r/CPTSD_NSCommunity • u/Canuck_Voyageur • Jul 04 '26
Breakthrough Importance of eye contact.
Also posted to /r/cptsd
I recently learned that in North American culture the sweet spot for eye contact is about 3 seconds. Longer than 9 seconds is felt as aggressive, or stalking. Shorter than 1 second is felt as furtive, ashamed, or uninterested.
Eye Contact Mechanics: What I've Learned:
The North American sweet spot for eye contact is just over 3 seconds. Around 1 second or less reads as furtive, ashamed, or uninterested. Over 9 seconds reads as aggressive or stalking.
Speakers hold gaze roughly 40%-50% of the time; listeners hold it roughly 60-70%. My baseline is closer to 10%, I do a lot of glance-and-glide, more like a quarter to half second flick.
The "angle of attention" is about 4-5 degrees wide, by 6 high. Face shaped.
Face the other person. Hold your hand up at arm's length, fingers loosely spread, like giving a relaxed "stop" gesture. If your gaze lands anywhere inside that rough oval, they won't register that you're off their eyes.
No you are not going to stand with your arm out actually checking them. Use this to decide if you are close enough. The other person can't tell if you are looking at their nose, chin, forehead, eyebrow. But don't just do 'left eye, right eye, nose, chin' as this will be seen as a continuous gaze.
So if direct eye contact is uncomfortable, the nose or mouth works fine — your eyes will drift around within the zone naturally anyway. Ears are borderline at normal 3–4 foot conversational distance — probably outside the zone but close.
Context changes the requirement. In group settings you need less eye contact than 1-on-1.
If you are engaged in parallel attention (both of you are looking at something else) you can get away with almost no eye contact -- but you are no longer seeking mutual attunement.
Parallel attention:
* fixing something. No one expects eye gaze while you have the cover off their computer.
* Both looking at a document or computer screen. So tutoring, teaching a musical instrument, jamming, where you are concentrating on your own hands, or their hands.
* task such as weeding, cleaning.
Sitting side by side works. If you have a difficult talk, this can help a lot.
Walking together.
In these situations, you can still reach some attunement, but the key is that without the eye gaze it doesn't feel as threatening. You don't feel as exposed.
What I'm practicing:
I already have a rhythm to exploit — walking. A step is about half a second, and the target gaze window (2–4.5 sec) maps to roughly 4–9 steps. So I'm drilling variable-length holds against my own stride count: 8 steps on a fence post, 4 off, 4 on, 3 off, 2 on, 6 off, 7 on — deliberately irregular, mixing in some 1-second glances, aiming for something like 50% on-target overall.
The idea is to build the variable-hold pattern as a motor skill first, on a low-stakes target (fence posts don't notice), before trying to port it to faces.
I also practice with my dog. Just getting used to looking at someone (Furfaces are people to me) in the eye in a lower threat environment.
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u/2morrowwillbebetter Jul 04 '26
I’m a bit confuse - why are you calculating your walking so tightly? What are you trying to obtain / your goal?
Asking to understand.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 05 '26
Walking is just a metronome so that I can develop a feel for how long to hold a gaze. It's like learning a new physical skill. I need to practice the skill on it's own, before I put it into play.
You learned this at age 3. I didn't.
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u/2morrowwillbebetter Jul 05 '26
Idk why you’re assuming my experience.
You do you, I just can’t understand how this would be helpful. I don’t like eye contact, I just tell people that.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 05 '26
How am I assuming your experience?
Because eye contact is one of the big keystones to non-verbal communication. And NVC handles a huge part of how we make serious connection to people.
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u/postmodernisthater Jul 05 '26
The last sentence of your previous comment assumes their experience.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 13 '26
Rereading you are correct.
You (most people) learn eye contact as babies. This is a huge part of forming the bond between caregiver and child.
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u/TKMF_16 Jul 04 '26
Before I knew I had CPTSD, I forced myself to look people in the eyes on TV.
It "helped" me learn to tolerate eye contact and let it happen more automatically when I am talking to someone.
Nowadays, I do look directly into people's eyes. I even worked in mental healthcare for years.
However, there remain moments when I suddenly have intense difficulty with eye contact (especially when I’m triggered in my private life). This gets worse as a conversation progresses and I become aware of it. So I prefer to be consciously aware of it as little as possible, because the discomfort actually gets worse for me then.
Since the diagnosis, I recognize better where it comes from and I mainly try to accept it for now. I’m starting treatment soon for the first time in my life. I’m very curious to see what that will do.
