Uncomfortable looking people in the eye

That may require the assistance of a certified professional or appropriate medication.

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It might be easier to practice eye contact with someone you trust or a loved one if you have a difficult time with strangers or people of authority. A video chat can also be a good option for eye contact practice and for feeling out the pacing of conversation. That additional technological layer between people can provide a softer environment to practice in.

How to Make Eye Contact the Right Way in Life, Business, and Love

Establish eye contact with other people before you start talking to them. In doing so, you can create a habit that becomes muscle memory and instinct rather than needing to think about how you are going to interact. After that initial bond is established, you can more freely look away or break your gaze with body language at an appropriate time. Developing oneself is not something that happens overnight. It requires persistent, consistent effort to work through that type of anxiety.

There are right and wrong ways to break eye contact. The importance of healthy eye contact cannot be understated.

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Many people consciously and subconsciously base their interpretations of other people on nonverbal cues, eye contact being one of the most important. Quality eye contact can communicate honesty and integrity in a way that words cannot. Do consider consulting with a mental health professional if you feel distress over eye contact with other people. It may be caused by a problem that requires more personalized, professional help to overcome. Do you have a hard time with eye contact? A quick glance sends a different message than a cold stare, but both are forms of making eye contact.

How and when to make eye contact depends entirely on the customs of where you are, who you are with, and the social setting. For example, some cultures consider making direct eye contact aggressive, rude, or a show of disrespect. Other cultures and some religious groups consider eye contact between men and women inappropriate and either as threatening or flirtatious.

In many Asian cultures, avoiding eye contact with a member of the opposite sex or a superior is seen as a show of respect. However, in the United States and most of Europe, making eye contact is not only seen as appropriate but is necessary for establishing yourself as a powerful business professional. In business and social settings making the "right" eye contact never involves staring at someone or having a fixed gaze.

To make eye contact, look directly into the other persons' eyes for seconds. Be sure to blink normally, and nod or shift your head from time to time during a conversation. Mimicking the facial expressions of the person talking i. A frozen stance and tense face seem more like staring than contact. Almost universally, looking into someone else's eyes for more than a few seconds before smiling or otherwise changing your facial expression.


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Blinking fast and frequently can be associated with feeling nervous or uncomfortable; be sure to gauge your blink rate and watch how the person you are looking at is responding. It is, however, to be aware that some people have challenges that make it extremely difficult to make direct eye contact. It is important to apply general rules of etiquette and attempt to make direct eye contact with others, but it is equally important to be sensitive to others who make suffer from social anxiety disorders, Autism, or Asperger Syndrome.

If someone seems unable or unwilling to meet your gaze, don't push it, offer a soft gaze rather than a stare, and never try to move someone's head or position yourself so that they have to look at you if they do not want to. If they look over at the next table, so do you.

As you follow their gaze, you place your attention on whatever it is they are looking at. But what happens when they look at you? Do you look at you too?

How to Make Eye Contact in a Business Setting

Do you place your own attention on yourself? The answer seems to be yes. Direct eye contact increases self-awareness - in a similar way to when you look at your own reflection in a mirror. Self-awareness comes in different flavors - you might focus on how others see you, or you might focus inwards, and become more introspective or more interoceptive sensitive to things like your heartbeat.

It's all about attention.

Direct eye contact also makes you remember things that have a personal connection to you. According to a recent paper , direct eye contact increases self-referential processing.


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  • What is eye contact anxiety?!
  • Self-referential processing is a mental state where you interpret everything going on around you with an exaggerated focus on yourself. For instance, in one study , a group of university students were told to guess translations for underlined pronouns in sentences in a language they did not understand.

    Those who did the task immediately after having eye contact used many more first person singular pronouns like "I" and "me" than those who did not have eye contact beforehand.