eye contact

Post Reply New Topic

there are two bad mistake that aspies often make:
1. they do not look directly at the person and often drift away. the other person will not take that kindly. they'll see that as lack of interest, unappreciation, or even rudeness.

2. aspies, trying to improve their eye contact, will stare at a person closely and directly in the eyes, like a staring contest. unless it is for when the person is saying something really serious or its an intimate moment with a love interest, it will easily be seen as intimidating or even creepy.

my solution:
look at them at an angle. stand at a 30 degree angle maybe or tilt your head a little bit.

that way you can keep eye contact without it being like an interrogation.

and it will make it less intimidating for you as much as with the other person,

Its tough for me as I feel very uncomfortable even glancing towards someones eyes-It's painful for me and shocking to me. I try and I really feel sick to my stomach almost to the point f throwing up.

here is what i learned about eyecontact:

direct eyecontact is the nonverbal equivalent to an exclamationmark. people look directly at someone they want to communicate an important message to. therefor im trying to remind myself of directly looking at someone when i require them to pay attention to what i want to tell them without speaking louder and it usually works very well.

when other people try to establish eyecontact with you they probably want to tell you something and make sure you are listening to and understanding them or just start a conversation. it might also indicate flirting or anger.

i am extremely fascinated by eyecolors. i am not only interested in the genetics but also like it in an aesthetic sense. i love the different shades of eyecolors in different light, i enjoy comparing relatives eyecolors and most of all staring at interesting irispatterns especially when they come in a beautiful or unsual color or more than one color or have those little irregular spots in it or are really dark or that kind of blue that provokes depthperception and so on.

to cut it short: i like eyecolors, so i used to stare at peoples eyes a lot and got the craziest reactions from that. people were expecting me to be angry or flirting and seemed to be very irritated by me not saying anything. they asked me what i wanted and frequently got angry or flirty themselves. i was also told that it is scary to look at people that way. i stopped looking at peoples eyes because i wanted to avoid reactions like that, and then was wrongly accused of: being shy, arrogant, bored, uninterested, afraid, ret*d, not paying attention, not listening and considering myself superior, just because i did not look.

i think the ops advice is really good. my personal solution was to look at peoples eyes for about 2/3 of the time when in an interesting, serious or workrelated 1on1conversation or giving a lecture, 1/3 of the time in casual conversation and to simply smile, look at my coffee and only make brief eyecontact with the person currently speaking when in a group. i have no clue if that still comes across as odd or not, but i usually get along well with others.

two related things id really like to understand better:

1. i can not read facial expressions except for crying or extremely exaggerated smiles (happy) or raised eyebrows (surprised). i learned the probability of peoples intentions when making eyecontact but i can not read any emotions or anything but recent druguse from looking at someones eyes. eyes are.. eyes. how the hell is that supposed to work?

2. some people seem to be extremely uncomfortable with eyecontact in general and i would like to understand why. so in case you can and want to explain that to me: what makes looking at other peoples eyes that painful? please do not feel like it is necesarry to make eyecontact with others if you dont like it and especially not if it is painful for you.

I think demand for unremitting eye contact is a cultural thing. It doesn't even apply in all settings. I don't see the point in staring into the listener's eyes while I'm doing the talking. I see it as a jesture of dominance and I think cultures other than our western one would agree. I think aggressive extroverted domineering types tend to make more eye contact because they are overall less sensitive and their staring doesn't distract from their ability to talk. The only time I'm capable of staring people down while I'm talking is when they have royally pissed me off. Otherwise it just aint natural.

I think all that's really needed is occasional eye contact to show that you are listening and engaged. Looking up to the left or right is an appropriate signal that you are thinking.

I have my good days and my bad days about the eye-contact issue.

The best thing that I put myself through where a sign-language course in school. You just had to look another person in the face to learn at all. It helped me a lot. But now I've driffted away from that because it's so long ago.

I would feel the need to stare at interviews, because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I also try my hardest not to fidget around. I should practice more on proper eye contact etiquette. Thanks for the post!

But then, the point might be better expressed if there was a list of non-verbal cues in descending order of importance. For me, the only cue that matters is that the person is in the general area, but the lack of eye contact is seen as hostile or rude by most people. It takes a decent amount of focus just to remember to move my hands and look like something other than a puppet controlled only at the mouth. Then, there is the factor of trying to water down my pedantics by making mistakes.

I have a question about the staring. If the staring phase ever happens, approximately when does it happen after the gaze avoidance phase?

I can't look someone in the eye and focus properly on what they are saying. I end up freaking out and losing track of what they are saying and then I will have to ask them to repeat themselves and that annoys them. I try to look at the nose but find it still doesnt work so I use the method of looking for half a second then looking away and I find this works best when making conversation with someone, oh and by the way this goes for family too

[/quote]A glance can often work just as well in my cases. However, I when I do try to initiate eye contact, I look above instead (less facial details=less anxiety).[/quote]

Thanks I will give it a try.

As an additional note, I find looking at noses very intimidating too. Just look somewhere in the general direction and they will stop caring after a few seconds (NT's frequently have the attention spans of untrained dogs).

i cant look at pepole much at all

i just look straight ahead if i am talking with someone, and if i think the situation demands the illusion of eye contact i will look at their mouths.