My Autistic Experience With Eye-Contact: I don’t need to look at you to speak to you (or hear you)

Growing up, especially in school, I was often scolded for “not paying attention” (regardless of whether I was actually paying attention or not).

NOTES/DISCLAIMER: It’s important that we all understand that, as Autistic People, there is not a unified autistic experience. We all have different opinions and very different experiences, and I think it’s great to share those things.

If you’re a NeuroTypical watching, remember that this is just my experience as a NeuroDivergent Person. I encourage you to listen to and read as many Autistic experiences as possible to best understand Autistic and other NeuroDivergent People.

Patreon members, Substack subscribers, and YouTube channel members had access to this video on Friday, July 5, 2024. The video will be released publicly on Friday, July 12, 2024.

This video is based on a Substack post published on February 20, 2024.

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Transcript:

Lyric Rivera: Hi, everyone.

Lyric here I am the best-selling author of the business ethics book, Workplace Neurodiversity Rising, based on work I’ve been doing with organizations consulting on how to make their spaces more inclusive for NeuroDivergent People and, really, anyone with a brain- because Neuro-Inclusion is inclusion for everyone with a brain. Which is probably you.

If you’re wondering how to make your organization more inclusive for everyone with a brain. Reach out. I could help you with that.

Today, we’re going to talk about Autism and eye contact.

If you’d like to know more about my personal experience with this, please stay tuned.

Music Plays: intro

Lyric Rivera: music,

Welcome back. Glad you’re still here.

So with eye contact, for me anyway, I don’t need to look at you to be able to understand what you’re saying to me or hear you.

Going up, especially in school, I was often scolded for not paying attention, regardless of whether I was actually paying attention or not.

“Look at me.”

“Eyes on me.”

“Eyes to the front.”

Or “if you’re drawing, or doodling, you’re not paying attention to what I’m saying,” the teacher would say, failing to comprehend that a person’s ears can work, even at that person’s eyes are elsewhere.

That same teacher also thought one had to be “sitting appropriately” at your desk in order to learn- which is something I don’t even do today. I’m sitting criss cross knees up feet under my butt in the chair.

“Feet on the floor.”

” Don’t slouch!”

“Don’t cross your legs in your chair.”

“Be still.”

“Be quiet.”

“Don’t make noise.”

“Don’t bounce your legs.”

“You aren’t looking at me!”

“Go into the hallway!”

That’s, basically, my elementary school experience in a nutshell.

Out in the hallway, I could no longer hear the lesson.

” Why send me out of the classroom for not paying attention, if you want me to be able to learn?”

“Why do you need me to look at you when you are speaking?”

Questions that were never asked, because questioning my teacher, would have been punished as backtalk.

My teacher wanted respect and felt that my refusal to look at her, or be still and quiet, whenever she spoke, was disrespectful.

My teacher didn’t understand that looking at her, when she spoke to me, and trying very hard to appear still and attentive, meant I was too busy, trying to make myself “appropriate,” that I couldn’t actually pay attention to the lessons she was teaching me.

My teacher didn’t understand I was listening, and that doodling, looking away, and splitting my attention, was the only way I could actually maintain my focus in a busy and chaotic environment, like a classroom.

My teacher didn’t understand that I’m a visual thinker, and I need to visualize things to process and comprehend them. Which means I often need to look away when talking, or listening to something, especially new informations, as I’m drawing and painting pictures in my mind.

My teacher didn’t understand my need for movement, my Autism, or my ADHD. Instead, my teacher saw a “bad kid, who “needed to learn to act like everyone else” to stay in the classroom.

My teacher wanted to kick me out of her classroom.

My teacher tried to have me put in the segregated special education classroom, but my test scores were too high, and my guardians pushed back, so the school sent me back to her.

My teacher did not understand me, so instead of supporting me, she punished me, labeling me “a disruption” to her teaching and to my peers.

My teacher framed me, and my “behaviors,” as the problem, demanding conformity, instead of considering my unmet needs, which prevented me from engaging in the class environment.

I spent a lot of time sitting out in the hallway, especially in elementary school, when I didn’t, yet, know how to camouflage my AuDHD traits, that would send my small town Texas school teacher, who took my “disruptive behavior” very personally, into a rage.

