Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit, which is walking into a room, a café, a gym, a meeting, a bar, a bus, and feeling that the room has turned to look at you. Not a room of friends. A room of strangers or near-strangers who, as far as you can tell, are noticing what you're wearing, how you're walking, that you're on your own, that you said the wrong thing, that there's a mark on your jumper, and who are filing all of it away and coming to a view. You plan your route across the floor. You practise the sentence. You take the long way round to avoid the group by the door. And afterwards, on the way home, you go over it and find the bits they must have seen.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the feeling makes sense from the inside. You can see yourself very clearly, and it's hard to believe that everyone else can't. The second is that the feeling is wrong in a particular, measurable way. There's a body of research, thirty years of it, on how much people think others notice them against how much others actually notice, and the gap is large and runs in one direction. People notice you less than you think, remember less than you think, and judge you less harshly than you think, and the reason is that they're doing what you're doing, which is watching themselves. The third is practical. You can check this in any room in about a minute, and once you've checked it a few times the room changes. Chapters 19 to 22 cover how.

This book isn't going to tell you to stop caring what people think. Caring what people think is most of what makes people bearable to be around. It's about the audience that isn't there.

Three cautions.

If the feeling is more than uncomfortable, if it stops you doing everyday things, if you avoid shops or phone calls or eating with other people because of it, or if it's been like that for months, then the NHS describes that as social anxiety, and says it's common and treatable and that a GP is the person to see. You can also refer yourself to an NHS talking therapies service without going through a GP. This book can sit beside that. It isn't a substitute for it.

If people do look at you, because of a visible difference, a disability, a wheelchair, your skin, then some of what follows applies and some of it doesn't, and I'm not going to tell you it's all in your head. Chapter 23 is written for you, and the rest of the book should be read with that chapter in mind.

And if your problem is less the room than getting to it, the invitation you turned down because of nerves, then the book for you is Go anyway, in this series. This one starts once you're through the door.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.