What other posters said, respond with the blinking. My son calls them eye kisses. It shows trust. In case you’re unfamiliar: you look at her and slowly close your eyes for a second. She might mirror it. Facing a fierce predator such as the one you pictured and confronting it willingly blinded, even for a second, takes courage. She’ll honour it most likely. Also food and clean water, preferably placed in separate locations.

Childhood trauma affect people in lots of different ways. Some learn to retreat inward, preferring to live in their own mind over learning to emotionally connect with others. This could look like autism on surface level, however autism doesn’t result from trauma and is accompanied with an array of other signs and behaviours. If you’re still seeing a psychologist, try to work towards opening up your early experiences, especially how you remember your attempts to cope with the world. This is not easy of course but it could help to see yourself as an object of curiosity. Also keep in mind that it is hard to find a therapist who feels right to connect and open up to, even for the average person, so this might be more challenging for you. I hope this helps a bit.

There’s a lot to unpack there, and I don’t want to appear qualified to help you over this medium. In therapy you could get to the bottom of this, but it takes a lot of work and time. Please have a look into Dialectical behavior therapy, as this seems applicable for the picture you painted about your experience.

Have you thought about why you do this? What prompts you to seek help? If you want to cease this behaviour, do you know why? Is it because it doesn’t feel right, as in it’s not “you”, or is it because of the consequences? What worries you, should you live more authentic and truthful, about your social interactions and relationships? Envisioning that folks in most cases react very well if one takes their mendacious mask of, how do you feel about that? Change is hard and those are some questions I just came up with that should prompt you to contemplate in order to understand the root of these behaviours. No need to answer them here.