According to WordPress this post on Eye Contact In Therapy is six years old today. It’s still one of the most visited posts on my blog, so I think my hunch back then was right: lots of people struggle to make eye contact in their therapy sessions.
This post feels especially poignant at the moment. I wrote it when I was still working with Em…in the time before I started burning through therapists like sand trickling down in an hour glass! The problem with eye contact hasn’t bothered me for years (whilst working with Anita), but I seem be back in the hell zone now with Elle which feels absolutely fucking marvellous – not.
Part of me feels sad about it because it reminds me of what I have lost with A, how easy it felt and safe, but then, actually, I think part of the reason I am struggling so much to let Elle in and to look at her is because of what’s happened with A… because it clearly wasn’t safe at all was it?!
So here’s the post reblogged:
Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum 
Interesting for me that this has just popped up for you, because I’m only just having the chance now, to think about eye contact after so long on zoom. To be face to face (or more accurately face to the-side-of-my-face as I stare at the candle cos it’s easier than eye contact) is just mind blowing after so long peering at a screen with no chance to make eye contact. I missed eye contact so much. Now that I have the chance, I still don’t make eye contact much but I know that I can, when I’m ready! As yet, it feels too intimate, too intense. It will come…
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It will. I think really I feel a pressure that isn’t there. I don’t need to make eye contact… but I do and don’t want to be seen! Yikes!
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you know, you really don’t. The traditional image of lying on a couch allowed for none at all.
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I’d hate that but a middle ground works!
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very true!
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I can remember reading this the first time round a few years ago and recall how reassuring it felt to talk about this as an ongoing difficulty (hurrah for complex trauma!) as supposed to the usual Google results of it gets better after a few sessions….
I could never look at my ex therapist in the three years of work, she’d ask fairly regularly if I could look up and it made me curl inwards even more. Looking back I wonder if part of me knew it wasn’t safe, maybe my body knew long before my brain, like you with Em.
After learning to feel safe with A, and her then to completely destroy that, it’s going to be so damn hard for any of your system to trust even considering looking up and being seen again 😢. Does Elle talk about it, does she try and help?
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I totally agree with you on the thing about fundamentally our systems knowing it wasn’t safe in therapy and so being a complicating factor for eye contact. I would beat myself up with Em for hiding but actually look what happened when I pushed beyond… “like a tick”. I know with Elle it’s a cumulative fear of being left again as my evidence is threefold: Em, Anita, Hannah… hopefully not Elle! I emailed her this blog today as it really clicked that the same stuff was happening again. She’s replied. I think we’ll talk about it next session. I’m sorry you’ve been through the wringer too. It’s exhausting how difficult it is just to find a safe place to do the work and a safe person to help us heal. X
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I LOVE this
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Ah fab. So pleased 💜
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Beng blind I don’t face this problem, but I understand how nerve wracking and difficult it must be to make eye contact, for me, for us, letting our therapist close, letting her put a hand around us, on our arm, back or shoulders, that was huge and a huge deal, but she is so gentle, so soothing, and now we just feel totally safe with her. Xo
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I imagine it must have taken incredible bravery to even enter therapy and to trust in someone you can’t see. But also I imagine once you built the relationship and could trust in her the touch must be especially comforting and helpful. I’m glad you have a lovely therapist. Everyone deserves that. Big hug x
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