Am I doing it right?

Eeek... this picture makes me uncomfortable.

When I feel like making eye contact turns out you're not supposed to directly look at people's iris. I even shared "tips" to some friends about just switching to look at each eye to make it more "friendly". Lmao.

That's brilliant. I'm on the spectrum and have always had issues with eye contact and feeling like I'm just STARING at someone. I usually will look in to someone's eyes for like 2 seconds before the "pressure"(?) starts to build and I have to look somewhere else like their chin or forehead. I'll try looking at each eye individually next time!
- Another technique you can try is the "triangle method." This involves shifting your gaze every few seconds from one eye, to the other, and then to the mouth or nose, creating an invisible triangle. This mimics natural eye movement and can help reduce the intensity of direct eye contact.

Yeah, eye contact has always been tough for me. After about 2~3 seconds, my brain feels like it's being severely tickled. One trick I've picked-up is look at the middle of their forehead or the bridge of their nose. I've asked a number of people after trying, and they said they couldn't tell the difference.

What helped me a lot was to look at a single eye, and not be afraid not to respond immediately (just a quick « let me think about it » + break eye contact + take 5-10 seconds before speaking again). Not perfect, but it’s much more manageable this way. If it’s a meeting with multiple people, I also tend to not look at the other people immediately (it feels easier to me to look at others while I am already « reciting »).

I just usually look in someone's general direction and they handle the eye contact. They're doing most of the work not me. It's great I don't even have to think about it