SelfhelpMagazine

by Edward A. Dreyfus, Ph.D.

You seem to be very motivated to change and have made some significant progress in overcoming your shyness. Your self-consciousness about maintaining eye contact may be affecting your progress.

Perhaps you are trying too hard to maintain continuous eye contact. Continuous eye contact is difficult for many people.

Most often, we look at someone when we are listening, and tend to intermittently maintain eye contact when we are speaking. We tend to connect, look away as we think, come back, look at the bridge of their nose, look away, come back to eye contact, etc.

It is not necessary to maintain direct, eye-to-eye gaze for an entire conversation. Over time, it becomes easier to maintain contact for longer periods.

Perhaps you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. You are overcoming years of shyness; be patient with yourself. Shy guys make progress one step at a time.

About the Author:

Dr. Edward A. Dreyfus is a Clinical Psychologist, Marriage, Family, Child Therapist, and Sex Therapist. Dr. Dreyfus has been providing psychological services in the Los Angeles-Santa Monica area for over 30 years. He offers individual psychotherapy to adolescents and adults, divorce mediation, couples counseling, group therapy, and career and vocational counseling and assessment. Dr. Dreyfus can be reached at: (310) 208-5700.