I tend to oscillate back and forth between people's mouths and eyes when I'm talking with them, but I barely look as people at all, or perhaps not at all when I talk.
I remember when I was at school I had a drama teacher who was also sometimes my English teacher. I remember being absolutely baffled by eye contact. I had experienced enough adults flying into an apoplectic rage because I didn't look at them when they were shouting at me for some rubbish. Then I started to try and maintain eye contact with every ounce of will I had and was then getting the same rage for apparently trying to be defiant.
My drama teacher, I suspect, had noticed my awkwardness and perhaps my other traits. One day she did an exercise in our drama class where she told us we were going to think about the experience of eye contact when talking. A few of us were selected to do this activity with her. I was once of them. I do recall feeling a bit like she was observing me at the time. But I learned something I hadn't understood before, and these things were discussed during the class after the activity.
I was really glad we did that because I learned more about how eye contact works. It basically boils down to, if someone is talking, you look at them for a moment then look away, rinse and repeat. This gives confirmation and comfort that you are listening, but maintaining eye contact for a slither too long and people feel like you are trying to make them uncomfortable. Maybe 40-50% eye contact here.
When you are talking, you show more eye contact with the occasional glance away. Maybe 70% eye contact here.
I felt so grateful to her for doing that! I felt like I had unlocked the secrets of the universe! It felt like a gift. I managed to build my skills with it over time. But it can rapidly vanish when I'm feeling really depressed. It's perhaps second nature for me but not really a natural habit.
I also have a suspicion she may have tried to either suggest I was on the spectrum to my mother on a parent's evening. I used to think it may have been dyslexia, but the thing that has made me second guess that was that the words I was told she used was "I feel Mildred is very intelligent, but they struggle to express themselves..." This apparently caused my mother to fly into a rage and start saying that she was going to "sort me out for my bad behaviour when she got home." And she certainly did that.
I remember I was subjected to a lot of angry insults and abuse that went on for hours when she got back.
The next day my teacher came to find me and said she was very worried about me and was sorry if she had caused my mother to be angry at me when she got home. She said she wanted to talk to me about something and offered me a lift home that evening.
I remember she said in the car that she felt she had noticed something about me, but she said she couldn't come out and say it to me but she had tried to talk to my mother about it and she had been very concerned about the rage she had displayed.
She asked me lots of questions, some I certainly realise now would be relevant to ASD, I remember enthusiastically talking to her about how I liked finding patterns in things and figuring out how things work. But that was pretty much the last time I spoke to anyone about it until I found this forum.
I think she realised something bad was happening at home too.
This is also around the time my mother kept on criticising me and telling me that if I played video games I'd become autistic.
She had said things like this before, she would get a bee in her bonnet about something I was doing and then she would start doing it again.
I suspect, it may not have been the only time someone had suggested this too her.
Anyways, I'm still very grateful to Ms W to helping me figure out eye contact. It made things so much better for me
