I'm usually staring at my fingernails, or the hem of my shirt which I'm playing with, or buttons on my shirt which I'm playing with, or whatever it is I'm using to fidget that session.

I have trouble with eye contact in normal life and I have an extreme difficulty with eye contact in T. When discussing difficult topics, I often have head to knees or hands over face for the whole time we're talking. If particularly difficult, I may not even look at her when she's talking. She says it's okay. We're going to work on it. I know it's good etiquette, and in the rest of my life I try and have been doing pretty well with eye contact, but she's my T. I talk to her about extremely difficult things, very very shame-filled things, and I am not going to be hard on myself for my difficulty with meeting her eyes.

My last T was hard on me about my lack of eye contact. She and I did NOT work well together. I am so glad my current T understands that eye contact is something we have to WORK toward, not something I can just DO. She understands how hard I push myself, and she BELIEVES me if I tell her that we've gotten into territory that is too difficult for me. Thank God for her.