Paranoid about people in cars watching me

[Guest]

Whenever i'm walking down a street and there's a cue of cars, I get the feeling the people in the cars are watching me and judging me. Then I get self conscious about the way i'm walking etc. Anyone else get this??

 

[kgord]

Not really, I don't care if they are. They are going to drive off anyway. I know when I first moved to this area from the city though, I got paranoid when I first moved here from the city though when cars will follow you for miles. However, I just realized that there were few ways to get from point A to point B here and they were just traveling though the same way I was. It lessened the paranoia, that I was being followed. It was just a bit of culture shock.

 

[It'sJaz]

Sometimes I feel self-conscious partly because I walk weird. It was a lot worse in the past but now whenever I feel that way, I try to imagine what I would normally do if I'm in a car, and chances are I'm not looking out at whoever's crossing the road. Even if I was, they wouldn't leave much of an impression on me. So in the same way, others shouldn't be looking at me or thinking too much about it.

 

[Laneorexorcist]

Not really on cars, but I feel this when I get on a bus. Most of thetimes, there's a lot of people there and all the time I feel like they are watching me and thinking a lot of bad things about me... Sometimes I try to calm myself while listening some nice music but I lost my iPod, so I don't know what I'm really going to do. But sometimes I try to think what I would be thinking if I was them, and I won't probably be so mean to me, and I just hope that they are not being that mean with me too.

 

[kelden]

Only when I'm riding a bicycle, and whenever I share the road lane with them. You can go figure it out how judgment I receive from "friendly" car drivers. If you're cycling I suggest to stick within the bike lane if you don't want a set of eyes stab you like a bundle of knives.

 

[kgord]

Yes, it is scary to be riding a bike when cars are around especially if they are going fast. I remember from when I was young, and riding on the side of the road...cars would think I was in the way or something and give me a blast on the horn. That is really rude to do to cyclists. I would never do that, unless someone was really taking up the whole road...and even then I would much more likely to just drive around them if at all possible. Those who have anxiety could really become startled by rude car drivers.

 

[rz3300]

I do get this feeling a little bit, but I think that this is one of the ones that most people get. Of course we with anxiety issues are probably more likely to have it be the case and we probably get a little more nervous, but on some level I think that it is a natural reaction. It really depends on the area of town that I am in though too, and if I am downtown at night I tend to be a little more nervous than midday in the suburbs. I guess it is better to be safe than sorry.

 

[MellowCat]

Oh my god, I get self conscious about how I walk. It feels so peculiar. It's almost as if I am someone else watching me when this happens. It's like an out of body experience, and I am conscious of how I move, how my body fat jiggles, and how my knees are pudgy even though I've lost weight. It's very disconcerting.


This doesn't happen to me so much when seeing people in cars, but it happens when I walk into a room of people, especially if I don't know some of them, or don't know them well. I constantly feel like people judging the shape of my body and my wrinkles/stretch marks whenever I am in an open space, as it were, and have to cross a distance to get to where the others are. It almost feels like I am being filmed.


You are definitely not alone. I don't know why this happens ...

 

[Norjak71]

I get this in and out of cars as well, its a really paranoid feeling. I don't get the feeling they are seeking me out or anything of the such; however, I do try to avoid contact with people. Even when I am outside just walking by someone I always turn the other way. I wish I had a solution but I really don't.

 

[amy88]

Sometimes, yes. I think I'm more intimidated by other people walking down the street though - I think the worst is if there's a group of people laughing at something and then I automatically assume it's me that they're laughing at. Even if part of my brain is like "don't be silly Amy, it's not you!" there's another part that can't shake that feeling.

 

[pwarbi]

When my anxiety was at it's peak, while I never really worried about the people in cars watching me, I did find it hard to walk around town as I always used to think I was being judged. One of the things that helped me as strange as this might seem, was that I actually moved from a town to the middle of a big city, and while you might think that It would be worse, after a few weeks I found that I was actually less anxious.


What I put that down to is that when your living in a town while it is busy, there are less people so I tended to think that I was the one that they was all looking at, but in the city there are that many people going about their daily lives that even after just a few days I could see that I was insignificant in their eyes. Being insignificant might not sound nice, but when your dealing with anxiety in a public place, the best thing that can happen is that you blend in with the crowd and nobody notices you.