Pretending you are being watched

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Is it an aspie trait to feel like, or act like, you're being watching by someone all the time? Or does that sound more schizotypal?

I know what you mean

When I go into stores with a bookbag or something I feel like I have to "prove" to whoever may be watching that I'm not stealing anything. That sort of thing.

i did this as a game when i was young a lot

and im still always on the look out for someone ALREADY looking at me

I think it's just my paranoia.

Aspie.
I can only truly relax when I'm at home, alone.

I do this too (out where people are, not when I'm home alone). I think maybe we do this because we're so focused on attention going FROM us TO our environments, that the fact that it can also go FROM our environments TO us will forever confuse & scare us. Attention to my person makes me feel like I'm a tennis ball that someone's trying to turn inside out. It's not possible to do that without cutting up the ball (i.e. me). This may also be why we don't like eye contact (we don't want to see we're being looked at).

For the longest time I had the strangest walk because whenever I was in public I felt like I was walking on a stage in front of 6000 people. Now it's mild; I'm still ridiculously self-conscious but I'm better at hiding it. I'm only truly relaxed at home or wherever I'm sure there's nobody around.

I feel the same. At the moment I can only relax when I'm on my own in my room. Otherwise I get really paranoid and think that people are spying on me.

I do that all the time. ALL the time.

I’m always looking over my shoulders (figuratively and literally) even when I’m at home; the only time I don’t is when I’m outside in a moonless night. Yeah, I feel as if there's a threat that's watching me that I cannot see.

Probably just anxiety on my part….

I think some of it comes from being made fun of or bullied - so you get very sensitive about the idea of other people looking at you. Because generally I think there aren't any grandious feelings attached to that. You don't think people are looking at you because you are so cool (lol). I feel comfortable if I am out with someone else to anchor me - like my husband. Then I don't pay attention to anyone else but him.

I used to think that people I admired were watching my every move. Odd.

Well, to me it's less of a paranoid look over your shoulder type thing and more of a keep really aloof thing. Not that someone is out to get you, but that someone is studying you. And I also feel, reflexively, that people who I find interesting are studying me especially. Now that I've realized that really no one pays much attention to anyone else, it's helping my social anxiety.

when i was a child more then now i always felt like i was being watched when i was alone and i would invent stores about who was doing the watching like aliens or witches, always knew (sort of) that it was not true but i always needed to be on my best behavior because it felt like they would see every thing i did. i also think everyone one is looking at when im out in public but thats resonbly true, not everyone but as look of people stair at me

Yeah I definitely have this problem - it annoys the heck out of me that I think this way. I can relate to every post in this thread. I remember back in high school I was always thinking people were looking at me as I walked down the halls (I was a perpetual loner). As someone else said, not feeling admired but being looked at to ridicule. And the bookbag / store situation someone mentioned - I always feel that!

I have to have my windows covered all the time - not because I'm hiding anything but because I'd feel too much like I'm "on display" if they weren't covered. This drives my girlfriend crazy because she'd like to see the sunlight once in a while.

When I'm depressed I feel that everyone is looking at me. I find it hard to walk properly, and every move I make is selfconscious. I also fake my facial expressions. It's probably at those times that I have any understanding of what it is to aspie