bad eye contact - has anyone improved?

[dottie]

has anyone out there significantly improved their bad eye contact? like REALLY BAD eye contact. if so, let me know any tips or tricks you may have learned.

my eye contact is terrible and it always has been. once when i was younger my best friend's mother told her that she would never trust me because i seem dishonest for never looking her in the eye. i was horrified as i am the exact opposite! she could trust me with her life if she knew better. i am painfully honest and that is a big part of why i don't look people in the eye. i am afraid they will see right through me and take advantage. instead of seeing bad eye contact as shyness many people interpret it as decietful.

it is not deciet, it is anxiety at its rawest. when i was very young i suffered anxiety attacks and it was an accomplishment just to be around people, to try something new, or go places. so i have that ability to venture out by desperately clinging to silly coping mechanisms. this means i look like a nervous wreck. i can bring myself to face people but not look them in the eye for more than a few seconds. isn't that silly? this is a barrier i want to break (without looking creepy). i would like to be able to carry myself calmly in a dignified manner. i would like to have the cool to maintain eye contact.

anyway, i am curious if anyone has had any deep rooted issues with eye contact who has had ongoing therapy specific to this problem until it has been eradicated or well-improved. Basically: is there hope?

 

[Starlight87]

My nephew is an autistic and he doesnt look anyone in the eys...i think its ok because we all different and its terrible when pepole cant understand this.

I think eyes are the mirror of the soul and when you feel bad you dont must look anyone in the eys.

Perhaps you can practice in your therapie...i think when you have friends who like you with your good and your bad side they like you wheter you look them in the eys or not...and i say autistic can that almost never...

 

[Felgen]

In a conversation, people hold eye contact 70% of the time. When I learned that, it became easier to improve my eye contact issues.

 

[lyricalliaisons]

I don't know if there's a specific type of therapy that targets getting people to hold eye contact. But my first therapist, about 2 1/2 years ago, practically forced me to look her in the eyes. It was very, very hard, but eventually I could make myself do it even though I still hated it. I can do it better now, but I still don't do it often because it's just too scary & too hard.

I really wish I could understand why people want others to look them in the eyes when they're talking to them. I just don't see the point of it. As long as you're listening to the person, why does it matter if you're looking in their eyes? I think maybe it's because people think you're not listening unless you're looking at them & if you're looking at their eyes, they assume you must be listening because that takes a lot of concentration. It really annoys me, though, so I don't do it most of the time, because I just don't see the point of it.

 

[Anastasia]

My lack of making eye contact used to be atrocious when I was younger..so much so that I look back on it and squirm in embarrassment.

I can't say there was any one thing that helped me with it, it was more like a gradual improvement as I gained (a small amount) more confidence in myself, maturity, and also came to see other people as simply other people, rather than creatures incredibly superior to myself. Unfortunately now I seem to have the opposite problem - I realise that I am making too much eye contact and making people uncomfortable! - this has resulted in people not wanting to look me in the eye when I'm having a conversation with them! Can't win!

 

[sevenroses]

Just think of eyes something that is not threatening and just a regular body part. Also think that when people look at you no harm is being made to you

 

[EscapeArtist]

No trust because no eye contact? That's stupid, those darn assumptions.
My eye contact has gotten a lot better surprisingly, the only problem is that I now stare them straight in the eye too scared to look away lol! When I'm staring at them, directly, my mind wanders in panic and I can't hear a darn thing they're saying. I almost want to go back to having shy-away eyes.

 

[coyote]

have a read:

Eye contact - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Sial Axetder]

no, have not imporved. Have tried, little to no success. Thought occurs: rude, impolite to stare. I can understand what is being told, spoken to me better when not trying to hold eye contact.
Hold eye contact and not understand vs. some/little eye contact and understand.

 

[stephen]

I used to have trouble with it until I made a conscious effort to maintain eye contact. Now I feel like I'm too much the other way. I feel like I'm staring at them too much but I just go with it. It messes with your head when you try to analyse yourself mid conversation.

 

[HeavyRain]

When I meet eye contact with someone one, in the next second I'm almost always the one to look away first. It's something that I wish that could be easily handled.

 

[Haruhiist]

I still have it, and but I've got days when I feel good, then I notice what helped during that day.

I don't think "normal" people look each others in the eye (that's too awkward, and we always think we need to do that). I think they just look at each others face, in general.
When I was feeling okay to have a conversation yesterday, I just looked at the girl's face, the area around the nose and mouth actually. I felt better that way, and I think the person I talked to felt better too, because I wasn't trying so hard to stare.

 

[jishaku]

I can actually make eye contact but I avoid make eye contact with people because they hate it. I actually cause them like "nervous" a bit..
i even make my school principal uneasy..

 

[LazyHermitCrab]

im trying to use less eye contact because i have a habit of staring..grr it's hard to get it just right

 

[davidecl]

When I meet eye contact with someone one, in the next second I'm almost always the one to look away first. It's something that I wish that could be easily handled.

Anyone try to improve this kind of eye contact successfully? When I walk toward someone I don't know whether to make eye contact or not and whether to smile or not, it seems painfully hard, also when I do manage it I jerk my eyes away as soon as they look toward me

 

[panzerfaust]

As a child, I would look at the ground. I couldn't bear to think people were looking at me and that a smile was viewed as a smirk, the precursor to someone laughing at me.

In my teens I finally got it in my head to do something about this discomfort. I practiced holding my head up and gazing back at anyone who would look me in the eyes. I can't describe how anxiety provoking it was. I'd come home in a sweat, but as I continued, it became incrementally less difficult. Since I convinced myself that the perceived "intrusion" into my space was offensive, I approached it adversarially. In order to maintain the gaze, I would get angry. I seldom smiled, but I eventually got over the eye aversion.

Nowadays I practice a non-committal gaze: neither friendly nor adversarial. In dealing with the lemmings at work, I have to do the least politically incorrect thing. Let people I don't care about think what they want.

 

[Lonestar473]

I always do too little or too much.

Haven't really tried it myself yet, but I heard or read somewhere that you can look at a persons forehead, just above the eyebrows.

 

[NinjaLikesToast]

I used to be really bad at this, and still battle it to this day. I know I have made some improvement on it, and I notice a lot of the time it depends on the person I am talking to. It is a total confidence issue with me, and I'm sure you all feel the same way.

I would say during a conversation I can keep eye contact 40% of the time. Not bad, but as soon as our eyes connect, I am looking around for something else within seconds haha. I sometimes feel rude about it, but understand that there is nothing I can do to avoid it. I wish I could just tell the person in advance without looking like I'm crazy..

 

[AutonomousAutomaton]

I don't know if this will help at all but I think this is what I did. Stare at one eye. Don't think of it as looking at the person. Just literally think of it as staring at their eye. Remember to look away while you are talking.

 

[hoddesdon]

Yes, I have been focussing on this in recent weeks and have improved.