Social Anxiety and Perception

I think someone is following me when I go on walks it would seem that this same woman keeps following me and says hello but I don't know if they are following me or if it is coincidence in which case it would probably be just as eerie to them as it is to me. I always feel awkward because I know that my appearance can be frightening to people on the street because of how I present myself but I am really an artist at heart and just want to make things which help themselves in some way like the shadow work LLM thing I vibe coded the other day. I tried wearing more colorful clothes but I think it is my haircut, because I keep a buzz cut because that is what I always do because it is a haircut I can do with my eyes closed so I don't have to pay to get haircuts which I find to save a lot of money. It is all about money for me. Not some political statement which people on the street think and make assumptions. I get called a nazi a lot. Maybe it is because I speak in German to them and pretend not to know English when they do that. But I try my best not to be creepy to people when I go on walks. It is the only way that I get exercise. I have grown weak from lack of manual labor work and if I don't get this job then I am really screwed because I broke my spine and can't do manual labor for a while. It still bothers me all the time and makes me sit strange and look like a weirdo I bet when I sit and smoke.

What you are describing sounds a lot more like hypervigilance and social anxiety mixed with stress than evidence that someone is actually stalking you. When people walk similar routes at similar times, you naturally end up seeing the same faces over and over. The fact that she says hello could genuinely just mean she recognizes you as another regular walker. And honestly, the way you describe yourself versus the way you think others see you tells me there is a huge gap between your internal identity and the assumptions you fear people make. A buzz cut, reserved body language, smoking while sitting awkwardly because of pain, maybe wearing darker clothes, being alone a lot, speaking German sarcastically when people insult you — all of that can create an image people project onto without knowing anything about you. But projection is not the same thing as who you are. Most strangers are not building elaborate narratives about you. They are usually reacting to fragments. Humans are pattern recognition machines with incomplete data. You are doing the same thing with the woman on the walking path. Your brain notices repetition and tries to assign meaning to it because you are under stress, physically hurt, financially scared, and uncertain about your future. When the nervous system is strained, coincidence starts feeling loaded with significance. The German thing probably does not help though. If someone already makes assumptions and then you suddenly answer them in German while pretending not to know English, it likely confirms whatever bizarre story they already invented in their head. From your perspective it is irony or deflection. From theirs it probably reads as unsettling or confrontational. You might get better outcomes by just ignoring people entirely or giving a quick neutral nod and moving on. Also, chronic pain changes posture, facial expression, movement, and emotional regulation more than people realize. Someone with a spine injury often looks tense or guarded without meaning to. Pain narrows the world. People interpret body language emotionally even when the source is physical discomfort. What stands out most in your message though is not creepiness. It is exhaustion. You are trying to conserve money, preserve your health, survive uncertainty, and still hold onto this idea that you want to build things that help people. That does not sound like somebody trying to intimidate strangers on sidewalks. It sounds like someone isolated and stressed who has become extremely self-conscious about how they are perceived. And for what it is worth, colorful clothes probably are not the deciding factor. People respond much more to expression, pacing, eye contact, and tension level than haircut alone. A relaxed posture and small ordinary social rituals tend to matter more than aesthetics. Even something as simple as headphones, carrying a water bottle, or focusing on a destination can subtly signal “person on a walk” instead of “person observing the environment.”