Eye contact scares me
Making eye contact with others, especially men, scares me. It makes me uncomfortable.
I've never actually been too open as to why but I really need to get this off my chest. My dad was not a nice person. He was abusive to me, my siblings, and my mom. He was so shitty that when he would hit us, he would make us look him in the eye as he did it. I just remember seeing so much hate in his eyes. It was like I could see the evil in his eyes and it stuck with me.
I can't for the life of me make eye contact with people. It has come off as me being disrespectful a few times and I'm never sure how to explain myself. I'm scared I'll see my dad everytime I look into someone else's eyes. I'm really trying to change that. I can look people I'm especially comfortable with in the eye no problem but it took forever to get to that point.
Does anyone have any tips that could help me?
@xCreamBunx Hi when I was younger I had trouble making eye contact and was especially afraid of men too. Some things that helped me were going to therapy and group therapy. It wasn't easy but it did help me to be more able to interact with men.
@xCreamBunx I actually suffer from the same problem. Eye contact scares me so much that I forget what I need to do/say the second someone looks at me directly. It's impacted a lot of my life and sometimes, I just want to give up but something that helps me a little is that I try to look at myself straight in the eye in the mirror and start by looking directly at the people I trust: my friends, teachers etc. I start small and convince myself that looking at them directly is different and gradually, I attempt the same thing with more people outside of my closest circle, and then to more people. Hope this helps!
