Eye contact - is it resolvable?

Accidentally put an Introduction message in this post, so am editing the content to remove it. 

Hi Buffy I don't experience that in cafe's but do find it that I need to be facing into the cafe whenever in one. I think that may be just me but which ever. I have always liked a corner seat to view to the whole room or if tables are lined up alongside the wall i will pick a seat the wall side so am looking in....

Hi, I am going for my full assessment in 2 weeks and have been making notes to take to the psychologist. I've been thinking about social anxiety and eye contact and wondered if anyone else has experienced the following:

when I am with someone new in a cafe or restaurant, the anxiety I feel when they were looking directly at me I cannot lift my cup / fork / spoon up to my mouth as my hand and head starts to shake. If for a moment they look away to look out of the window, or just look around and their eyes leave me, I am then able to drink / eat without shaking ... until they turn round and look back at me.

Anyone else experience this ever?

Hi, can I add to this? I notice these posts were from last year

Does anyone else use distractions to stop people from looking at them with their eyes? As a teenager I used to wear black "goth" clothes to either blend into the background as I was so dark or to distract the eye gaze away from me (looking inside me and my head) and onto my clothes. I would dye my hair purple and pink and crimp it to make it huge and wear weird make-up, all just so people would not be able to "see" the actual me. Even now I will wear bright clothes to distract a gaze and also to express how I feel.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe not so much the extreme make-up bit! I was an experimenting with the idea at the time

Hello

I can remember as a child tearful meals when I'd claim family were looking at me and please stop looking at me and family saying back they weren't. Now I know what was happening for me in terms of eye contact.  I didn't think I had much problem but I do at times. There no obvious science in it for me. Sometimes I can very easily look people in the eye and sometimes as one occaision this year even when I was distressed they forgot and asked me to look at them. He meant it in a gentle way. Whilst I kinda complied it  brought on tears for me. So yes I do have this problem at times. I didn't think I did but I do. Sometimes a person will stand at the side of me rather than face on, they know am listening to the conversation. I do not know if it a concious thing on either of our parts, but I know sometimes I do feel comfortable and sometimes say more. Harder in a group situation but works well in a one to one contact.

Hi again,

Thank you all - as I've only just begun my diagnosis journey, this is all very new to me, and it is such a breath of fresh air to dicuss these things at last with anyone that can even comprehend any of what I'm trying to describe!

 When I am in the company of only one other person, I am definitely most comfortable not looking at them at all.  Input from my other senses just seems distracting, and I'll often let my eyes drift out of focus.  I am only now finding the courage even to ask people to turn off TV or music when trying to chat (folks that leave the TV on in the "background" are one of my biggest pet peeves!) 

Attempting to make eye contact, or thinking about my posture, immediately makes me incredibly self-conscious, and I wil then start to lose the thread.  If I am truly feeling involved in the conversation, I find that I often "zone out" - there's such an intense focus on the words that I become almost unaware of my surroundings.  This happens often when I am with my therapist - she now knows to give me five minutes at the end of the session to "come to my senses", as I can become quite disorientated - like waking up in the morning in an unfamiliar place.

When in a crowd, much as Marjorie describes, the mouth-watching helps me to maintain focus on the person I'm talking to.  I'm in my mid-forties, yet often can still hear those ultra-sonic cat scaring devices (ouch!) - so there's little wrong my ears, I'm sure (despite having played drums and bass for three decades!)

I think this ties in a little with what I mentioned before about "cognitive load".  When the conversation is moving very quickly, I often can't find the right mouth to focus on quickly enough (assuming it's even in line of sight.)  I feel like I become one of those "eagle eyes" action-man dolls, eyes constantly scanning back and forth, searching for the place where sound and sight are synchronised.  The need to find this synchronisation far outweighs any consideration I might have for "appropriate" eye-contact, even if I were comfortable with it - and it is very tiring!

I find the hubbub of a busy bar or restaurant very uncomfortable in general - so many voices all at once, yet no particular one that I can focus on.  If there is also blaring music, the sound of people eating etc. it all seems to become just a single, oppressive, formless kind of noise.  Add too much visual stimulus on top of that, and eventually I will need to escape - either get away from it physically, or retreat into my own head and become unresponsive to what's going on around me.  I doubt that I need spell out how this reaction is (mis)interpreted by the "NT" friends that one is hoping to socialise with!

Re:the attitude of professionals and voluntary organisations.  From my experiences and research so far, sadly, I find very little to contradict what Longman has said.

