Your feelings are being exploited

My mother told me when I was very young that “mothers know everything you do even if they can’t see you.” I easily assumed this because I was also raised as a Christian and taught that God had this power, so by default I assumed that all adults had this power too.

I still have a fragment of subconsciousness that assumes people know the same things I know. It’s completely untrue, but this delusion fragment is reinforced by rational or irrational feelings of guilt or anxiety.

There was a story on This American Life (#487-488) about a student at Harper High School who described intense feelings of intimidation when people looked at him, as if they were directly judging him.

At that age it’s easy to feel like you are being disrespected or judged by people, even when they are busy thinking about their own lives and don't know anything about you.

The boy in the episode was suffering from the experience of accidentally shooting his fourteen year-old brother. His feelings of guilt ever present made him assume that even people who didn’t know him were judging him.

The intensity of certain emotions heightens one’s feelings of being scrutinized or judged by everyone. This is a very common emotional state that is highly exploitable by despicable self-appointed leaders of every organization or group.