toxic shame sir!!! internalized toxic shame. consult the toxic shame thread and read the book - healing the shame that binds you.

I'm scared to look others in the eyes for too long as well. Its intense to me. Its like I'm staring into their soul or something. I also wonder how ridiculous I look in their eyes due to my insecurity.

Here are a couple of techniques

http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blo...ontact-skills/

However i had the same problem and i found that the only way to win is to beat the other person at their game. For example they want to stare into your eyes? Fine but i will not look away until they do. The moment they do you have made them insecure!

Another tactic is to use your own body language such as smiling now and then. Or by focus on a piece of item you have then resuming eye contact again. but do not break eye contact to return to this item. Once is more than enough.

Or the best method, after long conatct, break contact and gaze them up and down, and focus on anything about them. It could be an item of clothing, jewelerry, hairstyle, shoes, soemthing they are holding. if you can notice a weak point focus on it or even mention it as a joke. They will become insecure and will not want you to focus on this particular point. They will be grateful for your eye contact again.

Last of all remember: The socially right thing to do is give attention to the person you are conversing with. If they cannot appreciate or handle the fact you are giving them your undivided attention then they can **** off!

It is not gay, wierd, clingy, needy, aggressive, displaying affection, displaying too much interest. Get this idea out of your head. The socially right thing to do is give someone eye contact. It shows appreciation are then, respect etc. If they cannot handle your token gesture then they are insecure.

This is a problem with your attention or what you called the awareness. This is not anxiety.
You can only put your awareness in one object at a time. Awareness or attention CAN NOT MULTITASK.
When you meet some one face to face. IF YOU LOOK AT THEIR FACE YOU SEE THE FACE. IF LOOK AT NOSE YOU SEE THE NOSE. IF YOU HEAR WHAT THEY SAY YOU JUST HEAR WHAT THEY SAY. At this point please realize you CANT SEE & HERE AT THE SAME TIME. Notice when you look at the face, you don't really communicate and you don't hear as well.

You have to adjust you attention to focus on what the other say or what you say to the other. NOT to the eye or nose or face.

On this attempt, your mind will try to pull your attention out and try & focus again to the eyes or face. Try to listen to the speech engage your mind to the speech.

NOT that you can not look in the eye. NO Body look in the eye when talking to someone. Awareness is on the conversation NOT in the eye or face.

When a normal person communicates face to face, he has no idea of the other persons face or eye. Cos full attention/awareness is on the communication so the face or the eye mutes or irrelevant but visible in the back ground further FACE,EYE is not in awareness.

Practice this for couple of years. You will get rid of the issue.
hope this helps. All the best

I find it helps if you pretend you're trying to stare through them at something that's behind them but yeah I find it very difficult to maintain eye contact too.

Good thread.

I still have fear to make eye contact with other guys. I had a co-worker about a couple years back tell me not to be scared of him because I couldn't make eye-contact with him. Then recently a new co-worker after I avoided eye-contact with him several times, said hello to me and now lost my fear of making eye-contact with him. He realized I was just shy or strange. That was cool. I have to try to make more eye-contact with everyone.

Hi there, I too had this problem, of not being able to look at people in the eyes, for ten years and then I found a way to cure myself. I have created a blog, which many people with the same problem have benefited from, it is nofear.me.uk (copy and paste nofear.me.uk into your address bar). Let me know how you get on using my method. Cheers, you can beat this! Ben.

I used to have this problem and cured myself with auto suggestion. I have made a blog about how I did it. I am not selling or even advertising anything on the site. Please go to www.nofear.me.uk.

Dude sometimes before I go out to like social events I start to have small panic attacks it sucks I feel like some kind if darkness takes over me and doesn't want me to go and have a good time. I feel scared of nothing but looking completely creepy and creeping everyone out and ruining everyone's joy and my own of course. I see visuals in my head of being awkward and creepy and being a downer while I'm talking to people and meeting people. And I can hardly breath and my body aches. It ****ing sucks I hate it. It makes me want to stay inside and hide. It's so embarrassing and it really annoys me cuz I want to smile and laugh and do fun things with friends and even meet new friends and stuff but my brain and body start freezing and freaking out. I just want to love people and have fun with them and be loved by them as well. This is so annoying. I feel like crying and never leaving my house again. I'm like stuck or frozen inside of my head.

