What is eye contact like for an NT with social anxiety?

Post Reply New Topic

Personally, I am terrible at eye-to-eye contact. I am not certain why, but I feel much more comfortable looking at a person’s mouth. The few times I do look in another’s eyes, I seem to automatically divert my eyes if eye-to-eye contact is established.

I am curious if this is the same behavior for an NT with social anxiety. Or do NT’s with social anxiety regularly make eye-to-eye contact in certain circumstances (say, when interacting with people they are comfortable with -- close friends, close family members, etc.) and avoid eye-to-eye contact in other circumstances (say, when interacting with strangers or people they are not comfortable with)?

I look at mouth movement too. Which makes more sense to me. Their mouth is shaping their words, not their eyes.
Being on forums for NT teens, a lot of whom have social anxiety, I'd say your second paragraph sounds like that's the way it is for them.

The whole question of eye contact is complex and variable. I try to avoid too much of it if I can; some people say my eye contact is quite good, while others say I look 'shifty'. Like the previous posters I often watch people's mouths, and also the position of their eyebrows, as well as their body language in general. Once I've made initial eye contact with someone I'm talking to, I tend to look away as much as possible.

I can't speak for people with social anxiety but for me, I just have overall trouble maintaining it. It's not on my mind when I talk to a person and when I'm reminded to look at them while they talk I can't even hear or understand what their saying. I mostly "turn off" my eye sight and just focus on picturing what they are trying to say.

Same. If i force myself to have eye contact, i miss more than 60% of what they are saying and after they finished their sentence i am asking myself....

Huh? What?

Thanks everyone for your replies. I suppose I am trying to understand how eye contact is different for:

......an NT with Social Anxiety and an Aspie

I really want to understand what happens in the mind of an NT with Social Anxiety, when they are in a social situation (with family, close friends, others, etc.).

If/when you post, you are an NT with Social Anxiety, please indicate. Thanks.

------

P.S. - I realize that perhaps I should be asking this in a different forum (such as: http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum). Maybe I will and post the results here.

Your post made me wonder about something: Is being a visual thinker the reason some people have trouble looking at others while talking? If someone is a visual thinker, she likely thinks of what to say and understands what is being said by translating to and from images that are in her mind. The face of the person she's talking to is a separate image channel, and looking at it can interfere with the image channel in her mind's eye, making it difficult to use her inner image channel to create and interpret speech.

Since not everyone on the spectrum is a visual thinker, if this were true it would imply that people on the spectrum have trouble with eye contact for possibly very different reasons.

Since I've only just begun wondering if I possibly have some sort of ASD, I should count as NT, and I do have a diagnosis for social anxiety. So, hi.

I hate eye contact. I'll make it accidentally while searching someone's face (my eyes tend to focus on the mouth of whoever is speaking, but they also wander around the face when I start to get bored), and then quickly look away and consciously avoid it afterwards. It also makes me blush, and just generally feel anxious and uncomfortable.

Depends which type you are talking about (generalized/specific) and the length (acute/clinical) and the severity ('butterfies in stomach' thru to catatonic response).

Many individuals with a social anxiety often refer to eye contact when asked how it makes them feel as 'scary', 'uncomfortable', 'painful', 'intense', and 'aggressive'. When asked why they dislike eye contact they often say things like, 'I don't want the other person to see me', 'I know that I make them uncomfortable when I stare at them', 'I don't want them to judge me', etc. Think along the lines of being really really self conscious and insecure for the more extreme cases.

The anxiety is almost always based around a fear of not meeting the expectation of others in some shape or form.

Come to think of it I used to just look between the eyes at the nose, although I was not necessarily NT, the idea of me being autistic also never crossed anybody's mind until after I was being all non-conformist in boot-camp, but it's not that I am unable to engage in social-interactions, more like, I simply have very little interest in social-interactions.

So, I am not certain if this is permitted, by I posted a question about this at:
http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/f26/what-is-eye-to-eye-contact-like-for-an-nt-1483026/

I will post back here, once I have collected some responses. As I think about it, I wish the autism researchers would conduct more “differential studies” (comparing autism to other disorders). As, that, for me, would be interesting.

Do you think that you maybe could have collected the information by reading what they had already written about the subject?

What a great idea to ask. I hope they wouldn't mind and that they choose to participate.

I look at eyes I think. I was taught to and kind of intimidated into it, but it's work. And though I think I plant my gaze at people's eyes I don't "see" the color. If there's a movie, though I look at anything but the eyes.

Im NT, i dont have social anxiety but i am shy. Sometimes I avoid eyes contact because i am afraid how people are going to react to my words. I usually make social mistakes so it makes me more anxious if the other people is looking me weird. When I look at the eyes, i only focus the first seconds, then my mind set in the words and im not sure where my eyes are focusing. But once in a while i look at the eyes again.

Maybe I'm unique in this thought.

I find that it takes very little logic and compassion to see that asking a group of people who fear being judged if they mind if another group of people can pick them apart to see how they tick to be an overly bad idea. I also find it to be unethical to reinforce the idea that they are being judged whether intended or not. Just the fact that one person could and probably will read that and have their suspicions of others talking about them confirmed is in my mind one too many. The repercussions of that could set someone back years in their recovery or even push them over the edge.

I am not saying that was the intention, I am saying it's a likely consequence. When reading and creating a spreadsheet would have given the same information if not better information, because getting multiple samples is always better than a single sample.

If proof is needed you need not go further than this board. How many times has there been wars between websites over the judgements made by another group that inviduals here thought were grossly inaccurate? Hundreds by my count. Every AS post, every aspie partners post, news article, etc.

I don't understand where you're suggesting he get his data to present in a spreadsheet?