Do any of you have difficulty maintaining eye contact?

I have a tendency to look away, and down, when people speak to me. I get a lot of complaints about this, especially from my family. They think I'm disinterested in what they're saying. I'm not, I just can't look at them.

This issues is among those identified in studies of TBI patients. Great, I know it's real - but does anyone have suggestion for dealing with it? I can't will myself (I try) to just do it.

Below is some info on vision issues and TBI. Recent studies indicate that 90% are affected, in one way or another.

Vision Therapy Vancouver:

A recent study noted that people with traumatic brain injury often have a constellation of eye movement (sometimes called oculomotor) deficits. The study noted that over 90% of patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI, some times called acquired brain injury) were found to have one or more oculomotor dysfunctions, including nystagmus and/or other abnormalities of version, vergence, accommodation, and eye alignment. Related symptoms include difficulty tracking objects, difficulties in visual scanning and slow reading.
Oculomotor and Visual Symptoms in TBI

The following list comes from the study, "Clinical Oculomotor Training in Traumatic Brain Injury" by Dr. Kenneth Cuiffreda and colleagues:

Avoidance of near tasks
Oculomotor-based reading difficulties
Eye tracking problems
Eye focusing problems
Eyestrain
Diplopia
Dizziness
Vertigo
Vision-derived nausea
Increased sensitivity to visual motion
Visual inattention and distractibility
Short-term visual memory loss
Difficulty judging distances (relative and absolute)
Difficulty with global scanning
Difficulty with personal grooming, especially involving
the face
Inability to interact/cope visually in a complex social situation (e.g., minimal eye contact)
Inability to tolerate complex visual environments (e.g., grocery store aisles and highly-patterned floors)

Oculomotor signs in TBI

The following list also comes from the study, "Clinical Oculomotor Training in Traumatic Brain Injury" by Dr. Kenneth Cuiffreda and colleagues:

Reduced amplitude of accommodation
Increased lag of accommodation
Reduced relative accommodation
Slowed accommodative facility
Uncorrected hyperopia/ astigmatism (due to inability to compensate accommodatively)
Receded near point of convergence
Restricted relative convergence (BO) at far and near
Restricted overall fusional vergence ranges at far and near
Abnormal Developmental Eye Movement test (DEM) results
Low grade-level equivalent performance on the Visagraph II
Impaired versional ocular motility

- See more at: http://www.visiontherapy.ca/braininj....OFzDmvZe.dpuf