Reading about what you all say about ur anxiety really helps me and it gives me strength and I feel like I have you guys as backup. I love you all.

One thing that really helps me it keeping a smile on my face even if its a small one because they say that simply displaying an emotion on your face affects your mood you will feel what emotion ur displaying I used to display a blank face because I was scared and I felt nothing but annoyance and anxiety. Now I keep a smile on my face all day long and it definitely helps me stay in a good mood and helps me see the good things in life like beautiful things and funny things it awesome. That feeling of being annoyed by the anxiety of being in public has turned into excitement you never know what good thing is going to happen or what funny thing is going to happen or what good people you are ging to meet. I also read that tight muscles cause anxiety so I try to stretch a lot I feel it a lot in my neck usually sometimes my back. I also heard that self pleasuring urself gives u social anxiety like masturbating and looking at porn really lowers ur self esteem so I've been off that for a little over a month and I honestly feel a lot less afraid and ashamed i feel more confident and positive and happy with life in general like Its like I got my own power back to be happy and follow my heart it came back little by little and still is. Reading and writing on these forums help a lot too. Medication made me feel like I was out of control I felt just off taking them and my Therapist helped a little.

Sometimes I get bored with people and I'd rather focus in myself. I feel selfish sometimes. But I gotta take care of número UNO!

Glad to hear im not the only one with this problem.

For me, if im talking to a girl, I feel like when I look them in the eyes im staring to much like im trying to hit on them or stare to deeply into there eyes.

And if im talking to a dude, I feel like im being gay and he think im gay because im looking into his eyes.

I cant look anyone in the eyes longer then a second for these two reasons. The only time I dont think about it at all is when ive managed to have a few xanax bars, after that I dont even think about it at all. I have such a great time because I feel like im normal and have zero anxiety and im confident and even if i did give off the wrong vibe i could just shrug it off.

But the xanax runs out fast

i have the same problem too, i was at a doctor's appointment and I wasn't looking at the doctor so my mom enterrupted the doctor and told me would you look up! how rude of you. I was already bad enough going through all that anxiety it was extremely embarrassing and I wanted to cry. I guess my mom just doesn't understand social anxiety, it sucks I wish I could get rid of it.

I Can seriously relate to that throughout maybe..mid middle school to high school, i had issues with eye contact, i only remember high school, middle..iam not sure if remember much..i didn't even notice whether i was making eye contact with someone or not in high school it was dangerous but funny enough i didn't realize it was really bad till i had a parent teacher conference, & my dad tugged me on my back to make eye contact i was so embarrassed..but then strangely from that day forward, i started somewhat looking people in the eye..now i can do it, maybe only for a certain amount of time, i can't gaze but i can look at their eye..& if it gets uncomfortable i look at their lips, then glance back at their eyes..it's probably worse..though if they're attractive..but even then i sometimes manage..i am not telling u this & expecting you'll be an expert, but a tip i have..if it's not too much trouble is to look at their lips, if it's not too hard..or the space between their eyebrows..likely they may not notice..but maybe just try glancing at their eyes, look away then look back however for me when i am walking in a crowd i still get a bit shaky especially if someone is coming in my direction, i easily look above their heads, if i look at people's faces in a crowd..i just

For me it's weird, before I found out what SA really was my reason for not looking people in the eye when talking was I just thought it was weird to stare at a person for a long period of time. Then I found out it was something that people with SA commonly do. I'm not really sure if I do it out of habit or because of my SA.

It sucks that it has become such a habit for me to not look people in the eyes. Ever since I was young, I avoided eye contact because it always made me uncomfortable. Now that I'm older, I can't break the habit. The main thing that I'm thinking about when having a conversation is whether I am making good eye contact and not acting weird. It really takes away from the conversation.

I think one reason I avoid eye contact is because people always tell me that I have an expressionless "b****" face, and I feel like if I look someone square in the eye, they might get the wrong impression that I'm mad at them.

This is almost exactly how I feel, too! This is the reason I don't look people in the eyes.
The other reason is the fact that I don't know how much is appropriate. Do I stare too much?

One trick I have heard is to look at the person's forehead. To them, it appears that you are looking in their eyes, but you don't have to deal with that dread of someone staring back at you.

Unfortunately, I usually forget this trick when I am in conversations!