye contact with someone and it makes me nervous.