It’s very hard to practice eye contact

When I was a kid, eye contact with people was usually done if I was in trouble, so I always associated fear with eye contact.

I’ve been trying to work on this lately by making casual eye contact with strangers as I walk around places. I try just a few seconds of friendly eye contact then keep going, just to overcome this fear.

So the past few times I’ve been to the grocery store, I try to make eye contact with people walking by. It works well with men, but horrible for women (I am a guy fwiw).

Every time I walk past a woman, I look at her eyebrows or in between her eyes to work up to real eye contact, and I try to genuinely smile and look friendly overall. They end up just looking away almost instantly or appear to get nervous.

With guys I do the same and it’s the classic “head nod” move that friendly guys do most of the time.

Ofc this is Reddit and I’m highly overthinking it but I have noticed a pattern and it hurts pretty bad. Makes me think I’m too ugly for women to want to look at me, even though my friend said yesterday that I could genuinely be a model. Idk who to believe.

I just want to overcome my shyness! LOL!