Making eye contact

[froghat]

How do you guys feel about eye contact? I'm ok when I'm doing the talking, but when I'm the listener, I find it hard to stare into someone's eyes. After a while it just makes me nervous. Is it ok for the listener to look away every now and then? I don't want to give off a bad vibe like I don't care what they are saying, but staring at someone's eyes is just freaking. What do you guys think?

 

[Helyna]

Oh, yeah, you can look away. You might look strange if you don't. Just try to keep your eyes on their face for the majority of the time.

 

[ricksljf5]

For me, eye contact has not been such a big problem. If it helps, try looking at their forehead, their nose, or their eyebrows, and try not to think so much about the person's thoughts, otherwise you don't even pay attention. And I think that it is normal for someone to look away every now and then.

 

[ioanna]

i do the same

 

[SoUlSeNsE]

eye contact

For me, eye contact with other people has been the most difficult thing to deal with throughout my life. My friends who knew me and accepted me back when i was at school were always cool about it so it never bothered me when i was younger. Now i'm older, it's become a real obstacle that i can never really get over. Eye contact sends my adrenalin levels into overdrive. My heart beats hard and fast and i become very nervous inside. In this state i am unable to listen or concentrate on what the other person is saying. So i look away or to the side. This helps me feel relaxed and i can compute what the other person is saying and perhaps have an opinion or two on what's being said. It's as if my I.Q drops as soon as your looking into my eyes. I feel like i have nothing to offer, nothing to really connect with. So when i force myself to make eye contact in situations where it's necessary(job interviews,meeting new people,talking to managers,my dad.), it's just an act. I try to act like i'm listening and comfortable. I breath slowly and deeply in a meditative way to ride it out. Some people say that i think too much but i wish it were that easy. It's a feeling. The fact is i can't think when i feel this way. Eye contact just makes me feel stupid. When i'm alone, i feel at peace. I'm content and at ease. I accept myself. I just wish i could be this way when i make eye contact. My mother has always said that i'm a sensitive person. Doctors have recommended anti-anxiety medication. Close friends have told me to find a warm and safe place in my heart and just be open. I think the latter is a beautiful way to be at peace in this situation but i know that it requires something of me to make it work. Life is a struggle for most of us. So this is how i accept my condition. I'm not a bad person and i don't hate people. But i would like to live more of a life than this. I'm sick of running away. Dogging and avoiding interactions. If you made it this far, thanks for reading ; )

 

[lyricalliaisons]

I couldn't look anyone in the eye at all except my one & only (then) friend (now I have no friends at all), until about a year ago. She didn't like it when she was talking & the person wasn't looking her in the eye & vise versa. I started going to therapy & my therapist, every appointment, kept making me look her in the eye. Now I can usually look certain people in the eye: therapist, psychiatrist, etc. But I still can't look anyone else in the eye, though I try. I have a different therapist now & I can't look her in the eye a lot of times. I just get too scared, anxious, intimidated... when I try to look into people's eyes. It's just really hard. It's even worse when the person starts talking to me; I just get sort-of panicked, so looking them in the eye certainly isn't gonna happen. It's hard to even look at their face, sometimes, much less look at their eyes. But I try & I've gotten a lot better at it.