People who laugh at you as you go by

Hi everyone...

The other evening I had to go somewhere in the centre of my very small town, and I came across something I haven't felt for many years, since I don't go out much - groups of people who laugh at you as you go by. You have to walk past or through them, and you know it's probably because of you. It was only about 8:15 pm and it happened to me twice. I know, I know, maybe they weren't laughing at me - sure, sometimes they won't be but I have had times when people say/shout things at me as I go by too. I'm 25 and male but I'm small, I wear glasses and of course I'm on my own, so I stand out a bit. Though, if people decide you're odd then you could be the same as them in every way and they'd still laugh at you.

I'm not so worried about what they think, it's more that it feels like if I do try to go out more, then eventually some group of people is going to do more than laugh at me, if you see what I mean. It really puts me off trying.

It's not any specific people, there seem to be idiots everywhere - I used to feels it in school. Except there's nobody around to have a chance of stopping them doing something to you. It's pretty much always groups of older kids, male and female.

I'm in the UK, in case people are different here

Does anyone else have this problem and do you have any ways of feeling safer?

You are right. There are idiots everywhere who will mock people who aren't like them.

There's nothing wrong with you.

In the past I get laughed at because of the clothes that I wear, bad hair cut, sweat stains, or hunched back. I tried to fix these problems by fixing my appearance. I suggest you avoid the people who are laughing at you.

Sounds to me like that bunch needs to get a life. Seriously! Just sit around town to laugh at people? I'm really surprised some of them ain't got punched in the face for openly mocking random people. I wonder what they would do if a guy walked up to the first one, in his space mind you, and asked him wtf he is laughing at? I apologize for the rant but that upsets me that people would do that. Don't even acknowledge them, act cool.

yes that happens to me too i'm in the uk too and I feel this when I walk through a big group of people, I get nervous and just look at the floor and carry on, worse when the group is taking up the whole pavement and you need to get past so you say excuse me and they start laughing. Ive also noticed that women give me dodgey looks if I walk past them too, like pure evils, like this time I was out with my boyfriend in the shops and this woman was giving me pure evils so I looked the other way and saw out my cornor of my eye she was giving me this look like I was disgusting, I wonder why she did that? I looked okay. I don't know why people find it funny to laugh at people or to give people dodgey looks for no apparent reason.

I've had this but not so much as I've got older. It used to bother me but doesn't really get to me any more. I can look quite different from many here in my town. Longish hair, bandana, beard etc. My social anxiety can make me stick out. My facial expressions during everyday, but uncomfortable to me, rituals such as getting served at a shop counter give me away and can cause awkward glances from the store assistant. One of the newer techniques I've learned is to express my anxiety via curling my toes really hard. This seems to focus a lot of my unease on to a physical part of me they can't see. That probably makes no sense but I feel it helps. I get more looks when I'm dressed in a shirt for work than my outside of work dress. I think I look too 'rough' to be in a shirt and probably look like I'm off to court in my best wears to plead 'not guilty' your honor to cultivation of marijuana

There are some idiots out there unfortunately that will mock those they perceive as different. But that's what they are......idiots. Their opinion matters little to me. I still have issues. I feel my 'walk' is strange, I'm never sure where to look. I hide behind my mobile phone a lot. I have major anxiety when I ask for something in a cafe, shop and they don't understand me and I have to repeat. Other days I actually feel like a real human! It's a hard slog and I may be as good as I'm gonna get but it could be so much worse.

*I just realised after I hit post that I barely touched on the topic title. Apologies. Maybe I'm just venting *

Yesterday I went to the grocery shop, when I got out there were some guys without t-shirt on their bicycle, as I walk outside I hear them start laughing, I'm not sure if they are laughing at me or i'm just being paranoid. Or at school i can hear someone say ugh as I walk by, I'd like to think i'm just being paranoid about this.

yep it happens to me a lot. i don't really wanna go into why, but i'm odd, i appear odd and i'm always on my own. so the mob mentality of people has been working against me all my life. it happens everywhere and in every part of the world so it's not something you can escape from. i stay at home so that i don't go through this anymore. but this makes you feel trapped and halts your desire to wanna break out of your shell, so it's frustrating.

