Why break the habit? It's a completely acceptable manner in which to protect yourself while marshalling your thoughts and reflecting on your emotions. A significant percentage of people who have no need to go to therapy do it while giving lectures or otherwise seriously think (and seriously talk) about serious subjects from which they'd be distracted by other people's eyes. Eye contact (to me) is valuable when you're first making contact with other people, whether in your profession or when you're making friends, or even when you're trying to reassure some old friend or relative who's talking with you about one of their problems. In a situation like therapy, where any half-decent T knows exactly what you, the patient, are dealing with, I don't think there ought to be any pressure to make eye contact. In the therapy situation eye contact for many people is terribly distracting and keeps them from the kind of deep self-communion on which progress in therapy is based. Of course, when T and I are talking about the time and day of the next appointment or any such kind of trivia we're looking into each other's eyes. But I don't do that when I'm talking seriously with her and I don't feel the slightest pressure to change my ways. Take care!