Published on 12, July, 2020
I know this is pretty futile musing, although maybe some of the more neurologically typical people on here can help! (I shy away from using the term "NT's" because it feels a bit "them and us" to me).
I've found myself wondering, as I'm accepting, exploring and deepening my understanding of my own atypicalness & ASD diagnosis, about what it's like for others.
For every "aha!" moment I have about e.g. noisy restaurants, eye contact, lack of capability / impetus to maintain friendships, exhaustion in social situations, there is a corresponding "What's it like for others?" moment.
So for example, for typical people:
I always wonder about the eye contact one.
To me, eye contact is at worst painful. Physically painful. Soul searchingly probingly painful. At best, it's "ooh wow go me I'm making eye contact", which is kinda distracting from the conversation.
So to NTs, does it feel any different than looking at a chair for example?
Bagpuss7 said: At best, it's "ooh wow go me I'm making eye contact"
By the way, I've certainly experienced this :-)
I've never found eye contact painful, but I don't really know how you're supposed to do it / how much is enough. I guess I don't get anything out of it (and don't really understand why it's OK to basically stare at someone) so I always worry about doing it wrong. I do get the impression that you're supposed to do it for longer than I find comfortable, so i go for the good old "look at the mouth instead of the eyes and they'll never know" trick and that seems to work.
I never get tired of looking into my dog's big brown eyes on the other hand, but then a dog will look away and not stare at you for ages.
My better half doesn't do long eye contact either, despite being NT (as far as we know) but in his case it's more that he's quite shy so it makes him uncomfortable.