I have a hard time focusing in a conversation and someone is talking because I'm trying so hard to make the right face. It takes so much effort to figure out what the "right face" is supposed to be based on context and then make my face look the way I think it's supposed to look.
I will get scolded for making the wrong face, for not making it fast enough, or being too exhausted to try and find the right face and make it. The scolding doesn't make me any better at figuring out what the right face was supposed to be.
My "open and receptive face" looks like other people's "irritated/disinterested face" so I try to fix that and make the right face when someone is telling me something that requires attentiveness.
I try so hard to make the right face that I'm not retaining what I'm being told, just making sure I'm reacting to it so I don't get scolded. Then I get scolded for not doing what I was told the way I was told.
Then there's the insistence of having to make eye contact the whole time someone is talking to you which makes me physically uncomfortable.
In the effort not to look uncomfortable while maintaining eye contact, I miss what I'm supposed to hear.
I listen better when I'm not staring straight into someone else's eyes but, I've been raised in a society where not staring into someone's eyes and- for example, looking at their mouth so I can figure out what they're saying with my processing issues- is disrespectful or even predatory.