Re-evaluating my eye contact issues...

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So in this rather long journey to separate the parts of myself that are learned behaviors/reactions and those that are more naturally me, I have been examining my eye contact. On the surface, I do it.
But really, I don't. I'll look at the person's eyelashes, iris compositions, their eye shape, complexion, eyebrows, nose, forehead, facial changes during speaking, or their lips as they speak (mostly this, if I seem to be missing things).
Full, prolonged eye contact tends to illicit a trembling, anxious feeling in my stomach akin to the overused 'butterflies'. If I persist past this feeling, I get the heart pounding that I now know heralds a panic attack.

As a kid, I had lots of crushes. But I was also told this butterfly feeling was a result of being attracted to someone. As a result, I stay away from other men. But now I wonder? What if this was a result of forcing myself to make eye contact? I have had this sensation with men, women, my husband, my kids, and my parents. I can't be physically attracted to ALL of them. I CAN, however, be feeling anxious at looking them in the eyes.

Is it possible that I have an learned something wrong? Is this a reaction anyone else has? Even when I don't have this exaggerated reaction, I tend to have a difficult time completing a thought.

Anyone else?

Last edited by Brittniejoy1983 on 28 Mar 2016, 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Eye contact was beat (literally) into me as a child. My stepfather did this because he believed that not looking someone in the eye made them untrustworthy.

So, I can do it. It's very uncomfortable. Especially when I lock eyes and can't break away. I can feel my brain buzz when that happens.

I too look at different parts of the face and many times lips for the same reasons. But if in a quiet environment, I will look at the bridge of the nose a lot. Unless they have features that draw my attention. And, eyes are really quite pretty so they can transfix me, even without attraction. I love looking at eyes.

I don't get all the way to pounding heart and panic doing it. But, it does something unsettling to me. I asked a woman once if she was making passes at me. She looked shocked and then asked if I didn't notice her looking into my eyes and such. Well, no because I was taught that you had to look people in the eyes at all times. So, is looking into eyes some sort of 'signal'? If so, I'm toasted in either way. I get nervous and undomfortable if I do. If I don;t then what is that telling people?

The 'butterflies in the stomach' thing is just a basic nervous reaction. For instance, I have not been eating for a year and a half. I don't feel hunger. But, I do feel that anxious, butterfly feeling all the time. Even when in a situation that I am not nervous in, I still feel it. Or I get nauseous. But not hunger. I don't even know what hunger feels like anymore. It used to be a pleasurable sensation and felt good to eat. Now, it's anything but pleasurable. Sometimes, when I start to eat, I feel like I have to go to the bathroom or vomit. And, now when I do eat, I can;t eat much because things are not accustomed to having any volume of food in there. And, it's compounded by the fact that if I'm in the middle of things, I will forget to eat. Special interests are really bad about me forgetting to do anything at all. So far though, no issues with relieving myself of voiding bowels, but I can go so long that it's painful to get up and walk when I realize I do have to go to the bathroom.

This is my diet since Friday night:

Friday--Three spoonfuls of a chili type concoction with tostitos chips thrown in for crunch. Gotta have crunch. Milk.

Saturday: four snackpak puddings and a handful of chips. Made myself eat that because I didn't want to go into hypoglycemic shock. Milk

Sunday: Two snackpak puddings and a handful of chips. Made myself eat that because I didn't want to go into hypoglycemic shock. Milk

Today, nothing so far and no hunger. Just that nervous feeling inside. I am now wondering if my internal sensory system is all wonky. I've gone up to four days without any food.

The stupidest thing about the "Eye contact" theory is it's drilled into everyone's head while those that are the most trustworthy know it's drilled into everyone's head and actually use tons of eye contact knowing they can fool people over these "social cues" that society declares reveals all convincing people that just by merely looking into someone's social cues like 1. Do they give eye contact and keep it...oh they are telling the truth!" is a superficial myth that often gives cunning deceptive types leverage.

If eye contact is uncomfortable and overwhelming as it overstimulates you why force that? It's all a bunch of hog wash!

Hogwash or not, if it's been conditioned into you, along with a lot of other traits, you cannot really escape it. There are some cultures that use the eye contact thing to 'read' you. Apparently, there are a lot of cues given away by the eyes. I've never been able to pick up on them because I am so busy dealing with other input. And, part of it is because I'm busy dealing with the forced conditioning and the discomfort and then the looping of whether to break eye contact, when to break eye contact, should I break eye contact, will I look untrustworthy and back to the beginning again, building up pressure inside me. All of this an more goes through my head on top of everything else.

Whether I have good eye contact depends on the circumstance... But also the evaluator!

My ASD evaluator said that I make eye contact when I need it for lipreading or sometimes because I've been taught it (i said so, but also apparently it shows) because I don't use it for "social" something... As far as I've been able to understand the term I've forgotten , it means I don't use it for bonding.

I'm not exactly sure how I could do it that way. I've certainly never managed to beckon a waiter using eye contact.

Or I look between the eyes/at eyebrows.

