![]() Except, by making one fumble as a result of being fixated on eye contact, the result could easily be counterproductive,Īccording to a 2016 study, even though eye contact seems unrelated to verbal processing, the former can hijack people’s brains in a way that makes it difficult for them to concentrate on the simplest of things, including making conversation, because it disrupts their thinking and reasoning abilities. Take the fact that we’re repeatedly told just how important it is to maintain eye contact during a job interview - an affair that’s already stressful enough - in a bid to make a better impression on the interviewers. The number of people relating to my woes prompted this realization - showing me how the cultural emphasis on maintaining eye contact while talking to someone has always been overrated and limiting. However, anxiety about making eye contact exists among allistic individuals, too. I have experienced most of these throughout my life. In fact, forcing an autistic individual to make eye contact can induce dizziness, nausea, increased heart rate, tremors, watering of the eyes, and overheating of the body. Then, I learnt that I was autistic, and lack of eye contact was a rather common symptom of autism. As for fixating on other parts of people’s faces, I run the risk of making them conscious, and prompting questions like, “Is there something wrong with my face?”įor a long time, I wondered whether my struggles with making eye contact were normal. The latter helps me cope with my auditory processing disorder, too, but at the cost of coming off as creepy, on occasion. I have come up with similar strategies with in-person conversations, too - instead of looking into a person’s eyes, I try to focus on the tip of their nose, the area between their eyebrows, or simply their lips. So are video calls people can’t really tell if you’re looking them in the eye, or simply staring at a copy of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night that’s hanging on the wall behind them. Picture this: I’m hanging out with a friend and discussing the Mahabharata, which I can talk endlessly about suddenly, I accidentally look her in the eye, and lose my entire train of thought while my eyes start watering and my heart starts racing even when I am able to regain a sense of what I was saying, I simply cannot manage to translate it into coherent sentences.Īs a result, socializing in person has felt like a task for as long as I can remember. It feels like I’m being asked to multi-task in a way I can’t handle, and bolsters my social anxiety. ![]() I struggle to keep up with conversations if I’m also expected to make eye contact with the people I’m speaking with. In this series, we dig into our strange phobias, fixations, and neuroses, and ask ourselves - Is This Normal?
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