Even those professionals with a more empathetic view, such as Tony Attwood, are highly critical of the diagnostic standards that are currently in use - particularly the almost complete lack of recognition of the variety of sensory issues experienced, and the way that the strain of "passing as normal" so often leads to melt-downs and co-morbid mental health problems.

When I read of efforts to "train" people in eye-contact and body language, or to control non-damaging stimming, I do not see this as helping people with a disability - it's all about making sure that "NTs" are not made to feel uncomfortable by our behaviour, no matter how benign.  We're only worthy of help so long as we're "striving to be normal", and the onus of finding a workable way to communicate is always on us and/or our carers, never the public that surrounds us.

To access help at all, we are also forced to agree that we have a "disability" even if we personally do not think of our cognitive differences that way (I make no judgement here, I think either attitude is perfectly valid - my beef is that the professionals insist on deciding what our attitude should be, when it should be a matter for each individual and their loved ones.)

Is it really our different neurology, or is it society, that does the "disabling"?  I have to stifle a chuckle every time I hear the endless rhetoric about how our society allows so much "freedom of choice".  I've found nowehere yet that I can "choose" to have a nice pint of hand-pulled ale in an atmosphere that I can comfortably socialise in.  I have yet to work in a place where I can "choose" not be assaulted by the stench of aftershaves, perfumes and deodorants (surely the word "deodorant" implies something that removes smell - not a pong that is so overpowering that I want to retch!!).

In my case, I have never received any help at all until presenting to my GP suffering acute depression and anxiety - usually with my social life in tatters, and on the verge of unemployment (as I again find myself).  Over three decades, this has happened to me four or five times, and I have rebuilt my life each time only to have it come tumbling down again a few years later.  Only now is the task of finding the underlying reason for those collapses being addressed - and as with so many of us, this comes with the caveat that the diagnosis will not allow access to any helpful services - because there aren't any! (except for those of us with co-morbid learning difficulties, or who are on the verge of suicide.)

Of course, I agree that where resources are limited, the help should be targeted at those with the most dire needs.  But the way that "high-functioning" people (whatever that's supposed to mean) are dealt with does not even make sense on these terms.

It is surely better (and cheaper!) for us to continuously receive the little help we would need to be productive members of society than to have us lurching from one acute crisis to the next.  As each crisis point is reached, we then need access to much more intensive and expensive interventions.  All this time, while on the inevitable waiting lists and then receiving our therapy, we are unable to contribute fully to the world around us, and are competing for the very crisis services that those in more dire circumstances so deperately need.

Phew!  I didn't intend to rant quite so much there, quite some catharsis!  Thankyou very much for your patience if you have read this far!

Best wishes

Trog.

Much obliged to both Trogluddite and Marjorie195 for their insight on this, and Electra too. Trogluddite has brilliantly explained what I was trying to say in my questioning way, and added a lot more.

It helps me a great deal as I am often wondering if the way I see things is at all relevant to the experience of others on the spectrum. So the affirmation is gratefully received.

The tragedy is - is anyone listening out there?  By that I mean the decision makers on how autism is supported.

We hardly even see moderators these days, except when they retract posts while they deliberate whether they are appropriate, without bothering to explain their actions to us.

Are the psychologists, psychiatrists and other health workers listening to what we say?

Sadly NAS will keep pedalling the diagnostic triad with its misleading impression of life on the spectrum no matter what we try to tell NAS about how we want to be represented - (the best they can muster is a survey mostly of parents and professionals as to whether we want to be called aspies or auties!).

I watch the mouth to help me hear in noisy environments, ie I lip read a little to supplement the sounds. I have been diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, when I had a hearing test recently. My hearing is above average for my age.

Re eye contact, when I was younger, other people gazing at my face made me blush and shrink away from them. I used to think I was shy, but I am actually quite extrovert. Eye contact is uncomfortable, bordering on painful, depending on how strong and happy I am, or unhappy and un-confident. It has a strong emotional effect on me, which reduces my ability to think.

I often feel as though I am made of glass and others know what I am thinking, especially if their eyes bore into me. I find it intrusive at times and at others I fail to say what I am thinking, because I believe they already know.

Hi Longman,

Your post intrigued me - as a fellow "mouth-watcher", the way you summarise your experience chimes with my own.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you mention 'playing a role' - i.e. that it has an awful lot to do with the degree of predictability/ambiguity of a situation, and the amount of 'cognitive load' resulting from uncertainty.

In formal situations, life is much simpler - the roles of "talker", "listener", "questioner", "answerer", "dominant", "supplicant" etc. are pretty clearly defined, and there are fewer surprises.  There are relatively clear rules defining what constitutes "appropriate behaviour".

