Episode 113: Eye Contact as an Indicator of Intervention Potential Effectiveness

Something I've learned is that without being aware, many people are in a chronic state of vigilance and are unknowingly scanning their world for potential loss, harm, or threat to which they must react.

That is something that's been part of my experience as a licensed psychologist, and it's also a direct quote from the article I'm going to review today, because I hope you'll agree that quote, along with some other information in this article, have a lot to do with mental health, even though the title of the article may not seem to at first.

The title of the article is Hope for Dry Eyes and Eye Strain.

How breathing blinking patterns influence dry eye experience.

Authors are Pepper, Yoshino, and Harvey.

Published in the journal Biofeedback, which is a publication for the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback Community.

This is the spring 2026 issue, volume 54.1. We'll put information in the show notes.

As you may know, I'm quite interested in eyes and eye contact as indicators of physiological states so that when we are practicing mental health, we can make eye contact with our patients, but also gain some information about their physiological state during session Because that is relevant to when our interventions will be most effective.

If someone is in a heightened state of anxiety or tension, they're much less likely to be able to even hear our intervention fully, let alone be able to implement it.

So if we want to make our therapy sessions more effective, then we need to start being able to assess eye contact in part because of what this article explains.

To me, it's sort of twofold.

It's the person's ability to regulate their own nervous system, which this article sheds some light on.

And also their eye contact reflects their interest in working with us.

You know, in that moment, you can tell if someone is receptive to your intervention based on how they make eye contact with you.

So in this episode, I want to review this article as a reflection of how our eyes, all of us as humans, might be affected by our nervous system state.

Something I've learned is that without being aware, many people are in a chronic state of vigilance and are unknowingly scanning their world for potential loss, harm, or threat to which they must react.

That is something that's been part of my experience as a licensed psychologist, and it's also a direct quote from the article I'm going to review today, because I hope you'll agree that quote, along with some other information in this article, have a lot to do with mental health, even though the title of the article may not seem to at first.

The title of the article is Hope for Dry Eyes and Eye Strain.

How breathing blinking patterns influence dry eye experience.

Authors are Pepper, Yoshino, and Harvey.

Published in the journal Biofeedback, which is a publication for the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback Community.

This is the spring 2026 issue, volume 54.1. We'll put information in the show notes.

As you may know, I'm quite interested in eyes and eye contact as indicators of physiological states so that when we are practicing mental health, we can make eye contact with our patients, but also gain some information about their physiological state during session Because that is relevant to when our interventions will be most effective.

If someone is in a heightened state of anxiety or tension, they're much less likely to be able to even hear our intervention fully, let alone be able to implement it.

So if we want to make our therapy sessions more effective, then we need to start being able to assess eye contact in part because of what this article explains.

To me, it's sort of twofold.

It's the person's ability to regulate their own nervous system, which this article sheds some light on.

And also their eye contact reflects their interest in working with us.

You know, in that moment, you can tell if someone is receptive to your intervention based on how they make eye contact with you.

So in this episode, I want to review this article as a reflection of how our eyes, all of us as humans, might be affected by our nervous system state.