I was watching a youtube video by Sam Vaknin, the famous narcissist / sociopath who is spreading the awareness about his disorder. He gave a very good advice on how to recognise a narcissist.
He said that there is an emerging phenomenon nowadays where people start having a weird feeling around machines that look too much like humans. Go watch a video in youtube about robots with human faces and you will know what he means. It feels weird, as on one hand it looks, sounds and feels like human, on the other hand something is missing - because they are not humans. This is the same weird feeling people have when interacting with a narcissist.
Spot on.
I know this feeling. Very well. I used to take it personally. I would think that there is something wrong with me, and it would trigger me feeling inferior, embarrassed, apologetic, alert, anxious. I would attribute this feeling to myself and start feeling guilty, and start trying to make up for it. I guess that is what was making me attractive to this type of people, they would always get an emotional response from me. I wonder where and when did I learn such a response?
It is such a life saver to know that this is the undeniable sign that tells a lot about that other person, not about me. It is such a life saver that now when I get that feeling I can just turn around in the middle of the sentence and cut the conversation with that newly met person. The truth is that they are not even able to realise that my behaviour was off, they will just move on to another person.