This means that we can easily bring to bear everything we have learned from previous experience.  Some of that learning might even have been sub-conscious - i.e. over the decades, we just conditioned ourselves to give a cursory glance at another person's face, and go "Mmmm" every once in a while, simply because 90% of the time, we got a better outcome that way (and our keen observational skills noticed other folks doing the same, even if we don't quite know why they were doing it.)

In a less formal setting, knowledge from previous experience etc. is much more difficult to apply - the "roles" that each person plays are constantly shifting, and several people may be competing for attention at every pause in the conversation.  Far fewer assumptions can be made about what another person might be wanting or expecting, and judging the appropriate level of assertiveness is much more difficult.

  Simply, there's just so much more cognitive load - so many more possibilities to compute!  Meanwhile, the "NTs" that surround us have their handy "instincts", which allow them to short-cut past all of that complexity - they can just "do" without all that cumbersome "working out" before they look/speak/act.

This, of course, explains the "social exhaustion" that is such a common symptom reporeted here.  Thinking really does burn calories, and we can't relax for a moment in case we commit some unintended faux-pas.

I quite often find that the whole subject of conversation has changed several times while I'm stuck in a kind of "analysis paralysis" - and all of that time, I haven't been paying attention to where I was looking. my posture etc. (or of those around me)  I think that, even if we're not aware of it, this must contribute to a form of "performance anxiety" that strikes at precisely those times when we're supposed to be able to relax and "just be ourselves" (Oh, how I hate that phrase - my behaviour when alone is neither dangerous nor "perverted", but I doubt that being the "real me" would truly be appreciated out in "polite society"!)

I find that the most irritating aspect of this is that almost any kind of "shy" behaviour is so often interpreted as insincerity.  Plenty of experiments have shown that most people are absolutely hopeless at judging whether they are being lied to, yet are hugely over-confident in their ability to do so - basing this almost entirely on social cues which are signs of stress or anxiety, not insincerity. This is especially ironic considering that AS folks are supposedly less inclined to mislead than the average person.

Yet there may be a "silver lining".  The very social cues that we're "missing out on" are precisely the ones that politicians and sales people use to manipulate their audience.  By concentrating on verbal content and actions, we are likely better (if slower) judges of character than we might think - better than the average "NT", even.

Maybe that's preciely why there's so much emphasis put on mastery of eye-contact - they're afraid that they can't control us so easily!! (Wishful thinking, I know - but it's a comforting dream.)

I also have a little theory of my own regarding "mouth-watching".  People are inclined to see whatever it is that they expect to see, as shown by many psychology experiments.  So maybe, even if our gaze is a little "off target", we're close enough for the other person's ego to compensate - they want to be the centre of attention, so their brain compensates for our slight "error", and they perceive that we made eye-contact when we didn't really!!

Best wishes.

Thanks for this and many thanks for the link.

Hi Longman

This emphasis on eye contact bugs me too. We are about the only species where making prolonged eye contact is not interpreted as threat or aggression. Other primates mostly do what we do, glance at each other when interacting.

Why does everyone see it as a yardstick of good communication? I think ts because not looking at an NT person when you talk to them makes them feel uncomfortable. Eye contact is not essential for communication.

You might like this blog, the latest post has stuff on communication such has how our conversations follow a different rhythym and pattern to NT ones. Maybe this is why we find social interaction with NTs so tiring:

yesthattoo.blogspot.co.uk/

An aspect of my eye contact experience particularly concerns me. I can manage to play a role without being so obviously affected by it. But when this ends and informal socialisation takes over, it feels like I've already left the room, and am looking in through a window.

Workwise I've often had to play host, facilitator, presenter, educator, which I manage to do well. I seem able to engage, put people at their ease, get people talking and discussing.

I still have trouble if there's a lot of competing noise, other people talking or background music, mainly because I tire more easily in these situations, and I have trouble hearing what people are saying.

Also I don't think I'm making eye contact, or reading faces at all. It is an act I've become familiar with and expert at. I've learned how to say the right things. So why the big difference in informal socialisation?

Shyness has often been suggested. But I'm hardly a "shrinking violet", potentially too forward and pushy, which I have to reign in. And just to do the formal stuff needs a lot of boldness. So it is quite bizarre what happens when I'm no longer 'performing' and operating in an informal social environment.

It is a big handicap because to back the formal skills you have to be good at the social mingling and meeting. You have to join the right social circles and formal groups to get on in life. But I cannot, and if I try I make a most awful mess of things. And the world seems to judge more on social skills than ability.

As soon as things revert to informal, I'm suddenly remote. I often just leave.