[violetgarden]

This is just personal, but once I had to help my aunt during an extreme bipolar episode. She was violent, paranoid, and hallucinating. One of the most haunting things from that time was her eyes. They seemed hard and staring. When she looked at you, it didn’t feel like it was her in there. Her eyes weren’t shiny and expressive like normal. There was just something frantic and non human in them. Maybe it was just the extreme stress from feeling like people were coming for her, but it’s interesting to hear another avenue for getting insight into mental health disorders.

[sandworm101]

There is a deep part of our brain that controls eye contact. Babies know to stare at faces, even when they cannot recognize one from another. It is a common evolved trait. Dogs, lions, deer, seals, chipmunks, crows, some would say even sharks ... all sorts of animals will "look us in the eye". We expect to see a certain code of behaviour re eye contact. When a person or animal is subject to something that alters that covention we interpret that as "crazy eyes". A dog in pain will look a human in the eye. A dog on hallucinationogenic drugs will not. We must be careful whenever we are interpreting such things as our interpretation can be based more on expectations than reality. The shark is probably not meeting our gaze. Rather, we see an eyeball and expect that it is acting a certain way.

Spend time talking to someone with a false eye. You might not understand why their face seems a little odd. You probably cannot tell which eye is fake (false eyes are far more common than people realize) but you know something is not right.

[ddorian43]

Yes the eyes change when you are manic https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/take-charge-bipolar-...

[treeman79]

Sounds about right.

Was in a trapped situation. Not allowed to leave; flashback to childhood assault.

Started seeing seeing things in effort to get away. Was not really seeing anyone trying to talk to me.

0/10 would not recommend. Also if a person wants to leave a situation, for the love anything, let them.