Egocentrism - Chapter 15

I found myself thinking a lot about adolescent egocentrism, and more particularly the idea of an imaginary audience. The textbook talks about as adolescents, many of us feel that we constantly have people watching us and judging everything that we do. I remember this idea being really somewhat crippling when I was in middle school. Always feeling as if you have to guard against negative judgments from those around you is exhausting. I think it's something that we really have to keep in mind and be sensitive of when we interact with adolescents. Furthermore, I feel as if many young adults still struggle with this to some degree. I see so many people every day who just seem very self-conscious and I wonder if any of this that I notice is from a person's adolescent years that they just haven't completely worked out yet. If any of this does happen to be the case, this makes me wonder what we as adults (teachers, parents, mentors, etc.) can do to help adolescents understand that there is not any real audience constantly judging us, and helping younger people understand that they can open up and express themselves how they wish to, rather than how they feel they should.