When we ruminate on what we believe other people are thinking about us, it is almost as if our attention gives mass to these things, and since mass produces gravity, we find ourselves in the orbit of these notions, going over them again and again. As our attention persists, these thoughts take on the nature of a black hole, ultimately devouring us.
Instead we might consider the ultimate insubstantiality of such thoughts, that the power of such things is contingent upon our investments in them. They are not constitutive of reality. In fact we are often disconnected from reality when we allow our minds orbit worlds born of our anxieties and little else.