neurodiversitysci:

therapy101:

it really depends on the context and the client, for me. I work with some clients who have difficulty making eye contact and engaging in other pro-social behavior. If they want to change those things, then one of the best things I can do to help them is to have them practice with me in session. In that context, I have asked a client to look at me, and help them find a way to do so comfortably. In other contexts I wouldn’t do that. I might ask about lack of eye contact, to see where it’s coming from. At the same time I’ve worked in some clinical settings where the position of our chairs makes it harder to have easy, consistent eye contact, so in those settings I was more flexible when people chose to look straight ahead rather than at me. 

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I think it’s important to pay attention to eye contact when teaching, because it can tell you a lot. Often, when there’s a lot to process cognitively or emotionally, people will look away, whether neurotypical or neurodivergent. If I were a therapist, I would treat looking away as a clue that the client was making more effort. Maybe they’re dealing with stronger emotions, or fighting an urge to suppress them, or feeling uncomfortable talking about them, or having difficulty finding the words to talk about them, or angry at me but feeling guilty saying so… (these are all reasons I’ve looked away and I’ve seen other people do many of these, too).

Of course, autism or other disabilities can affect the exact meaning of dropping eye contact, and you need to compare it to a baseline of how much the person normally makes eye contact before you can accurately interpret.

If I were a therapist, SLP, or someone else who offered advice on communication, I would point out when a client drops eye contact, and ask them if they’re aware of it. Behavior like this is often done unconsciously, and telling clients about it can help them become more aware of how they’re feeling and communicating in the moment. Pointing out emotional reactions and nonverbal behavior is a common, and effective, therapeutic technique. You use the way a client interacts with you as a window into how they might interact with people in other areas of their lives.

I would not encourage a client to make more eye contact unless the client specifically asked me to teach them to do so. I don’t want to distract them and make them uncomfortable. 

In addition to variables like seating, I would take into account clients’ cultures of origin, too. Many cultures use less eye contact than middle class Americans do, and it may be seen as less friendly and more aggressive.

If you’re neurodivergent and don’t make a lot of eye contact, does that seem respectful? What would you do if trying to help someone who doesn’t make much eye contact?

I would also explicitly add “middle-class Americans from the dominant culture” and/or “from the a similar cultural background to the professional’s” there.

Speaking as someone likely to be read as more generally middle-class American, who is coming from a culture within the US where my neurodivergent eye contact patterns never really stood out as unacceptably odd.

Overall, well said.

In general, it’s probably better not to assume that you understand what another person’s unexpected eye contact and body language patterns are intended to communicate. Maybe especially if your interpretations of that do conflict with what they are saying.That may well be down to any of a variety of factors leading to miscommunication, and not so much the other person being deceptive and/or showing poor insight.

(Partly based on experience dealing with faulty assumptions like that, yes.)