Eye Gaze and Peripheral vision problems

Hello everyone! I hope someone here can help provide some advice.

I have some issues with eye contact and perepheral vision that are really annoying. I don;t know if it is a mental disorder or something physical. The problems are:

1.) I have hyper sensitive peripheral vision, with the result that if someone is sitting next to/ near me, I can see them even when I am not directly looking at them. So for instance I will be watching TV or perhaps a lecture, but I can latch onto a person out of the corner of my I and it produces the affect of me staring at them. People find this very uncomfortable and will even move away or shield there eyes with a hand to block me from thier vision. Sounds weird, but it's true.

2.) Normal eye contact suring conversations is hard, I no longer know where to look. I end up looking directly into thier eyes and again, produce an off-putting staring effect. I have tried moving my gaze to other areas of the face, but it does not work too well, I always end up having a staring competetino with them. The result is that when people talk to me, they quite often shut there eyes for long periods or look away.

Interestingly this has not been a factor from childhood, it just suddenly happened a number of years ago in my early twenties.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

It is more of a psychology/social interaction issue than an eye issue.  Get an annual eye exam to make sure your eyes are OK either way but you should talk to a counselor/psychologist about this and see if they can recommend some behavioral therapy to help with this.

HV