In my younger, bolder days I would stop and stare the crowd down if they laughed at me as I walked by. That usually quieted them down. Sometimes calling people out when they are being idiotic is enough. Sometimes not. I have learned to be above it.

doctor_who said:

yes that happens to me too i'm in the uk too and I feel this when I walk through a big group of people, I get nervous and just look at the floor and carry on, worse when the group is taking up the whole pavement and you need to get past so you say excuse me and they start laughing. Ive also noticed that women give me dodgey looks if I walk past them too, like pure evils, like this time I was out with my boyfriend in the shops and this woman was giving me pure evils so I looked the other way and saw out my cornor of my eye she was giving me this look like I was disgusting, I wonder why she did that? I looked okay. I don't know why people find it funny to laugh at people or to give people dodgey looks for no apparent reason.

Click to expand...

Its funny that you mention a woman giving you a look like she was disgusted. Same thing happened to me almost 4 weeks ago when I was at a hair salon. When the hair stylist finished with my hair, I looked in the mirror and I was all smiles until my eyes shifted over to a reflection of this stubby woman with a brutal facial expression The Grinch would be jealous of. Then she would talk to the hair stylist all friendly-like and smile. But as soon as I turned to look at her she would stop smiling and chuckling with the hair stylist and look at me with the same look of disgust. I felt so empty and foolish after I would attempt to break the ice by smiling at her....a friendly smile and she would just give me the look of a statue. What a bitch....

As you mentioned, "you know it's probably because of you". The point is that you are making an assumption, possibly because other people have laughed at you in the past. What happens is that the subconscious finds a past event with some similarities and makes the assumption that what is happening is exactly the same. Blanks are filled in without reason. Presumably it was obvious that you were being laughed at the past, but in this case you were just walking past and there is no obvious connection between the laughter and yourself. People laugh all the time, and it is quite possible for someone to happen to be walking past.

A few years back a woman mumbled something at me as I walked past. I saw her again, some time later and as I approached she smiled. I said don't mumble at me, you so and so. It was a pretty unkind thing to do, she might've just being friendly. Later I saw her and she was talking to a friend. He must be gay, she said. My anxiety was really bad then, and I was so sensitive to what people said, or what I thought they said. I thought she was having a go at me, but maybe it was something else.

No one including the great " Buddha" was exempt from criticism. Even a lovable person is laughed/criticized at. Even Gandhi, Kennedy were killed by people .....remember not everyone will like you.
If only we can love ourselves more as we are..!

They are assoles.. maybe they don't mean to be mean or don't think about what they are doing, but they are assholes anyway. I often feel that people look and laugh my way, which is why I started wearing sunglasses, even when it's cloudy. Thank gd for summer ^_^

It bothers me that people are so small minded and insecure. They'll go out of there way just to talk abou about someone's physical appearance. If someone really feels good about their self that wouldn't happen.

hardy said:

No one including the great " Buddha" was exempt from criticism. Even a lovable person is laughed/criticized at. Even Gandhi, Kennedy were killed by people .....remember not everyone will like you.
If only we can love ourselves more as we are..!

Click to expand...

Great advice! I once saw a Buddhist monk walking through a hallway at a community college. He had a backpack on so he's probably a student. He definitely stood out from the crowd but looked so confident and calm that nobody said anything.

If you are alone, then yeah, people may laugh at you. They are in groups and have friends, so anyone who is a loner is bound to make them feel like you are inferior.

It could also be because they are drunk. Drunk people laugh at a lot of things.

Even though I have gotten better with SA and depression, when I see a group of people laughing as I walk by, it still feels like they're laughing at me even when they really aren't. Is this a form of a delusion?

when people put you down, turn on your inner sociopath. Take yourself away from the situation emotionally. Then look at them and show them your evil smile. or...
what i do is I do something spontaneous that catches them off guard. Shows them that you can't be laughed at because you're not going to pay attention to them because you got better things to do.

I can never decide if this still happens to me (did a lot at school) or if I'm just paranoid to be honest!