Great difficulties with non-verbal eye contact

sabbath92003 · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:51 am Post subject:

Maybe you can have a notepad / clipboard with you, and when you tire of eye contact you can make notes, pretend to make notes, or just look at your notes for a while.

_________________
Accept your reactions and be present
Choose a valued direction
Take action

http://www.contextualpsychology.com/act

Lea · Intermediate User Joined: Mar 08, 2008 Posts: 235

seekeroftruth · Newbie User Joined: Feb 26, 2008 Posts: 21

I developed social anxiety in the last year or so where it changed from being socially awkward to something altogether different. The company I worked for just shut down, this job is the longest I have ever been employed by one company.

Eye contact is bad enough on a social basis let alone a job interview, I find it extremely difficult to appear calm and interested, I seem stressed and hyper I think darting my eyes around.

Slothrop · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:37 pm Post subject:

It isn't important to make direct eye contact. Nobody is comfortable with that. In many animals it's experienced as a challenge or threat because it's uncomfortable. In many human cultures it's considered impolite as well.

Think about the intent instead: what you really want to communicate to the person is that you're paying attention. You don't need to look them directly in the eye or focus on anything at all to do this. You only need to look them in the face every once and a while as your eyes dart around naturally. Unless you're very close to them it's hard to tell whether someone is looking you dead in the eye or just somewhere on your face.

If you feel the need to look away when trying to form your thoughts into a sentence, that's entirely normal, too. You're generally trying to juggle watching, listening, and speaking, all of which require a lot of attention to do. Instead of worrying about keeping them all "in the air" at once, try to get used to the idea that you're going to be rapidly switching between them without thinking.

(When you're anxious, you're consuming most of your attention with very inward-focused thinking, which makes it hard to do any of those things adequately. You may be trying too hard to mimic what you think is normal, instead allowing the most natural thing to happen and accepting it.)

The other part is when you're speaking, you want to make just enough eye contact to gauge their reaction, and see if they are listening. I've noticed this usually happens right after you finish forming the sentence in your mind but before you finish speaking it. You don't "decide" to look, but it's like suddenly your mind nothing to do, so you're free to take a glance.