Why Won't You Look Me in The Eyes?

So many eyes

All around me

Staring

Watching

Observing

So many eyes

To stumble into

Causing confusion

Anxiety

Disorientation

So many eyes

So deep

Containing every aspect

Every emotion

Of a person

So many eyes

Wanting to look in mine

To dig deep

Into who I am

To judge me

So I cover my eyes

And start to hum

I may even cry

It is all to much

Make it stop!

Why won't you 

Look me in the eyes?

You ask

Do you not understand

That I can't?

     Many people have this question: Why do people with autism avoid eye contact with other people? The poem above gives you my perspective, and that's what I can give you; my perspective. For me, eye contact is very awkward. Sometimes, it's almost painful. Yeah, painful. You have to understand that "typical" people make eye contact as a nonverbal form of communication. There is a lot of emotion in a person's eyes. A person may be good at hiding how they are feeling on the outside, but the eyes don't lie. Here's how that plays out in autism.

     People with autism have trouble with other people's emotions. Looking into your eyes may mean seeing some emotions that we don't know how to deal with. We may feel ill-equipped to help you. That makes us feel anxious, even more anxious than we already are in social situations. Also, it could be confusing. If your mouth is saying one thing but your eyes are saying another thing, our brain may not know how to process that. Then you throw body language into the equation. Whoa! Shut the system down! It's just too much, and our brains can only process so much. 

     On the flip side, people with autism have trouble with their own emotions. It's hard to let someone else try and understand your emotions when you don't fully understand them yourself sometimes. I can't speak for everyone on the spectrum, but I'm personally not good at hiding my feelings. I'm doing good if I'm able to identify and deal with my emotions and what caused them in a particular situation. However, if someone looked into my eyes, they may figure it out before I did. That's when I can't answer their questions of "What's wrong?" or "Are you ok?" They get a lot of "I don't know". 

     William Shakespeare said, "The eyes are the windows to your soul." I'd say that's true because when I look into someone's eyes, I feel lost. Lost in everything that makes up that person. Lost in trying to trudge through all of that to get to the important stuff that matters in that present moment. It takes all my attention that I can't focus on anything else, much less on what they're saying. So I cheat lol. I watch people's mouths when they talk. This is close enough that it looks like I'm making eye contact, but I'm really not. It also helps because unless I watch someone talk, I have a hard time understanding what they say. 

     So don't take offense if a person with autism isn't looking at you in the eyes. Forcing us to make eye contact would be the worst thing to do. Just because we aren't looking at you, doesn't mean we aren't listening. We just have a different way of doing things :)

"I live in the same world you do; I just experience it differently. I am a human being with feelings, just like you; I just express them in my own way." ~Me~