To my teacher, this “disrespect to the order of the classroom”- lack of eye-contact, and traditional neuro-typical style attention (jumping about, humming, tapping, crawling on the floor, making animal noises, and sitting under my desk), was personal, against her- disrespect, to her.

She made it about her instead of being about me.

A lot was going on in that classroom. I was not trying to be disrespectful. I was overwhelmed- overstimulated, and under-stimulated, simultaneously.

Despite the busy-ness, and my need to move around to compensate for that busy environment, I was expected to sit perfectly still, and quiet- something that had never been asked of me at home, so, I didn’t know how to do this.

When I failed to sit perfectly still and quietly for hours upon hours all day, because I was incapable of doing so, something I needed more of, recess (time to run, move, get my excess energy out) was taken away from me.

They set me up for failure.

To be successful in the classroom, I would have needed, more support, less criticism, more compassion, understanding, and more freedom- not more restriction.

I needed a teacher who would let me stand up, and move around, or sit on the floor under my desk in a safe little nest, when the classroom felt too loud, or too bright, or too overwhelming.

I needed a teacher who would respect my needs to seek sensory input, and who would allow me to bring sensory protection, like sunglasses, which were not allowed in my teacher’s classroom.

I needed a teacher who didn’t insist. I give eye contact, staring at them when they give lessons, because doing so made every lesson go in one ear and out the other.

I needed a teacher willing to let me doodle, or do something else, with my hands, while they were teaching.

Most of all, I needed a teacher who didn’t see and treat me as the problem, or an obstacle to their teaching ability, and I needed a teacher who didn’t think, and tell me, that I was bad.

Because I was treated like “the problem,” and told I was “a bad kid” over and over and over again, eventually, I began to believe I was “the problem”… and “a bad kid.”

I took on the belief that I was a fundamentally flawed, damaged, inferior, type of person, holding onto this truth as if it were one of the core, defining characteristics, of my personality. The belief, planted by my first grade teacher, has been challenging for me to reconcile.

Though I no longer, logically, believe this about myself, thanks to learning I’m Autistic, a little over seven and a half years ago, I have adapted patterns of behavior from a lifetime of living my life as if my feelings, needs, and comfort are less important than that of everyone around me, and that’s been hard for me to break.

I’m healing, and I’m growing, and I’m learning to stand up for myself, after a lifetime of being encouraged to make myself small.

Some days there are victories, and some days I falter, and I will fail terribly, but the more I practice, the more wins I experience, and the losses become more manageable, and less painful.

I’m not perfect, but I’m doing better than I was this time last year, and better than several years ago, when I first learned I was Autistic, and better than several years before that, when I had no idea I was Autistic.

I take baby steps, moving slowly, but I’m moving in the right direction.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. It was a little bit of a different, more narrative and storytelling format.

I write on Substack, and I tell a lot of personal stories about my life, growing up as an Autistic Person (who didn’t know they were Autistic for 29 years of their life), and I wanted to bring one of those story style narratives over here to YouTube.

Let me know what you think about this one, if you like the story format, or if you like the original YouTube format. Just wanted to try something new, give it a go, and see how it worked.

I have other stories I can tell, about school, and other things, if you would like more stories, and more narrative style videos like this, just drop a comment, let me know, and I will do that.

This video was shot on Friday, July 5th, 2024.

I’m going to try and get it shared with my Patreon, Substack, and YouTube channel members – Hopefully later today, if I can get it edited, and nothing goes wrong (because my poor, computer’s having a hard time).

If I can get this out today, it’ll be out early today, July 5th for the paid subscribers, and it’ll be out everywhere else in about a week or two.

It’s just a little early release preview, just as a thanks for those of you who do subscribe monetarily, to help make this content possible, help make this blog possible, help make our survival literally possible, because we couldn’t do this without you… so thank you all so much.

I’m really grateful for every single one of you. Yeah. None of this, none of this would exist without every one of you.

Thank you for being part of this community and part of this movement.

Bye all!

Music Plays: And I’ll see you next time!