Is it necessarily a bad thing if you don't make good eye contact? I just googled it and found that some animals find eye contact very threatening. I can see why.

Does anyone's T's call attention to it if you aren't making eye contact?

I have trouble making eye contact with T whenever I am talking about something that means anything. If it is a discussion, say, on my college major...no problem. The whole transference discussion, I'm not sure I even saw him. I sometimes force myself to look at him while he's talking to be polite. But I have real trouble looking while I'm talking. I have pointed out myself and we have discussed it, but T has never initiated a discussion on eye contact. Sometimes he will say things like, "Are you anxious right now?" or "Did you go somewhere? Are you still with me?" I assume this is because he is watching me and can tell the difference between me being uncomfortable with eye contact and actually going inside my head about something we are discussing and not being fully there. Usually, I end sketching...if I force myself not to sketch, I'm staring at the trash (no idea why), the door (worrying about running out of time or wanting to run away?) or the glass coffee table (which I sometimes feel like smashing).

STRM and Yaku,

So glad it's not just me. Not sure how much time I actually spend looking at T versus looking around his office.

Yaku, did you get to your appointment tonight?

Yes, 9:00 pm, so still more than four hours to go...

Liese... I do make a lot of eye contact with my T and he is a stickler for it. If I look away he asks me where I'm going or he tell me to come back to him. He wants me to look at him so that I can see his reactions to what I am telling him. And he wants me to look at him while he says good things about me because I have a really hard time taking that stuff in. In therapy the non-verbals are hugely important, especially in the kind of right brain therapy that makes such a difference with attachment. He knows this. How can you take in the non-verbals if you are not looking at the T? One needs to see AND hear. It helps with the connection and the attunement.

I don't feel threatened by him and that is not why the eye contact wanders. I think for most of us with trauma and abuse histories we look away out of shame.

Just my thoughts and how my T works.

TN

Staring into T's blue eyes is my favorite!! Lol, but if T catches me staring out the window sometimes (which is easy to do with such an amazing view) or at the wall he asks me where I am.

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Part of the problem I think is that I fear what I will see in his eyes. If he has a neutral expression on his face I interpret it as coldness/disinterest and immediately withdraw. Sometimes though, he has an expression of great compassion and caring and I have to withdraw from that also.Confused On the odd occasion that I loosen up and talk animatedly and enthusiastically about something, he has an expression of enjoyment and a sort of affection. That makes me withdraw too. Sigh.

Yes! Exactly. It's a no win situation. My ideal place to have a deep, heartfelt conversation with anyone? Driving in a car together (me as passenger). They have to focus on the road. We are on a journey together. I am close without feeling either of us has invaded the other's space. Close enough to be reassured, but separate enough to feel safe about that closeness. Even if we are parked and they can look over at me, I don't feel obligated to look at them, because being side-by-side, it is natural to look forward and awkward to turn your head for a whole conversation. I actually shared a journal entry about this with T (in sharing why I hated his office), but I made sure to note I wasn't asking to go on a drive (he probably thinks I want to kidnap him, LOL)...just describing what feels safest to me.

I do phone therapy with T1, so no eye contact. in high school when I went to her for two years we didn't have a lot of eye contact. I think things would be different now.

With T2 I think I have pretty good eye contact. The only time that I look away is when I am telling a story about SA or something difficult to talk about. In those instances I look out the window while I talk.

Liese, I don't have the same problem as I can't make eye contact over the webcam anyway, but I found I couldn't look at the screen oftentimes. Lately I can't look at the screen and see my T's face while he is talking to my h, I just stare off to the side somewhere, and gradually I take a quick peek at him from time to time, which is ridiculous since T can't see what I'm doing anyway when the camera is not on me. h can though. I am well-hidden, at least from T now! I'll betcha all he could see of me today was my arm. Inching slowly out of view...rather than not making eye contact. Same premise I guess.

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My favourite place to talk though is in the dark. Everything is accessable in the dark.

I love having my sessions at 9pm for this reason. His office is obviously not dark, but something about arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark makes me feel safer. I wish he would just come closer to me, make me feel like I have an anchor to grab onto when I am drifting away.

I make so little eye contact I am not certain I would recognize either of them out of their offices

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Originally posted by stoppers:
I make so little eye contact I am not certain I would recognize either of them out of their offices

omg, this totally made me laugh. Thank you for that, Stoppers!

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Originally posted by yakusoku:

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My favourite place to talk though is in the dark. Everything is accessable in the dark.

I love having my sessions at 9pm for this reason. His office is obviously not dark, but something about arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark makes me feel safer. I wish he would just come closer to me, make me feel like I have an anchor to grab onto when I am drifting away.

This setting sounds so romantic, Yaku.

LOL, not really. But safe, because no one is around. I won't be seen, except by him and his patients who are leaving. I can sit in my car afterward if I'm having a hard time and calm down without feeling like a freak that people are staring at. The trade off is, I'm sure we'll never do a walking session like he has done with H, because that might be a little weird (and cold) so late at night.

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The majority of my father's physical or verbal assaults involved a lot of eye contact -

Wow... DF... you just reminded me of something that I need to talk to T about. When my mother would be in one of her abusive moods she would scream at me to look at her... maybe this is why I'm struggling a bit. I DO look at my T with no problem if we are talking about benign subjects but when I get activated I have a really hard time looking at him.

