Do you ever get a strange feeling about someone ( or something?)

[Trixiefirecracker]

I recently met someone, just a friend of a friend, and had a really visceral gut feeling about her and not in a good way. It made me feel so uncomfortable and I felt really awkward around her, like she might know what I was thinking. I have no idea why this happened and has never happened before, there was no obvious reason for it. She was perfect polite. However It felt like all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and something about her really rattled me.Has anyone else ever had this experience and were they ‘right’ about their gut feeling?

I do, yes.

This has happened to me several times over the years. Most recent one is my cousin’s fiancé. She is head over heels in love, I have such a strong skin crawling reaction I can’t be near him. No one else in the family gets it, and I hope that I wrong

I was just thinking this. I wasn't diagnosed until my mid 40s. All my life I've been told I'm a great judge of character. With that I was very black and white - I like them, or I don't.

I think that comes from the masking and mirroring. Obviously subconsciously, but, there are people that you know are hiding something or not being a genuine person.
You can't mirror them, because either there is a false mirror or you wouldn't want to be anything like them because they aren't aligning correctly.

However, which is very strange, you can usually detect a ND yourself even though they may be masking and mirroring.

It's a lot of seeing nuances and a lot of instinct, but it's there.

A bit different but when I went to Uni I knew my second cousin was also there but my mum has an absolutely huge extended family and she didn’t even know what his surname was. I then met him randomly and I just knew it was him immediately, even before he said his first name.

Yes - a guy who interviewed me for a job. Felt wary even though he was friendly and charming. Turned out to be a bully.

I have been wrong, though. There was a little old man in my street who always seemed lovely. His dog attacked mine and he was just evil about it.

I had it with a potential boyfriend once when i was in my 20s - very good looking but I couldn't develop it into anything physical as something was 'off'. I wish I could remember his name as I'd google and see if he's in jail by now.

Yes, I met a bloke and felt that he would take advantage of women- and I was wrong.

He was actually a violent rapist for fun because he enjoyed it more than consensual sex.

He looked and acted like a bloke who'd taken advantage of me in the past, which was why I sensed that he'd be the same. But you never can 100% tell. They could even be worse.

Over the years I had feelings about certain people. One of my friends went abroad to study. She met a man on her course and got engaged to him a few years later. I just could not warm to him. The Christmas before they were due to get married I was out with them one night. I suddenly realised that he was not going to marry her. A few weeks before the wedding he called it off. By then he had got settled in a job, made friends and his life was good. Later we heard several things about him and my friend knows she had a lucky escape.

Totally the opposite. Was stood next to a man in the queue at TKMaxx, he made some small talk comment and I felt such a really strong rush of what I can only describe as love for him. It wasn't sexual attraction, he was older, not my type and it just wasn't that type of feeling. It was so bizarrely intense though.

I've had this a few times and I know that it has saved me on at least two occasions from serious harm. Though as a child I was a victim of serious harm in any case but I learnt to listen to my gut.
Conversely I am good at recognising decency too and I would say the vast majority of humans are actually kind- which means the bad ones, for me, run around with a flashing light above their head.
For instance I had it once on first meeting a bishop of our church when I moved areas. Made my skin crawl. I couldn't be near him.
After months of knowing him discover he's an enthusiastic wife beater and the whole church knows about it.

It’s a shame that people never have this feeling about all the murder suicides you hear about after which people all say they were the perfect partner/such a nice person/nobody would ever have guessed them lm capable of such an act.

Yes! My mum's new partner. The moment I met him (and all my siblings) we all had a gut dislike. My partner felt the same and so did his parents and sister. 🤷‍♀️

I still don't like or trust him and they've been together 7 years. I just told my mum that i don't have to like him, she's an adult and it's her choice. They got "married" (not in law, she's just decided to wear a ring) and it made me feel a bit unwell thinking about it. But her life and all that. I don't think it helps that she is now well off and my dad and his partner who worked all their lives are struggling. Mum's partner spent all his money on gambling and booze and now lives rent free with her on a boat that she never expressed an interest in...

We're designed to feel this. Inexplicable attraction is on the opposite end of the same scale, but spoken of more often because it has outcomes other than 'I had to leave the room'.

We can't all be drawn to each other. There has to be an opposite, and there has to be varying degrees, otherwise everybody would feel the same about everybody.

