Feeling of being watched

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I've read before that some aspies are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because they feel they are being watched. Thank god I never was, but I do have that feeling often. I don't even know why because I know full well there is no one watching me. But it's this feeling that I have and am not sure exactly why or what I could do to make it go away. I'd like to get past it because it really doesn't make sense and does make me feel like I'm even more odd than other aspies. Any thoughts on this?

I feel that same feeling off and on like someone I knew from the past is somehow near. I just have a lot of unresolved issues that could never be fixed.

I would like to read someone's thoughts about this behavior also.

I almost constantly feel that way... I have simply brushed it off as either I'm insane (in which case it does not make a difference one way or the other) or that it is just me.

What I mean by that is, whenever I think back on a memory or anything about myself personally, I am never in my body. I can see my body doing the things that I did and the area which I was, the people and blanks (people I don't know or don't care to remember without faces) around me. So I have just considered the feeling of someone constantly watching me as just me... watching me. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

Then again, all that is around me could simply be fabricated and I am really much more like a rat in a maze in some weird experiment... but that is back to me being insane.

Sometimes I will have dreams of past events or events that seemed probable due to the conditions. I am always in the first-person viewpoint.

In dreams I am also always in the first person if I personally am in the dream... and sometimes I still have that "someone is watching me" feeling. If I am just a consiousness watching something or flipping around or astrally projecting myself (because in some of my dreams I can do that), I never have that feeling. *Shrug*

When I was younger and had not yet done any work on my childhood abuse stuff, I used to feel that people were watching me. It was because I thought that somehow my very soul had been damaged and that people could see it, as though I had some sort of weird mark on me that everyone could see but me. I felt like a leper. How could people not be watching me? This feeling dissolved when I went to my first support group and met the other abuse survivors, and saw that they all looked like your basic human being.

I wonder whether something similar happens with Aspies. Perhaps because we feel so different from everyone else, and because we tend to think visually, we are afraid that this "otherness" is communicating itself to the outside world.

This whole issue was resolved for me before I got the AS diagnosis, but it seems like there are some similarities here between feeling very "other" as an abuse survivor and very "other" as an aspie.

When you say you feel like you are being watched do you mean that it's like someone is stalking you or something? Or do you mean that you feel like people are watching you and scrutinizing your behaviour? I know if i'm out somewhere by myself where there are a lot of people it often feels like people are watching your ever move. Or if you hear people laughing it feels like they're laughing at you, even though they probably are just laughing amongst themselves about something totally unrelated.

I get that feeling alot whenever I'm outside. I usually even wait until it gets dark out before I go get my mail. Also, in the summer, I sometimes wait for weeks until I feel comfortable enough to go out and cut my grass, even though it only takes 10 minutes to do it.

Not ALL the time, but if I was in a room with posters with people on, I'd feel like the people are "watching" me, which I realise is insane, but it's freaky. That's why my room isn't like other teenager's rooms, it only has paintings of landscapes instead of pop band posters and that. Only yet another reason why I hate sleeping in other people's rooms.

Also, on my copy of 1984 there is a picture of an eye on the front, so if the book is on my bedside table, I have it face-down else it freaks me out.

Yeah it's kinda hard to explain, but there are times even when I'm alone that I still get that feeling, but it's definitely intensified if I'm at work for example where there are people milling around everywhere, for example. But sometimes I even have thoughts that it's a specific person that's on my mind for whatever reason, I think if they were watching me right now they'd think....and usually it's something negative. I don't know if that makes any sense at all but that's the best I can describe it right now. And definitely worse when I'm outside. I used to love living in the country because I could take walks outside where generally there was no one around. Now I have to will myself to walk down the sidewalk because I know it's inevitable that I'll meet someone else walking, or I feel like people in their houses are watching me walking and I hate that feeling so I just generally stay inside.

Last summer I went through a phase where if an insect was in my room, I would think that this certain boy at school (who, for the record, I hate) had a magic pet insect that spies on people. That sounds very mentalised, but it really freaked me out at the time.

Cos, y'know, if that was in any way possible, I know this boy would take the opportunity. He's a well perv.

Watch it topic

I think NTs watch others before speaking to them. I know they do this to me, and I do not like it. I suppose they watch for signs that it is all right to approach them. Then they keep looking at me because they wait for a signal to initiate a conversation.

They will never get it!! !