# Morita Therapy (Eye Contact Phobia)



## RCMC (Feb 5, 2017)

I am learning Morita Therapy and it helps my eye contact phobia so that I want to share it with all of you. It is because eye contact phobia is one of the core parts of social anxiety disorder.

The core knowledge you need to bare in minds are:

Cause of Eye Contact Phobia:
Your superego which is based on what you learn from your parents/teachers/social customs etc. wants you to have conversation with other people and makes eye contact which means respectful to others. However, based on your previous experience say school bullying, judging by someone on your eye contact etc., you have very low esteem, you are fearful making eye contact. As a result. You don't know making eye contact or not. Whether you make eye contact or not makes you painful. If you make eye contact, you get hurt by your low self-esteem. If you do not make eye contact, you are blamed by your superego. You are tortured by your superego and self-esteem. You don't know you should make eye contact or not.

What comes to your mind when making eye contact:
You are fearful making eye contact. You think your eye contact hurt others. Other people see you lose your eye contact with them. And they also make less eye contact on you. As a result, you think it is your fault. You think they hate you because they make less eye contact on you. You believe your eye contact did something wrong with them. You think your absence of eye contact hurt them. You think others are judging your eye contact.

The fact is:
First, you avoid making eye contact with others and they make less eye contact with you is to protect you. They find you make less eye contact on them. In order to make the conversation go on smoothly, they have to avoid their eye contact on you rather than staring at you. On the opposite, they keep on looking at you if you already avoid your eye contact on them, that means they find you cannot communicate naturally. Therefore other make less or avoid eye contact on you does not mean they hate you or judge you. Instead, this is natural social behavior. Second, fear can spread out. Our fearful and avoidant eye contact makes them a little bit nervous so that they avoid their eye contact on us to make themselves more comfortable. That doesn't mean they do not want to talk with us or make friend with us by judging our eye contact. As a result, you think your eyes can hurt yourself and others. This is not truth. Other do not judge you by your eye contact. 

What should you do:
DO NOT make eye contact intentionally, making eye contact is a natural process. Make eye contact only when you need to do it. Why? You make eye contact intentionally to every person you face is proving the hidden agenda that your eye contact has problem. Over eye contact is also exhausting. Making eye contact is a natural process. Let it go. If you make eye contact with others and feel too anxious and then you look somewhere else. There is no problem. Do not blame yourself of losing eye contact. Just make the eye contact again. Acceptance to your anxiety is important to overcome eye contact phobia.


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## the end of silence (Oct 21, 2017)

RCMC said:


> I am learning Morita Therapy and it helps my eye contact phobia so that I want to share it with all of you. It is because eye contact phobia is one of the core parts of social anxiety disorder.
> 
> The core knowledge you need to bare in minds are:
> 
> ...


Thanks for sharing this.

It's definitely something I need to address, and reading this was a good start.


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## rockyraccoon (Dec 13, 2010)

I took martial arts training before and during one of the classes my master had us sit down and stare directly into the eyes of the opponent we were going to spar with. ****, the eye contact itself was more fearful than worrying about getting hurt in the sparring lessons.


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

@RCMC

In the words of Pat Morita from The Karate Kid....."Always look eye!"













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## CloudChaser (Nov 7, 2013)

For a few moments I was hoping this was going to help me get over my fear of putting in contact lenses.


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## RCMC (Feb 5, 2017)

millenniumman75 said:


> @RCMC
> 
> In the words of Pat Morita from The Karate Kid....."Always look eye!"
> 
> ...


:lol:lol:lol

Actually he is Shoma Morita.


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## Sbeeter (Mar 21, 2018)

I heard about one method: when you can't stand eye contact (but you feel you need it), just imagine you are wearing sun glasses. Sometimes it works.


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