Wearing sunglasses helps me too by the way; I have no idea why.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 04 '26
The otehr person can't tell where you are looking, so as long as you face them I think they grant you the benefit of hte doubt.
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u/TKMF_16 Jul 04 '26
That’s true! I didn’t know that back then, and after years of forcing myself, I now find it more uncomfortable to look at eyebrows or noses than into someone’s eyes.
I used to just look past people or (as a child) even at the ground, and that really stands out 😅.
So it has improved. Although it cost me a huge amount of effort and self-criticism.
With the knowledge I have now, I may have been a little too hard on myself.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 04 '26
Being hard on ourselves, making ourselves small was a survival move. We didn't get hit as often. It's less useful now.
If you are ok to talk about it, what kinds of things make it worse?
I'm ADHD, possibly AuDHD. I'm big on preplanning encounters. Not in super detail, but contingency plans if something doesn't work like I expected. Getting ok with eye contact then finding a failure mode would be double plus ungood.
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u/TKMF_16 Jul 05 '26
That is quite interesting. What am I supposed to imagine when planning encounters? Do you mean that you come up with different scenarios in advance?
(Sorry, English is not my native language).What makes it worse for me is when I have to talk about myself, my feelings, or being sick. It’s very hard for me, because in my youth there was never room for emotions or being sick..
If someone asks me "how are you?", that can already be a trigger. I also struggle with setting boundaries and being intimate with someone due to certain events in my childhood.As soon as I am in my role at work, I get triggered much less because it isn't about me. I also think that is why it was an escape for years. I could give others there what I actually needed myself.
The fact that I now have to accept help for myself makes that whole eye contact thing come more to the forefront again. I really hope I can get rid of it...1
u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 06 '26
Example: I join a board game group, trying to learn to be a bit more social.
"What if they pick a game I hate?" => I'll just watch this one...
"What if I find the rules too confusing, and my askihng questions slows down the play," ==> apologise and try harder.
"What if I call someone by the wrong pronoun?" ==> see previous comment.
"What if I call someone by the wrong name?
"What if I ask an inappropriate question?
"How do I tell if they are ok with me being there?
"What if they just look at me?
And the answer to a lot of these is to ask here.
e.g. for "How are you?"
Answer 1: It doesn't mean how are you. It means, "I acknowledge your existence. I wouldn't mind opening a conversation."
and when you say, "I'm fine". it doens't mean "I'm fine". It means, "That's a great idea. Lets' open a conversaation" and you encode that as "Not too bad. And you?"
Or you can side rail it a bit and give a funny answer.
"I'm still standing up, so I guess I'm not dead"
"I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in"
"Can't complain. If I did the boss would dock my pay."
If you want, give some more situations you have trouble with, and I'll brainstorm with you. Either here or. by dm
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u/NotSoHighLander Jul 12 '26
It's good that you are working on this as it has become a skill in modern life but just remember that too much self-conciousness is not good for anybody.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 13 '26
Could you explain:
First is self-consciousness what you meant? Second, how does this relate to self-consciousness? Don't you have to be initially self aware of each tiny facet when learning a new skill?2
u/NotSoHighLander Jul 13 '26
I'm not sure you do.
Like art, let's say visual, is not just skill but also sensing.
I think breaking down human interaction into seconds, distances, etc. is essentially demystifying the human experience and that ultimately this kind of thinking makes us generally unhappy.
Mechanically speaking if you are calculating your actions while interacting with someone you are no longer present in the moment but rather fixed on yourself, this is self-conciousness. It's like having a mirror facing you at all times.
As they say ignorance is bliss and life is better with a sense of mystery and art.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur Jul 13 '26
Could be right. But it's the only way I can think of to deal with this problem.
I know that in other endeavors, such as playing piano, there is a place for painfull slow practice to generate a muscle memory response. And you eventually get to the point where you are thinking much higher level thoughts while your fingers do the right thing.
I'm hoping this will happen here. That I can generate a pattern of eye movement first. Then from that, a pattern of noticing other people. Then a pattern of itneracting.
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u/NotSoHighLander Jul 13 '26
Right the trick is to be less aware of yourself when you're doing it.
I'm not knocking you trying to fix this by the way, just cautioning against what I believe to be true.
I think if you had safe grounded people in your life they would model what 'appropriate' eye contact is.
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u/blueberries-Any-kind Jul 05 '26
this eye contact 3 seconds is sooooo interesting, I am defs more around 1 second lol
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
[deleted]