But, on the surface I have "satisfactory" or "good" eye contact (two non-ASD reports). I've been told by a variety of people that I have a tendency to stare very intently at times.

I recongize the process you describe, having experienced it myself - this sounds like information overload and nothing specific to eye contact.

For me, the problem is caused when too many interacting simulations are loaded in to memory at once, and memory runs out, so the brain shuts down (faints) and reboots (comes around) just like if you opened too many applications on a computer.

This would explain why the same feeling is generated when feeling attracted to someone, as it would also trigger multiple complex simulations (life together, deeper evaluation of the individual, how are they interacting with the people around them, how do they really view me etc).

Anything relating to my body is prone to cause this.

For instance, when in my old science class I saw images relating to nuclear weapons and the teacher was describing how the people would've been vapourised instantly, my mind began processing in parrelel what it would've felt like for those being vapourised, what it would've felt like for me being vapourised, and the ethical implications aswell as possible mitigations for nuclear issues and foreign policy - this was too much and I almost blacked out.

You need to kill off/ stall the process before you run out of memory. You should break down the task in to bitesize chunks.

In the case of involuntary verbose facial analysis, try to analyse the eyes only, then look away until you've finished processing the eyes, then look back at the person and focus on their nose only, then look away again...

You'll avoid staring the person out, connotate consistent attentiveness, and avoid a panic attack.

All this assuming your brain works like mine.

Why not give it a try and let us know how you get on?

I had never associated it with discomfort. I have read of many people who have professed that it makes them unsettled. But I had never (knowingly) experienced. It is part of how I think my upbringing has helped hide the symptoms/traits of ASD. I was told to "look at me" when someone was talking to me. Since I would have been in trouble at that time, it didn't strike me as individually uncomfortable, as the whole situation would have been. In school, I would have with friends, but hence the feelings of butterflies. I was drilled against homosexuality and crushes on teachers, so those feelings would have been suppressed. I was told to be cautious around boys and men, and now, knowing how eye contact makes me feel, I wonder if those two concepts are what have built my aversion to being around men.

Either way. I am in awe of how much of my inadequacies are explained by what is a very normal trait in ASDs.

It is less that I wasn't normal, just I was a different kind of normal.

Shaarga: THAT'S WHAT I RECENTLY STARTED!! !! (Overjoyed yelling). It actually helped in a major way last night when I had to run a parenting meeting that was about 22 moms to my one educator instead of the usual 10 moms/parents to THREE educators. Granted, still wasn't fun, but luckily trying to maintain 'normal' wasn't as necessary because it was insane. No one minded if I was a but overly direct, too loud, or bossy/controlling. Eye contact wasn't needed because I was troubleshooting carriers, not people's faces.

ConceptuallyCurious: yeah, I use the lipreading thing when I have a hard time processing what someone has said. But only if they've had to repeat themselves a couple times.

It actually is quite simple for me since I got officially diagnosed: when I look someone directly in the eye, I can't understand what they are saying. I used to "pretend" to look people in the eye when I was working. I remember in my childhood, people telling me, "look me in the eye!" But now that I'm retired, and have my official adult diagnosis, when someone is talking to me, I look away so that I can understand what they are saying. My autism doctor (the one who diagnosed me)thinks that this is reasonable.

For me eye contact is useful for letting the person know they are talking to you so when I hear someone talk, I turn my head and look and see if that person is looking at me so I won't answer them thinking they are speaking to me only to find they are on their phone or talking to someone else in the room. I had to train myself to do this.

Eye contact is also useful when you are driving. If you are waiting to turn and you see another car, look at the driver to see if they give you a hand gesture to go. I had to train myself to do this too.

Eye contact is useful when you speak to someone so look at them so they know you are talking to them. I also had to train myself to do this.

When I was a kid, I was trained to look at lips so I could learn how words are formed. This was also useful for learning to say words and how they are formed. This is how deaf people learn language and I wasn't deaf but it was very similar to when I was learning language and to speak. I am not sure how different it is for autistic kids when they learn to speak. Are they also formed to look at mouths so they know how to form words?


Eye contact can be fun because you get to see what their hair looks like, their noses, eyes, mouths, teeth, ears, eye brows, their clothes, their chests, their arms and legs. The challenge is doing it without staring and I think their facial expressions can be funny. I can't stand to go through my day and not knowing what a person looked like who spoke to me so I force myself to get a look at them. But when I was a kid, no one could ever get me to look at them because in my defense, I had ears so I could hear them so why even look at them. I wasn't deaf and I could understand words now and how they are said. It even said in my IEP I preferred to not do eye contact. I didn't even know people did it so I know it wasn't anything new I did at 14. Even as a toddler I didn't do good eye contact but then I did it when they held something in their hand or were playing with me and had me engaged so it made me look at them. So it was like inconsistent eye contact I did, another plus and minus for me. So I have no clue if my eye contact is even normal to this day when I do it. Sometimes it comes natural but it only happens to my parents, my husband, my children.