Exactly this - as a teen I was rather paranoid about what people thought of me.

One day I woke up and realised that view was rather self centred - most people didn't care at all, as they had there own stuff going on.

I still had that niggling feeling of concern of what others thought of me, but turned this I to a positive and drove myself to do some rather interesting and creative things in terms of my look/style and the activities I took part in.

It worked for me as I was freed from worrying, (but also to a degree pleased when those I did care about, noticed).

Thanks a lot for your comment! This part in particular

> the only person they are obsessing about is the main character to them, themself

seems obvious in retrospect.

>nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself

I think there are shades of this, which is to say the level of judgement can vary.

I feel that in a smaller city my social anxiety is not as strong as when I’m in a larger city.

In larger cities, I feel much more evaluated and judged ie eyes on me looking at my clothes, checking me out, etc despite being a much more detached and impersonal environment than smaller cities where I just feel ignored. Maybe it’s just more people around putting me more on edge.

They might not judge you more in a large city, or be any more interested in you per see - they might just be a little bit more eager to check if you might be dangerous. As in places with many encounters with many people, the risk is higher.

Have you ever come across someone who you thought was dressed or acted strange while riding public transports or walking in the streets? Found one of your fellow traveler extremely attractive? I would assume most of us would answer yes.

Do you remember the face of these persons? I can tell you that I don't.

Nobody really cares about strangers in big cities. They are part of the background. Sometimes you are struck by something then you move along. Even people who might actually be judging you will have forgotten you exist minutes later. That's the beauty of cities.

I find it's the opposite for me. I'm basically anonymous in big cities, whereas smaller cities and towns can be, uh, incestuous when you start getting to know people. They can also be visciously judgmental, but that goes for people anywhere.

This is the classic platitude. I don't buy it - I do judge other people like that.

In aggregate, I have no doubt! But for a person suffering from social anxiety acute enough to affect their performance, the length of time that you are judging specifically them for a specific thing that they did is almost certainly orders of magnitude less than that person with anxiety fears - because, unless you've developed unheard-of levels of thought parallelism, you will almost certainly have moved on to judging someone else!

You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.