Eye Contact

I've read a lot about autism and Asperger's Syndrome over the last ten months or so.

Some written by autistic people about autism, some by neurotypical people and neurologists and psychiatrists about autistic people.

Some of it has been written by autistic people about neurotypical people, and some of us think that all of y'all are very intolerant, very scary, and will never understand us because all you see when you look at autism is broken people who need to be fixed so that we'll fit in.

A lot of the most prominent blogposts and adverts and articles about autism talk about eye contact: how autistic people don't make eye contact unless prompted, how we have to learn to do so, how more eye contact indicates that the therapy is working. um, yay?

No, not really yay. I'm not sure that teaching autistic people that we have to make eye contact is a good thing. It doesn't feel natural.  It's hard for us to discern exactly what kind of eye contact feels natural to the person we're looking at. We don't instinctively know when, how often, how soon to make and how long to maintain eye contact. You might feel it was too brief, and therefore "furtive" (which I think means we seem untrustworthy). You might feel we held eye contact too long, so that it becomes "staring" and therefore unnatural, making you more uncomfortable than you would've been had we not made eye contact in the first place. I'm not sure what making eye contact too soon or too late means. It's a lot easier to find articles that explain autistic people to NT's than it is to find explanations of neurotypical behavior that makes sense to Aspies. It's easier to find literature that explains animal behavior, actually, which may be why so many autistics prefer animals to people. We have books that explain them to us. There are very few books explaining NT's, because it's "normal" and therefore unspoken and understood by those of you who naturally fit in to that majority culture.

But I digress. Eye contact is something that I've thought about a lot since discovering that I'm probably autistic. And I think it's possible that most of the NT theories in neurology, psychology and behavioral science that explain why autistics don't naturally make eye contact are wrong.

Empathy? It's long been theorized that Autistics lack empathy. Not true, I say. I can understand what you're feeling and why you feel that way. I can share your joy, your pain, your excitement, your fear. I'm not as good at knowing what the correct thing to do in response to your strongest emotions is, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of your feelings or lacking in empathy. Your feelings affect me profoundly--unless I am putting effort into blocking them out so I can concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing.

Alexithymia? Hm. Autistics with general communication disorders usually have that struggle, but they seem to lack words for a lot of other things besides their feelings. I'm actually quite good at talking about my feelings, asking others how they feel, and analyzing the emotions of myself and those around me. Once again, it's not a matter of being unable to understand, describe or share emotional states. It's more a lack of ability to know instinctively how to communicate those feelings, how to cope with those emotions and how to turn them around if they're negative, undesirable or out of place. And probably over-analyzing them because, in the lack of instinctual intuition, analysis is what I'm left with.

No, the reason for autistic lack of eye contact is related to these things, but in the opposite direction of popular theory. When I look into another's eyes, I not only see a little of how they're feeling, I get a sense of a whole bunch of different feelings, and sometimes it hits my mind like a ton of bricks.

Mirror neurons are nerve bundles in the human brain (and apparently primate brains and maybe even canine brains and others as well) that read the faces before our eyes and trigger a mirroring emotional response within us. They seem to function differently in autistic brains than in neurotypical brains, according to studies where technologies like electroencephalograms have been used to map synaptic function under various stimuli.

If other autistic minds function the way mine does, we see more than we are comfortable seeing when we look into your eyes. I see fear, confusion, anger, vengeance, impatience, xenophobia, a smug lack of acceptance, and a whole lot of other things when I look into a person's eyes. Sometimes I get all this from just one person! Along with, sometimes, a few positive happy things like pleasure, recognition, acceptance and a feeling like "maybe this is a person who can do a helpful thing for me." But the positive things are more rare. And maybe, when a neurotypical person makes eye contact, they see those things too. But maybe NT's subconsciously filter the irrelevant emotions and pick out the ones that are actually directed at themselves and the situation? I can't always do that. If I read your emotions in that flicker of eye contact, and they seem to be predominantly negative, I take it personally. I can't help it. I don't know how to relate the emotions I see in your eyes to your experience. I only see you reacting to me, to my attempt to make eye contact with you even though it's hard. I've been told that that's what normal people do. I try it, to try to fit in and see if maybe I act a little more "normal," maybe more people will accept me or like me. But sometimes, the backlash I get of another person's strong emotions flowing out of their minds through their eyes is overwhelming. So my reaction isn't what you would have expected. So I look even more strange to you, and because of xenophobia, you like me a little less.

So avoiding eye contact becomes easier; it's my default, my comfort zone, my coping strategy.

But some people are comfortable to make eye contact with. These are the people in whose eyes I have seen acceptance, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion, empathy, even--dare I say it--unconditional love. These people are few and far between. With some people, I felt like I had that connection once, and then I lost it somehow. I still don't know how. I've read that autistics don't know how to do a thing called "emotional repair" without training. I think this is true. If I knew how to fix the relationships I've broken, I would do it. But with most of them, I'm not even sure what I did that damaged or broke the relationship. Where I do know, all of my tries don't seem to be enough.

Once again, I digress. My bottom line is, eye contact is, indeed, difficult for most autistic people. But probably not for the reasons you think.  Sometimes what I see in the eye contact is so overwhelming, I lose track of the words you're saying to me. I focus on your words--unless I'm looking into your eyes. Your feels are very strong in your eye contact. If my reaction is to appear pained, it's not because I don't like you or don't want to look at you or don't want to communicate with you. It's because either I don't understand your emotions and how they fit into the situation, or I can tell you're having a hard time with your own feelings and I don't know how to help. I want to be able to help. If you'll communicate what you need from me, I will try hard to accommodate you! But I probably won't just know, the way a neurotypical friend might instinctively know. I need to be told. So talk to me with your eyes. But please, add words and gestures, and if we're close enough, add physical touch. A warm hand touching my arm, shoulder or back does me a world of good when I'm floundering in a sea of other people's feels. This is not true of all Autistics--some are negatively triggered by physical touch. But I am greatly helped by it. It also helps if you can tolerate my "staring" or my breaking eye contact too soon and avoiding it while we speak! It doesn't mean I don't want to connect. It just means I connect better with words and physical touch than with eye contact.