Eye contact anxiety is a pronounced discomfort with making eye contact. A person with eye contact anxiety may be unable to look directly into other people's eyes when talking. They often feel like they are being judged or scrutinized when making eye contact.
Eye Contact and Social Anxiety Disorder
Often, people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) describe looking someone in the eyes as anxiety-provoking and uncomfortable. This is likely due, in part, to genetic wiring. Research has shown that people diagnosed with SAD have a pronounced fear of direct eye contact.
A person may avoid eye contact due to anxiety or fear of judgement. It can also be a sign of shyness or lack of confidence, or can be a symptom of a mental health issue, such as social anxiety disorder or depression.
Scopophobia, also known as scoptophobia, is the fear of being stared at. It varies in severity from person to person. Some people only fear when a stranger stares for a long time, while others fear even making eye contact with a friend.
Eye Contact
One study found a difference in gaze avoidance between SAD and Autism. Socially anxious people made initial eye contact but then looked away. This eye contact pattern is associated with anxiety and is an emotional avoidance strategy. Autistic people were slower to make eye contact.
Eye contact: Avoidance of eye contact is ADHD behaviour – your child/young person may look as if they are ignoring you but some find making eye contact really difficult.
A tendency to avoid eye contact is an early indicator of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and difficulties with eye contact often persist throughout the lifespan. Eye contact difficulties may underlie social cognitive deficits in ASD, and can create significant social and occupational barriers.
People with OCD may blink, close their eyes, or move their gaze in response to intrusive thoughts. A subtype of OCD known as sensorimotor/hyperawareness OCD involves being hyperaware of bodily sensations and engaging in related compulsions. Eye movements may also be a sign of tic disorders.
So, yes, anxiety can cause seizure-like episodes with symptoms like PNES. Common anxiety seizure-like episode symptoms include: Staring spell.
Individuals usually look away when they are thinking, hesitating, or talking in a non-fluent way. This behavior likely serves two purposes, the first of which is to shield themselves psychologically from the embarrassment of being judged for not proceeding.
The simplest answer to why people avoid eye contact is that they may be nervous or uncomfortable. It makes sense—eye contact invites cooperation and increased interaction from others. If you feel insecure, you don't want people to take a closer look at you.
Facial processing in posttraumatic stress disorder. People who have experienced childhood abuse often learn to avoid direct gaze due to it provoking their abuser.
Social anxiety disorder is an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others. This fear can affect work, school, and other daily activities. It can even make it hard to make and keep friends. The good news is social anxiety disorder is treatable.
Anxiety can cause several different issues that affect the appearance and feeling of the face. Anxiety can lead to a red face, facial tingling, and other issues that affect the lips, eyes, and more. Despite these issues, most people cannot tell when a person is anxious by their face.
People with anxiety and depression may experience periodic hallucinations. The hallucinations are typically very brief and often relate to the specific emotions the person is feeling.
Psychopathy, PTSD, and alexithymia (sometimes known as “emotional blindness”) are often associated with greater discomfort with eye contact. So are neuroticism, shyness, social anxiety, and autism.
Autistic people often prefer to view inanimate objects over people interacting. This atypical gaze pattern may help clinicians flag autism before other traits appear. The average age of diagnosis in the United States is 4 years.
Mild autism is level 1 autism spectrum disorder. It means a person does not have severe symptoms and needs a lower level of support than someone else with autism. People with mild autism still have a hard time communicating and interacting with others.
The most common visual condition related to ADHD diagnoses is convergence insufficiency (reduced ability for the eyes to focus, read and work at near). Those with ADHD are three times more likely to have convergence insufficiency.
Furthermore, they many times find simple social interactions painful or awkward. This all results in not always knowing how to interact with others or pick up on social cues. As a result, eye contact just doesn't happen often if at all.
While ADHD can make it difficult to focus, sit still, or control impulses, autism can limit a person's scope of interests or affect social skills and learning abilities. ADHD and autism often share symptoms, like difficulty communicating or concentrating. Additionally, it's possible that the conditions are connected.