Severe eye-contact issue

[cruisin]

When anyone experiences any sort of emotion which contorts their face, the image of their face will remain in my head and I'll analyze their physiognomy. I often do it to my own reactions. If it is anything embarrassing it can keep me up at night.

I do this too! Exactly the same.
I work in retail too so I have to talk to a lot of strangers and for example if I look at them and they have a certain look on their face I fear it's because of me and then that image is stuck in my mind for the rest of the day and night while I work out why their face looked like that.

I'm trying to get around it by just telling myself it's impossible to know why they looked confused/happy/angry/weirded out and so there's no point thinking about.

Of course that doesn't stop the problem it just prevents me from thinking about it as much.

 

[cobalt_bluester]

PS (hopefull this won't sound stupid) But when I'm wearing shades/sunglasses I find it 10x easier to hold a conversation.
Obviously you can't rely on this seeing as you're not outdoors all the time.

hi lime. i have started to wear sunglasses now for the first time, basically each time I go outdoors. I just don't want to give someone a stressed out look which I invariably do!!! I also don't want to reveal my depressed face and the huge bags that are under my eyes!!! I wish I was carefree like most of the people I see walking around, baring their arms and legs and not afraid to make eye contact. I am in a very dark place compared to them, and that's in more than one way if you catch my drift.