To irrationally dislike someone i barely know

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I am normally friendly and non judgemental and in my career come across people from every walk of life. I always try to be kind and accept people as they are. However in my village there is a lady. I don't see her often, rarely have occasion to interact with her and she is a perfectly normal average middle aged lady. I have no reason to dislike her. She has a small business of which I am unlikely to ever need to use and is popular on social media. But for some reason just seeing this woman makes my hackles rise and makes me feel uneasy and irritated. I would even go so far as to say I really strongly dislike her. I know I am being unreasonable as I just cannot think of a justifiable reason for feeling like this. Its so out of character and I do not like feeling this way. How do i get over this feeling or do i just trust my gut and try and avoid her as much as possible?

People may be thinking the same about you. There are a lot of confirmation bias stories here.

There are a couple of people on social media who I cannot bear to watch. There is something so fake about them that I hate.

@DanielRicciardosSmile

Love that poem - thank you!

It does make you wonder, doesn't it? I've had the odd person in my life to seemingly take a dislike to me without even knowing me and no idea why? I've always thought it might be because I remind them of someone as I'm pretty inoffensive really.
I've not experienced a strong dislike of anyone but I have experienced a few who instantly make me feel Ill at ease and I am never comfortable talking to them so tend to avoid them. It tends to be loud, extroverted people.

There was a popular science book a few years back Blink - Malcolm Gladwell... His central ideas were about this type of phenomena... We're reacting at a different level of processing..
And we often can't verbalise it, apart from 'I don't like this person' , or something about this situation is 'off'.

If it's not too dangerous (eg odd bloke on a dark Lane😱), I wait before acting on these 'feels', because often, in time, it will become evident.

For example, years ago, I was a new worker in a residential unit for young adults with profound LD....staff had loads of responsibility for daily stuff- the management was hands off on another site.

A long standing fellow worker... (5+ years)

All Id heard before I met him... 'Was, oh Steve's great, everyone loves him - he's so lovely'. Good with the clients etc etc...

So... I meet and work with 'Steve' the first time ... (we usually worked very long hours,with only 2 staff each shift eg 7am Saturday, 'til 10pm on Sunday (before laws changed.)
He was perfectly pleasant to me...but I was getting all the ringing alarms from my nervous system.. .

I was so disquietened by this, I remember telling a good pal, the day after.

This feeling didn't change and intensified over a good few weeks.

We had lots of control over substantial amounts of money coming into clients' bank accounts... paper records kept on site ... I noticed minor changes; unexplained discrepancies, the odd £10/20, here and there, but it was nearly always whole figures... But only when he was on duty... (not unusual to have several hundred pounds in the safe-this was 25 +years ago).

I mentioned it generally at a staff meeting... It was largely dismissed. 'one of those things, could be anything...'

So I went and met the off site boss... She was pretty dismissive of my concerns too.

We also had responsibility for stuff like taking out money so clients could buy clothes /items for themselves /going out /holiday monies...

Some of the expenditure for the person he key worked... Just didn't make sense. Eg £400 for items such as stereo/nice bed stuff and some records... That was all accounted for in his handwriting...
None of these items appeared/could be found ... Usually it would be completely evident... As they'd obviously be in the person's room. (none of the residents had any language /makoton/cognitive ability to say. )

So I had solid evidence. I went to a different boss... Knowing that if they acted on this... I'd be the obvious whistle-blower....
(he had lots of loyal friends in the wider team...)

So the long and the short of it?

This 'lovely', utterly disgusting man, had been stealing money for YEARS from these vulnerable clients, once they had forensic book keepers go through everything, he'd been doing this within a few weeks of starting .... He was eventually suspended /sacked.

It was many many thousands of pounds he'd defrauded from this vulnerable client group.

He was prosecuted.the boss made sure all the local care places knew his name (pre DBS type stuff).

The bloke is still around the local town.

Utter psychopath... Noticed in local paper he'd married into a rich local family.

I think there are 2 sep issues.
If you're creeped out or feel afraid by someone for no specific reason, I would never ignore that feeling. Esp as a woman.

If you find someone irritating for no specific reason that's something else... I wouldn't assume they were bad or dangerous.
I personally find people who appear smug and self congratulatory unbearable so would avoid them even if they were perfectly nice on face value.
I recently had to work alongside a woman I have avoided for years bc she is so full of herself and all over social media with a running commentary of her life... she turned out to be a very sweet, hard working but lonely person. She is hugely popular always busy but has a difficult home life and understandably chooses to conceal that part of her life and "celebrate" (eye-roll) the rest.
I do feel bad for having judged her.

I had this about a neighbour a few doors down, she certainly had an air of being above me about her if I'm honest. I wasn't jealous of her and we had the same house, pretty much same life and number of kids, similar ages, sex of the kids the same. She just uhhhhh gave me the rage to even see her. Luckily she's moved !!!

My neighbours like this. It’s rhe oddest thing. She has never worked in her life and is married to a very successful wealthy man, she treats my husband and I like we are druggie squatters who have just camped out at the next house and whom she expects to do nefarious anti social deeds at any moment, that’s if we have not already done them. Her husband on the other hand is chatty and friendly.

my husband and I are both high earning proffessionals, hence why we can afford to live in the next house along, we are quiet , polite and keep to ourselves, our home and garden are well maintained, and to the best of my knowledge we have never committed any nefarious or anti social crime or even considered it. 😂

But every few weeks she accuses us of some random shit, like trashing her plants, using her bins, dumping rubbish, ,breaking her gate, throwing empty bottles around, stealing stuff etc ,and she either texts it or appears at the door and actually asks if we have done x or y. if she sees us randomly she tries to actively avoid even looking at us, pretending she can’t see us, and generally behaves in a very odd manner.

However If her husband is with her she is all sweetness and light, the most pleasant friendly woman you could meet. If it looks like I am going to touch on a recent accusation I can see the panic in her face as she doesn’t want her husband to know what she does. She clearly hates us and she also hated the previous owners too.

for awhile I started to actively dislike her, now I actually think she has some serious issues and avoid her. I am however offended by it. We have no idea why she’d remotely think we would do the things she accuses us of, but it’s actually deeply offensive that she does.

so I guess this is the flip side, when someone irrationally dislikes you and makes it clear but you’ve literally no idea why.

@IamtheDevilsAvocado my aunt was a forensic accountant she had similar tales - con artists are charming, affable, "helpful" people

That's why they succeed, there's a branch of my family are con artists superficially lovely, friendly even generous people...until they aren't!

Ekman and others theorise that those of us with certain life experiences (violence, abuse) and/or contact with certain types - con artists, gangsters and other criminals - have learnt how they are, their micro expressions, scent, body language etc

Possibly as self protective survival mechanisms - eg I can read a man's mood changing to aggression pretty quickly and get the hell outta the way! Likely due to my fathers abuse and learning to read him. I could even tell by the way he used his key in the door whether to stay downstairs or scarper!!

We don't have to like everyone, even if we have no proof that there's a reason for our dislike. I'd just avoid her as far as possible. Why force yourself to try to like someone if you don't have to? Unless it's someone you have to see and speak to for work or because they're an in-law or something, just avoid people who give you bad vibes!