Woman has parallel parking anxiety when she notices what all the men around her are doing: ‘My worst fear’

Everyone knows it’s harder to do almost anything when someone’s watching, and TikTok creator Vanessa Sosa (@Vanessa_sosa_95) recently learned that the hard way when she tried to parallel park and noticed a group of men staring at her.

In the short clip, viewed more than 115k times, Sosa shows the interior of her car with a text overlay, “Nothing more humbling than trying to parallel park while a group of men watch you.” She captioned her post, “You’re doing great, sweetie.” Meanwhile, the camera pans to several men seated at a table on the sidewalk near where she’s trying to park, all craning their necks for a better view.

Sosa received sympathetic comments, including “My worst fear,” “I will park on the moon before parallel parking,” and “Yea so this is why I don’t parallel park. lol I drive around till I find an easier spot. I couldn’t handle the pressure of people watching me.”

To help with situations like these, modern vehicles increasingly include driver-assistance technologies designed to make parallel parking easier and safer, with systems commonly known as automatic park assist, active park assist, or self-parking features.

These systems typically use ultrasonic sensors, cameras, and sometimes radar to scan the area around the vehicle, identify a parking space large enough for the car, and then guide or automatically steer the vehicle into the space as the driver controls braking and gear selection.

Why is it so hard to parallel park?

Even still, many drivers struggle with parallel parking due to a combination of technical difficulty, limited practice, and social pressure, according to surveys and driving experts. Some call the fear of parallel parking “Parallelophobia.”

Parallel parking requires strong spatial awareness and reversing control while maneuvering into a tight space between vehicles, often on busy streets, which increases stress and the risk of mistakes.

Surveys have found that nearly half of drivers report fear of parallel parking, with common concerns including holding up traffic, hitting another car, or, like Sosa, being watched by other drivers and pedestrians.

People watching makes everything worse

And why exactly is it so difficult to do things with people watching? It comes down to a well-documented psychological effect known as social facilitation and social inhibition, where the presence of observers increases pressure and anxiety, which can hurt performance on difficult or unfamiliar tasks.

Psychologists have found that being watched increases alertness and stress because people feel they are being evaluated, which can lead to mistakes, distraction, and overthinking.

On that note, a comment on Sosa’s post noted, “I can parallel park just fine but not if someone is just staring at me instantly all knowledge of parking in general would of left my brain bruh be fr.”