Extreme eye contact phobia

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If I ever make eye contact I have a panic attack. I can't even look at pictures or videos of people looking straight into the camera. Anyway am I the only one?

I don't really get a panic attack. What I get is a sensory overload. It feels like a laser burning through my head when I lock pupils with another person. BTW: looking at pictures and video of people staring at me had no effect on me.

^ Same. I don't get panic attacks, but even if I accidentally make eye contact with someone it makes me extremely uncomfortable and just ... squick. Especially if someone then draws attention to the fact that I accidentally did it or comments, that makes it worse. I avoid it at all costs.

It's odd for me. I've been a target of 2 sociopaths in my life, and something they typically employ is extensive eye contact. I didn't actually realize when I am, or when someone is giving me, eye contact. For the first half of my life I never looked into peoples eyes cause I didn't even recognize their faces. After a while, when that developed, I sort of stopped doing it. The sociopaths are always confused because they think I'm just like everyone else, then when they try to come manipulate me with charm it just doesn't work for them and they get frustrated.

I used to hate it but since I had to do it more and more with time and different social situations I kinda just got used to it and now it doesn't bother me so much anymore, it's still uncomfortable but I've realised it's only uncomfortable when I'm really aware I'm making eye contact with someone, most of the time now I stop acknowledging I'm doing it.

I think this is more along the lines of social anxiety rather than autism.

I hate making eye contact and only do it fleetingly if I feel that I have to. I go shopping with my mum sometimes and when we get to the checkout, the assistants will often stare at me when I'm packing up our stuff and it makes me feel like I've been "busted"! I know they're trying to figure out why I'm not looking at them and maybe they want an acknowledgement, but it just freaks me out. My mum will sometimes try to distract them but it doesn't always work.

Whenever I actually do go to a professor's office hours for extra help and it's just us one-on-one, I struggle immensely to maintain eye contact whenever they're explaining concepts to me. It's so bad that I end up not really listening to what they're saying (and just saying "yeah", "mhm", and nodding occasionally) because I'm more concerned of maintaining eye contact and hopefully "passing". And its pretty obvious to them I'm not following along, because they'll repeatedly ask if I'm sure I understood but I just say I got it and move on. If I'm lucky, I did retain some of portion of the information. Usually don't get much from the whole experience and its a waste of time for both professor and myself, but I just tell myself "at least I went in and sought help" lol

I don't have problems with pictures like you said, but I do with videos. Not so much videos of public figures and strangers, but just of people I know.

On another note, I can't do eye contact with peers either. And I know I'm being "tested" by someone who will occasionally look at me and whenever we hit eye contact, I'm the one that immediately reverts my attention elsewhere. I say "tested" because I know this person is associated with Person B who I did wrong a couple years ago, so my guess is I'm being watched to get a better understanding of my behavior ... which at this point, taking everything in consideration, should be obvious I'm on the spectrum. I could be getting mocked too with the repeated glances, but whatever. I suck at eye contact in general, but this issue with the associate of Person B is more-or-less worse because there's a lot of guilt on my behalf and I just know they've already judged/criticized me with whatever they heard from Person B. I do think I'm being mocked by both of them, but I'm trying to suck it up and just pretend they don't exist lol

I think I've only had a few panic attacks in my life but I don't think I've had a panic attack from eye contact alone. Eye contact is usually a catalyst. I definately don't have a problem with pictures or videos but Facetime or Skype can be problematic but not as bad as face to face or at least I don't think so.