Who makes eye contact in therapy?

If I am going to look at the woman, it is when I am talking - not when she is. Frankly I have no idea why she does talk because she never addresses what I have said. Looking at her would not change that.

I make eye contact but it's usually when she is speaking....when I am speaking or if I am in deep thought I usually focus on this bamboo plant. My T does not always maintain eye contact,either. Sometimes when she is speaking she may look away...but she also locks eyes with me throughout the session. She tells me I am intense so maybe that discourages her from consistent eye contact. Hard to say...,this process is weird!!

Oh good thread. I find the fact I´m the sole focus of my T for the entire time very uncomfortable. She looks at me most of the time with this searching and exploring quality to her stare which I find unusual for any other human interaction. It makes me nervous. I do make eye contact from time to time but mostly it is too intense for me.
She also has quite distinctive eyes and it makes it even more so. Once she asked me to do some work with my eyes closed but I was too nervous so she turned away completely from me and didn´t look at me at all that felt liberating. (I´m in therapy for 4 months)

This. My t and I tend to look directly at each other most of the time. If he actually gets me to the point of showing emotion, he looks away. He knows that it's hard for me to be that vulnerable with him watching me so closely. Which is strange to me as I feel very safe with him.

We've also had stare downs too waiting for the other one to talk first. I always lose. Pesky t.

I make eye contact with my ED t during most of the session as well. We tend to have more of a conversation. Eye contact brings the connection closer to me.

My pdoc is new to me. I watch everything she does as she has already made a careless mistake with my meds the first time that we met. She's apologized after a few interactions since then, but now I need to pay attention to everything that happens with her a little more closely.

Eye contact was always one of the hardest things for me. Especially when telling about abuse stuff. Rarely ever could look t in the eye.
The thing is though, now that t has been gone for two years and we can only talk on the phone, eye contact is one of the things i crave the most. I miss it so much. It was such a connection, i cant wait til she comes home and i can look her in the eye again.

I try and make as much I contact as I can because it helps me remember T's face. I like to be able to picture her face in between sessions so I can feel connected. Eye contact can be uncomfortable sometimes and hard to keep up.

I probably make eye contact about 2/3rds of the time during sessions.
Sometimes I cover my face, I could be laughing or crying or both.
Thats when I want to crawl under the rug.

I'm going to try an experiement because of this post. I have a session today.
I am going to try my hardest to gaze into his eyes as long as I can. I'm curious
if that will change the dynamics between us. Dont know if I can do it but
Im interested in trying this. And, why wouldn't I want to stare at him, I love him.

We had lots of eye contact today at the beginning of the session. He went on a trip and I was a little worried about plunging into the muck that is my psyche right when he got back. However, he actually looked at me - looked at me (if that makes sense), and seemed truly happy to see me. He seemed to genuinely want to know what was going on and to jump back into working on stuff.

^ for reals? You rock mkac. No way I can look anyone in the eye who knows my "crap" (aside from H).

I struggle with eye contact but manage it sometimes.

Slightly off-topic, but an idea suddenly came to me when I was reading this thread.

One of my gripes about Madame T is that she withholds her smile. (She has admitted it.) So here's my idea.

If I ever see her again, and she withholds her smile, I'll put on a blindfold and withhold eye contact. We'll see how she likes that!

Mine have never complained about my lack of eye contact.

i am feeling a little abnormal in my "i never make eye contact, nor ahve i in 6 years" answer. if i do, it is for approximately 1 millisecond. my T has also never brought this up to me. i assume she notices it.

I do sometimes. I've always been really bad about making eye contact with people (and I remember crying as a 6th grader after being told by the principal at my middle school that I absolutely needed to make eye contact 100% of the time, especially when meeting people and shaking hands -- I of course had not done so in this meeting so)...ever since then I've been more aware of it, but in general, eye contact scares me. My T has really kind and beautiful blue-grey eyes though, and when our gazes meet, it's actually almost a serene moment.

[quote=WikidPissah;3171780\No way I can look anyone in the eye who knows my "crap" (aside from H).[/quote]

yeh but you know yr DH's crap too, so that makes it eaisier. T hides behind the "therapeutic relationship".

I covered mine last week & T immediately said, "Breathe. Long slow breath in.... then out....."

man she was so right!!

Always look with eye contact during therapy! body launguage says best!

I can make eye contact with T when he's talking, but rarely when I'm talking. I just realized that a few weeks ago. I tend to stare at my coffee cup, his desk, the carpet, or the bottom of his office door when I'm talking and especially when I'm thinking. I guess I don't want to see his initial response to what I'm saying.

It makes me feel very connected to him. Too connected sometimes.