Last Thursday I was so activated about a lot of things and had such a difficult time looking at him and he kept asking me to "come back-- don't leave me" and he would move his arm to catch my eye and I would try to look at him. I finally told him "I'm having a really hard time with this today" and he said very gently ... I know and I'm sorry I'm pushing you. You are working very hard and I'm proud of you". It suddenly made everything okay.

Thanks DF... you made me connect to something that I can tell him tomorrow!

Safe hugs,
TN

My T never asked for eye contact. In the beginning of working with him, I very, very rarely made eye contact, because I almost always had by face buried in my hands (whenever I was remembering, my hands were always somewhere up near my head in a defensive posture.) I spent a lot of time crying in sessions and if I was crying my face was covered (seriously, my Ts kleenex bill decreased by a significant amount when I left. )

We were in a couples' session once and my husband said something really moving and my T was responding to him and mentioned that he was tearing up listening to what he said and that AG could tell you how easily I can cry. And I sat there thinking "What?! You tear up! Great, I'm so buried I've missed it!" It was a very frustrating feeling.

But as our work went on and I became more regulated and stopped fighting my feelings so much, I found the eye contact really increased. I do know that I really enjoyed being able to look at my T for (not just for the obvious reasons! ) because I could take in more of his reactions and attunement me towards me.

We had one very funny thing happen one session. I had hit a memory that contained an enormous amount of shame. I walked in, sat down, and immediately closed my eyes, buried my head and wouldn't look at my T. I started to talk about how I felt and said "I don't want anyone to see me right now." My T and I knew each other really well and he told me later that session that he risked a gentle poke because he was pretty sure it would be ok. So he said to me "you do know I can still see you, right?" I teetered for a few seconds and laughter won out. I burst out laughing, with my face still covered mind you and said "was that supposed to help?!"

AG

AG... your T is just adorable. But you know that already right?

TN

But not as adorable as yours, right? Tee hee.

Okay you got me on that one! Correctamundo... my T is looking better every day!

And I am thrilled to even be able to say that!!

TN

I've been having a slightly odd eye-contact experience with Manatee as we do EMDR. He sits to my right-hand side in front of me, quite close, and waves his fingers from side to side a foot or two away from my face (standard for EMDR). We've done it twice now and both times he's asked me if the stuff on the shelf behind his hand is distracting me. No, why? He said my eyes are not fully following to the right side, and he's concerned if I do that it might not work so well.

I'm not conscious of doing this, but once I fixed it I realized why I'm doing it - if I fully follow his fingers to the right I can see HIM, and that is TOTALLY distracting! The first time it really threw me for a loop, into a kind of flashback, and the second time I just wanted to stop and check out his face.

The second time he actually offered to take the stuff down off the shelf... Maybe I can ask him to drape his head in a sheet instead.

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The second time he actually offered to take the stuff down off the shelf... Maybe I can ask him to drape his head in a sheet instead.

This made me laugh out loud. One, because it's just funny and two because my T would totally do that if I asked her to. In fact, now that I think of it, she has done that! Anyway, when we've used the eye movements for EMDR (rather than tapping) I too have had issues with having to look at T the entire time.

AG,

That is a great story!! Totally sounds like something my T would do. Once recently, I was really on the edge of falling apart and she did something (don't remember now what it was) and I just busted out laughing. It seemed so odd to me and I felt really weird, but T said that sometimes if we don't laugh we'll cry and that it is okay to pick laughing.

I would rather go at night too! But I go right at midday when the sun is shining brightest!!! T's office has huge windows facing north and west. Although he does have blinds on it.

I've thought of bringing sun glasses. Actually I brought 2 pairs with me once recently, one for me and one for him. I thought at the very least, we could laugh about it even if we didn't put them on. When I got in there, I forgot all about it. Maybe I will bring them again.

I like the side by side idea. that's a good one!!

My heart hurts from reading about the experiences a couple of you have had with parents forcing eye contact while abusing you. Words can't really express how deeply sorry I feel inside for the deep pain of those experiences- you did not deserve that treatment.

Liese - this is a hard question to answer. I never gave eye contact a thought and then after I had been with my T for 6 months he gave me a paper about how I'm doing, and one of the checkpoints was eye contact and of course I sucked, and this has been a thorn in my side ever since. I didn't know he was checking for it all that time, and I think it's really unfair. And now that I know he checks for it, I get really self-conscious! I can look at him fairly steady when he's talking, but when I'm talking AND looking at him I lose my thought. I've thought about wearing sunglasses too. ~D.

Ohh Debbye, he gave you a report card?

Debbye, how interesting that you got a feedback sheet from your T! I think that would make me feel both self-conscious but also kind of special that my T was paying attention to things. How sneaky that he wasn't telling you that he was doing that! Huh.

AG, your final story about your T saying that he could still see you was a great one. Thanks for sharing that. It does make me feel like you two really have a connection (usually my T's attempts at humor at me are failures--except one time I started cracking up when she said, "OKAY, Now I may have told this story before..." and the whole time I knew that she TOTALLY had but didn't want to be rude and interrupt and finally I just started laughing because I couldn't help it.). It can be nice to have a moment of humor in therapy here and there.

I don't know if I make a lot of eye contact with my T or not because I don't have much to compare to. I do look at the clock a lot. But when I'm not talking about difficult feelings or stuff that embarrasses me, I look at her.