the.com/spotlight effect

means The cognitive bias where you drastically overestimate how much other people notice your appearance, mistakes, or behavior, because you're imagining yourself as the main character of their attention.

from Not an old word at all — coined by psychologists in the late 1990s, most notably in research by Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky, who ran experiments having people wear embarrassing t-shirts in front of others and then estimate how many people noticed. The estimates were consistently, wildly higher than reality. The name borrows the literal image of a stage spotlight: you feel like one is trained on you at all times, broadcasting every flaw, when in truth everyone else is squinting under their own imagined spotlight and barely has attention left to spare for yours.