Hi All
Ricky mentioned in another thread:
No eye contact = Thuja
Are there any other remedies with the same "rubric"?
And why do some people make no eye contact?
Are they shy, unsure, disinterested?

[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: gien ]

That is for the practitioner to discover, I think.

Once you have that reason, it may help lead to a remedy. People may feel self-conscious, guilty, angry, afraid of confontation - it is important to ask what looking at someone directly means to them.

Remedies I have used for this behaviour are Calc, Kali-br, Cobolt, Cycl, Bar-c, Nat-mur.

David

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David Kempson.<br />Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine.<br />Lecturer Australian College of Natural Therapies (Brisbane Campus)<br />Member AHA, AROH, HMA<br />Member Australian Homoeopathic Association. Member#0442.

Dear Gien,

Ricky's visiting her daughter in Israel right now. Hopefully she'll see this thread when she gets back.

I suspect that it's victims of child abuse-- people with guilt and shame who avoid eye contact. There would be a lot of rubrics to consider: Delusion, is a failure; Delusion, has neglected her duty; Mind, abused; Mind, humiliation; Mind, shame; Mind, guilt; Mind, reproaches himself; Mind, rejected; Mind, desire to hide; Mind, cannot bear to be looked at; and I'm pretty sure there's a rubric "Avoids the sight of people", anyway, there's lots to choose from.

Snoopy

Lots of people instantly associate this lack of eye contact behaviour with Nat Mur and ignatia.

I've seen it not so much in Thuja (who hides in other ways--mostly "half-truth" answers, in my experience) but also in hyoscyamus, who can use all kinds of different ways to "hide" themselves from scrutiny--covering eyes and face with hands, talking plenty of self-help book psychobabble, putting the head down to weep, and just using the standard :"I don't want to answer that" answer.

Divina

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

For what it's worth, a different type of eye contact avoidance came to my mind.

I've know people who will close their eyes when speaking to you. My impression was that it was a way of ensuring that you keep your attention on them. They are smilimg and talking but don't seem to want to know where you are in all of it. I guess they fear they might lose you if they open their eyes.

I've always found it an interesting affectation.

Contenta

Hi All,

Just another take on the eye contact issue. It is VERY important to find out why the person is not making eye contact. My son-in-law is Apache Indian. He was raised with the belief that looking someone in the eye is disrespectful. There are other cultures where this is the case, also.

Shirley Reischman

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Shirley Reischman

That is an excellent point, Shirley. Western culture places a great deal of importance regarding "character" in eye contact--but this is not a cultural ideal in many other cultures--including a vast majority of the First Nations cultures in North America as well as many Asian cultures, where direct eye contact is considered rude and defamatory.

As always, sensitivity to culture matters a great deal. It pays to ask a patient about why that eye contact is not present.

Divina

__________________
...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Shirley,

That is really a good point! Yes, as you and Divina said, in certain cultures it really is a sign of disrespect to look a person directly in the eye; but what's interesting is, in dogs, they will not look directly into each other's eyes unless they are angry and are ready to attack, so it's a sign of danger.

But I have to tell you a dog story, since they are so much like people. All my dogs were homeless, as I think I said before, so after I adopted my son Larry--my German Sheppherd, he was so independent that he wouldn't follow me or come when I called when we took him for a walk; and he was such a big dog, I thought he needed to be able to run and I felt a leash would be cruel. But what happened was, I would get so angry about having to chase after him that I would yell and go into rages....And then one day I had a moment of revelation on one of our walks, because I said something to him and he looked away from me! I said, "Oh my God!!!" I suddenly saw myself in him, because I couldn't look at my father! And it's funny because my other dog, Snoopy, (now everybody knows!), couldn't look at my father either! I realized what I had done, and I knew what I had to do! I stopped all criticism, all negativity from that point on. I walked him on a leash so there would be no more cause for yelling, and I replaced all the "Who-do-you-think-you-are's" with words of good cheer; and he was totally transformed! He became a family dog instead of an independent "free spirit", he became happy, and he stopped looking away.

So, there's a classic etiology in action for eye-contact avoidance.

Snoopy

Very Clever Snoopy, the question " Master"

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Dr. Shashi Roy
"Sarve Santoo NirAamyah"<br />"Sarve Bhavantoo Sukhinaam"<br /><br />Best Regards<br /><br />Shashi Roy

Hi
Thanks for all the ideas
Many South African cultures do not make eye contact out of respect but this is not the case here.
I am trying to find a remedy for a young woman and had Thuja on a shortlist.
She makes no eye contact when questions are asked (has done this allways). Looks to the left or right of the person spoken to.
I put it down to shyness, talks very fast.Very eager to talk but suddenly gets embarrassed and leaves here sentences just hanging there(does not complete the sentence)
The only person she really makes eye contact with is her mother.
The young woman (girl, she looks and acts like a 16year old) asked for help to get rid of all her guilty feelings.
As she puts it "I feel guilty all the time, please help me with this".