I felt like today was the perfect day for this assignment because I was going to be out of the house more than usual. I decided to spend the entire day looking everyone I encountered in the eye. I knew this was going to be a particularly hard task for me as a person with social anxiety. I usually try not to draw the attention of strangers when I'm out in public and I feel like eye contact is a direct invitation for interaction.
The first half of the day I went to multiple stores to go shopping. I had to remind myself multiple times not to look away from people and I noticed my immediate instinct was to look away from people. But as I got more used to the habit of looking straight into other people's faces I began to realize that a lot of people will either smile as an acknowledgement of my interaction and then look away. Others would just avert their gaze and keep walking. The cashiers were the ones that seemed to be the most willing to return my gaze. I like to think that they appreciated me looking into their eyes while interacting with them because they are often not acknowledged in this way.
The rest of the day I spent with my brother, his girlfriend and my grandmother. We went to get an early dinner together and this was where the eye contact got so much easier. I found that my brother's girlfriend was the most likely to maintain eye contact with me and I'm not sure if it was the eye contact, but she talked directly to me more than anyone else.
All in all, even though it was a really difficult assignment, I feel like the exercise in interacting with other people really helped me exercise my social skills.
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