Suggestions to what I can wear so I can avoid eyecontact?

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Like sunglasses or hats, preferably something I can wear indoors too.

I have Irlen glasses which I wear a lot and really help with eye contact as well as other things that bother me such as bright fluorescent lights. Mine are quite a dark blue/ grey colour so people can still see my eyes but only just so I don't feel I have to make eye contact, although when I got tested for them I was told people have all sorts of different colours such as blue, green, red, yellow etc. I had the lenses put in normal glasses frames so they don't look too much like sunglasses when I wear them indoors. They were quite expensive though, so you could maybe get slightly dark or tinted lenses in normal glasses frames to wear inside.

Also, I always get told to look at people's eyebrows instead of their eyes but I find even that really hard!

I wear glasses for astigmatism & found that when I didn't get the antireflective coating, they were naturally partially reflective. It's not much, maybe 10%, but it was enough to help me feel I could sort of hide behind them. But what really helped was after learning about audio processing disorders & workarounds...I look at their lips. With so much hearing damage in our culture it's not unusual for people to look at a speaker's mouth instead of eyes so they can discern speech better. Works for me, both for APD *and* not looking them in the eye.

If it's only eye contact that bothers you, you could try looking at a different area of the face, such as the nose or mouth. I know that some people do that.

I generally can't even look at faces and hold a decent conversation. Basic stuff, like talking to someone at the cash register, I'm fine with. But I can't process the information properly without being able to concentrate, and that for me means staring off into space.

I have no idea how this problem can be fixed, because I was told that I probably have some sort of auditory processing disorder. I can look at a person between sentences, or during pauses in the conversation. I will look at a person's face to see his/her reaction.

I can't go around with sunglasses all the time. And I think I'd still see too much and become distracted. I've got to almost shut everything else off, and focus on the speech. It's only faces that are distracting, and other sounds. And it's only the faces of the people that I'm speaking with.

a burka?

A burka wouldn't work because (assuming the OP is female and could wear one anyway), all you would be able to see are the eyes, which would likely make people try to force even more eye contact because they can't pick up cues from the rest of the other person's face. I mostly do what Yigeren does and stare off into space while talking, because I can't concentrate on a conversation and look at someone at the same time. When other people are talking though, I can usually get by watching their hands, lips or shoulders.

You're looking for James Bond-type sunglasses. You need dark, tinted lenses. Not only will it help with eye contact, but it'll make you look just a little bit more like a private investigator from a movie.

I wear Irlen lenses.
They help a lot with eye contact issues.

I've said it before, but I wear glasses for bad short-sightedness and that helps a lot with eye contact, to the point that people believe I'm doing it when I'm not. I look over the top of the frames and I can't see them anyway, or I place the top frame across their eyes and look at that.

What accounts for this? It's something that interests me recently in an ongoing issue with someone who refuses to wear their hearing aids and I think is deafening me.

From what I understand, it's because protecting hearing is not part of our popular culture. Maddeningly high levels of sound very much are part of pop culture, as it would seem they are one of the few things that can get non-hypersensates to *feel* anything. I just do it b/c of an APD. Insofar as why look at mouths/lips? It's so I can get the timing of the hard consonants, it helps sort out/reorder/piece together the sounds into words.

Thank you very much for your answers, I'm going to look up the Irlen glasses. I am practicing looking at other parts of others faces when i talk to them.