Do you stare?

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I remember a teacher stressing the importance of eye contact. It stayed with me all my life. But I find it hard to look at a person normally and if I keep looking at them, I feel there comes a point in the eye-to-eye contact when it become horribly uncomfortable and I feel I am giving an, 'I will possess you with my evil stare' kind of look.

Recently a friend of my brother's suddenly turned to me and began telling me something funny that happened between him and my bro. I felt uncomfortable but tried to appear interested and held his gaze as best as I could. The guy was talking normally until suddenly he blushed and started looking away. He ignored me after that. I don't know what my stare was like. I wonder if he thought I fancied him. I feel mortified to think about it even now.

Have others experienced something like this?

I find the whole process for maintaining constant eye contact extremely rude and I can't bring myself to do it. I tried a few times but I just find it weird and uncomfortable, the only people I look into the eye are those who are close to me. It's much easier to casually converse with people that come from cultures that do not have this constant pressure to maintain eye contact.

I stare when I first go to somewhere new, because I am trying to take in all the information at once, but as soon as someone meets my gaze, then I look away.

I too have issues with staring,at times, and makes the other person I am loking at uncofortable. I have learned a few techquies to stop from staring too long at people.

The first is stand or sit at an angle so you are looking past the person and loking at a object or a plain part of wall or door. I then flick between looking the other person and the wall, door, or object. Most of the time, NT's do not notice unless they ask why I am not looking at them or I point it out to them.

The other tip that I have used was look at the bridge of the nose to you are not looking directly in the eyes and again most NT's do not pick up on it.

Both of thease tips work but take a bit of pratcie to get right and then you start doing without thinking about it.

I've been known to give the 'Creepy Eye' plenty of times, it's so embarrassing. I try to count to five then glance away, this of course, means I will have NO idea what we were talking about. :/

If I really want to understand and retain what someone says I won't look at them. If I think the information they are conveying isn't as important as the attention they want from saying it, then I will look at them in the eye.

I've found that most NT people don't talk as a means of communication, they just... talk. Whether they have some information to convey or not, it's just... a lot of noise coming out of their mouths.

They say more in everything that goes with the noises. Eye contact, body language, glottals, hand gestures... all of that says more than their words usually do.

Not US vs THEM or GOOD vs BAD- just differences, I think.

I'm pretty bad at keeping eye contact, but I stare in the way that if I find someone attractive it's hard to stop looking

Same here. I find it easier to look longer at people I'm close to, but not entirely comfortable there either. And that's so true about the culture thing. Some cultures, especially eastern admire shyness and think it's rude to stare into someone's eyes, especially for opposite genders.


oh my God, I do that too. Not about the looking away but scrutinizing at every nook at cranny lol. I always worry someone's gonna think I'm trying to find something to steal.

You know what? I watched a vid about tips like that but funnily I never remember to do all that in real life. I did practice the looking at the bridge of the nose on my bro and he told me he thought I was looking at him the whole time. So yeah that's a good one. Now I just gotta remember to do it.

I know what you mean. Glue eyes lol.



Cool!Made me laugh and learnt some interesting things about NT's. I also find it easier to concentrate if I stop looking at the person and be aware of my ears lol.

It is a bad habit that I have made a conscious decision to alter with some success. People do not like to be stared at, as I have discovered. I still sometimes stare, but always try to correct it if I can.

I don't stare at people because I don't like being stared at myself. But since I gone on antidepressants I often have little staring moments, but I know that's a side effect to the antidepressants.

Verily... I always look into peoples' left eyes for some reason. Often I find my gaze drifting to another part of their face.
I think I sometimes have this intense questioning look; some people have gotten upset and said I looked angry, but this is mainly when I am struggling to hear them over background noise.

I'm trying to stop this too. What are you doing to change it? The bad thing with me is that I don't blink a lot and that makes my stare worse (imagine a googly-eyed stare). Once I was having trouble looking at someone cuz my vision was blurred and I was worried I was gonna go cross-eyed trying to focus and with the effort of maintaining eye-contact, so luckily as I had a headache too, I told them I'm listening but just have to close my eyes for a bit. That was such a relief lol.


I'd never deliberately stare at a person I'm not talking to. It's something that happens when I'm talking to someone cuz we were taught to maintain eye contact when talking to someone. When it doesn't come naturally it ends up being stare. I know what you mean about those staring moments. I don't think it's your medication as I refuse to take anti-depressant but have those little moments when I freeze. Apparently they're supposed to be tiny seizures, but nothing to worry about.

Last edited by babyheart on 02 Oct 2014, 10:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think that was part of the problem I used to have making and holding eye contact. I had been told in rather nasty terms on an occasion or two when I was young that I was staring. That makes making and holding eye contact all the more difficult for me since I didn't quite know for sure what was the right amount of eye contact and what looked like staring. I think I was in my early to mid thirties before I kind of worked it out.

Bang on! Somehow I think life would've been easier if I hadn't heard that teacher saying to maintain eye contact. It might not have become an issue. Being aware of something, sometimes makes it harder.

Yes, I tend to, to the point that I have to be on guard for when I'm doing it.

yes, usually i notice someone i reconize or someone from across the room who may or may not be doing something odd or speaking loudly and they intrigue me, so i study them but usually i get caught and people tell me not to stare