The strength of feeling will be based on something we'll likely never know; after all, if we could bottle attraction and sell it, someone would have made millions by now. We can't tell what magnetises us to others, or what turns those magnets so that we repel.

A former colleague made me feel very unsettled and I didn't like him; he turned out to be embezzling enormous amounts of money.

A former friend initially gave me very uncomfortable vibes but I wrote them off as her just being so pretty and vivacious that it must have been me being awkward. She turned out to have struck up an affair with a mutual friend's husband and before that tried it on with yet another friend's husband too.

Now if I take an instant yet inexplicable dislike to someone, I trust my gut on it.

One of my favourite Douglas Adams quotes:
”There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.”

Yes, I can feel "vibes" from people very strongly.
I tend to move in circles that contain good hearts though.

Yep, a girl I'd never met but knew she wasn't a good person, always had a feeling about her.
Turns out I was right as she created on her long term partner and is now with my ex after getting between us the day we broke up. I am certain if she didn't do this that we would be together and very happy.

Totally believe in ‘gut’ but in the sense outlined by Malcolm Gladwell, that as humans we are socialised by millions of little interactions so we build a bank of what’s standard or typical and can then quickly ‘read’ situations and realise something is off. I imagine lots of animal instinct is learned as well. It’s why sometimes people with very traumatic childhood can struggle with social boundaries. Or how people take bigger social risks when drunk. I always trust mine.

That said, Malcolm Gladwell did then write a book about how we can make assumptions and miss things.

This is interesting- I know a few people who had tragic things happen to them, but had this air of sadness around them for years before- it was like they knew beforehand.

I'm hyper vigilant due to my difficult childhood, so can spot bullies at 100 paces, no matter how well they try to mask it.

On the attraction side of things, I once saw the most visceral reaction between 2 people that I've ever seen, it was unbelievable. I used to work in an office, and we had a new IT guy join our team for a fixed term contract. He came to us through an agency so it's not that my boss had met him before at interview or anything, it was literally the first time they met. My boss had her own office so I took the bloke through to introduce him to her, and ... WOW ... I have never felt anything like that before. It was like the air between them was fizzing with energy, it was the weirdest thing. As far as I know, nothing ever happened between them though, they were both married to other people. It was strange though. I was tempted to mention it to my boss but didn't as I didn't want to embarrass her.

I once met someone in the same vein as Fred West. Sadly, he seemed normal-ish. He did seem over-friendly which 22 year old me didn't worry about. Annoyingly, I'd been told at Uni this was a bad sign. If someone tells you their name is X and they don't pause or hesitate you accept it.

Weirdly though my degree is Social Policy and Criminology. I mentioned the crime they had committed as a topic I'd studied. That seemed to throw him. I also mentioned a book I'd read. A book that had given me nightmares.

I didn't know who they were till their photo was on the internet years later. I felt sick.

I think you should always listen to your gut and proceed with caution.

However, it’s the oldest and most primal part of your brain that gives you these fears, it’s not very sophisticated and it will put you into fight/flight mode at the drop of a hat.

So, yeah there might be something off about them, but equally they might just be socially awkward, or remind you of the nursery teacher who was mean to you at 4 but you’ve otherwise forgotten.

It’s the same with places, there are conditions that tend to make people think rooms or buildings are haunted (something to do with damp a few other factors I think, you can look it up). These conditions in the atmosphere put our primal brain into alert, which our cultural memory interprets as ‘ooh! maybe it’s haunted!’ Obviously it’s not haunted - it’s the primal bit of our brain perceiving a threat when there is none.

This weirdly happened to me for the first time on Monday. Not a person but a situation. I was meant to go and pick a second hand Facebook market item up from a lady in a local town. The closer it got to the time I’d arranged, the more sick I felt. I felt an absolutely overwhelming sense of dread to the point where I thought I was going to cry if I went.

I’m a very rational person so this is completely out of the ordinary for me! I’ve also bought several things on marketplace and never felt this- in fact, I picked something up yesterday and felt absolutely fine. I listened to my gut and messaged to say I was sorry but could no longer collect the item (she was fine and had someone else lined up in case) but the relief I felt when cancelling was as strong as the dread.

It was such a weird, overwhelming feeling and what I can only describe as ‘primal’. Not sure if there’s an explanation for it but something obviously must have felt off in my subconscious.

Oooh the item wasn't baby clothes was it?