Title: Do You Feel Like You're Always Being Watched? | Psychology Today
Headings: Do You Feel Like You're Always Being Watched?
S. Rufus
Do You Feel Like You're Always Being Watched?
Some of us were observed too intently, too constantly, when we were young.

Content: Source: Anneli Rufus
A 1906 psychiatric journal first used the term "scopophobia" to describe a "morbid shamefacedness" and a "morbid dread of being seen." A scopophobic person typically "covers the face with her or his hands" and "will shun the visitor and escape from his sight where that is possible." OK. Expand the fear of being seen by those whom we see seeing us to include the even-more-irrational fear that we are always seen, everywhere, even when alone. In some of us, this fear results from having been watched too much, too intently, when we were too young. It wasn't just the plain weirdness of being watched, but why our watchers watched us: They made us believe that, unwatched, we would shame ourselves, shame them, blunder, or die. They said that the second we slipped out of sight, we would wet our pants, have seizures, shoplift. They said they could see through walls and straight into our minds.