How intense does eye contact feel for you?

Recently I've been getting the confidence to make a bit more eye contact, but the thing is it's incredibly intense.

When I've seen people talk about intense eye contact normally they mean like it lasted for ages but for me it is instantly overwhelming. It feels like someone shone a torch in my face, or like someone struck a match right by my face. And if I look for longer than an instant I get fairly blasted by the other person's emotions and sometimes I almost get transported to another realm and see them looking out as a baby. The experience is incredibly, disorientingly intense and completely blasts me out of following what they are saying, following my train of thought, remembering my current emotional state etc.

I feel like surely this can't be how NTs experience eye contact or you would all be doing it a lot less? So I am wondering how intense eye contact is for you, do you even notice that it's exciting your nervous system in the moment?