anyone else have problems not being able to stop staring at someone's physical features?

It's only happened a few times in my life, but they've all turned out to be AS. It's been more a resonance than empathy. It was in telation to what Senor was saying.

thanks for the replies... they're v helpful... sometimes i feel i am nervous when talking to someone, and may stare at - for example, once, at how white her apartment was, and just kind of marveling at it. maybe that had a calming effect on me, taking me away from having to uh - think about talking and listening and gaze. i guess it was shifting from unpleasant: conversing with person to pleasant: gazing at something that grabbed me. i don't think she liked that....  other times though, i feel i'm v superficial, taking in clothes, physical features, good and bad, and that that's how i form an opinion of the person opp me. since i feel i can lack empathy and the ability to 'read' folk, i guess i've fallen onto that as my not reliable way to judge people....

i'm not sure i've ever experienced that sort of instant connect... i'm pretty lacking in empathy, imho, and am pretty wrapped up in myself. in fact, forming *close* relationships even with friends is pretty alien to me. it's really disheartening, to put it mildly......... i may be one of uh those folk who connect much more easily to animals......not people.

That's interesting. I've had a few of these ASDar monents where I instantaneously connect with someone and then after time discover they're AS and have it in a similar way to me. It's like how they make love at first sight look in the films, but it's not falling in love. There's just a connection, I'm touched by them, I gain calm.

Once it happened just seeing the tiny fb profile picture of soneone that wasn't even showing his face, and then months later we met and we connected and i've never met soneone with such similar ASD to me. It happened in a meeting in Zoom, and when we emailed 1-1 turned out her ASD story was very similar to mine.

It's sixth sense odd!

This is a subject that gets explored here quite often. And we invariably hear  from other posters that stimming takes numerous forms. I used to doubt that I stimmed; conveniently forgetting a whole load of nail biting and skin-picking. My realisation of that has at last helped me to start bringing those stims under a bit more control; but then you have to employ other (less destructive) ways to calm yourself down.

it is perhaps worth noting the comment of Symon (below) about staring at other parts of the body to achieve a calming effect, with less eye contact involved. But I suppose you would also have to be fairly careful with that; even if it was only facial features. (Perhaps their smile would be the least controversial ;-)

Definitions of stimming tend to mention this calming effect, at some point. But neurodiversity is ..... diverse. What you find personally relevant, is important.

how do you think this might be stimming? afaik, i don't stim, but i'm in the process of discovering various unknown aspects of me............. i think of stimming in the 'typical' ways, that i've heard about....

Uh-Huh! I have also been accused of staring. but that was 50 years ago, so i suppose I have learned to zone out  a bit. But its hard to completely shut off. (I suppose it might even be thought of as a form of stimming.)

It even happened on the day of diagnosis, in a rather embarassing way. I was in the reception area, and a receptionist comes over to communicate some small point to me. I'd seen her photo before and had sort of noticed a facial feature. Well, I must have stared just a little too long at that feature as she approached. But it went further than that. It was perhaps some form of mutual recognition that we were both in the company of another person on the spectrum. Both of us were visibly a bit put out by it. It was almost like a moment of both double-take and satori. It was even quite like the moment when a movie camera zooms in and out to indicate that some sort of significant connection has taken place; so almost like a visual flashback. Looking back on my past, it is blatantly obvious that i have frequently been in the company of other neurodiverse people, but this was perhaps the first time it had happened when i was already fully familiar with the concept of neurodiversity. And just a few minutes later, i met another; but was perhaps this time better equipped to handle the experience.

I have come to think of this experience as an ASDar moment.