I don’t really know if I’ll explain this right, but I (20F) have a hard time looking at people. For background, i’m a junior in college, have social anxiety, and no friends. These past few years with no friends has messed up my social skills that already barely existed.
When it comes to talking directly to people I’m totally fine with eye contact. The problem is whenever I’m not doing that. If I’m walking somewhere or on the subway or whatever it’s like hard for me to look a people. For example, if I’m walking to class, I don’t acknowledge people’s faces. Like I could be looking forward but I just don’t look at them fr.
I don’t really remember when this problem began but I do remember that I started doing this because I didn’t like the awkwardness of eye contact. It’s like every time I looked at someone, they were looking at me, so i ultimately just stopped looking at people to avoid this from occurring. Ironically, I’m a very aware person, I just feel like this inability to look at people’s faces is making me oblivious in a way.
So I guess my question is where/how am I supposed to look when I’m in public? Also I know this probably sounds ridiculous.