I think I am feeling a bit of what you are describing. With me, it only happens with certain people. If they are not happy with me, especially over key issues that set me off, I have this urge to conform to whatever they want. I had sort of an argument (not really fighting, but disagreeing) with my husband last night, and a bit of his N came out, at least IMO. He has some rigid ideas about values and morality (OK, I do too ... both of us had parents with raging narcissism, mine was just my mom but he had both parents as Ns) and if our oldest son is not "toeing the line" my husband feels personally rejected. One of his issues is bad language. I don't really LIKE bad language but I think my husband focuses on "dirty words" and makes it into a huge moral deal. I think honesty, kindness, etc. is much more important, and that he shouldn't take it personally when my son uses foul language (he really only does it when he is angry, which may not be OK but it's not like he uses foul language in normal everyday conversation).
My husband was shocked and hurt when I said that I didn't think bad language is as big of a deal as he does. He said I was jumping on him because of his standards. He says he thinks he should set his standards "as high as possible" and that he doesn't think it is bad to be very idealistic. I asked him what it must be like to be the eldest son of a father who believes in setting standards as high as possible. Obviously hit a nerve. As recently as 5-6 years ago, he could not bring himself to confront his own father after his dad was rude and mean to me in my own home ... he was his father's eldest son.
Today I am feeling very very tempted to apologize to him, and pacify him because I feel like I am going to become a non-person if he doesn't approve of my values. Yet in my heart I don't think that making every single thing (like dirty words said in anger) something to go to the mat for. If I apologize I will be betraying what I feel in my heart (I didn't mean to criticize him last night, I was just attempting to raise his consciousness about what it must be like to be in our son's situation ... although maybe I did sound critical).
So, I am thankful that I don't feel this way every time I get cross-ways with somebody. Ami, it must be a terrible internal battle if you have such an enormous and overwhelming need to be liked by lots of people ... if I have to feel that fear of annihilation, at least for me it is only with a chosen few people.
I am sitting hear with tears in my eyes as I think about what it must be like to be both my husband and my son. I think possibly that what you are talking about, Ami, the fear of annihilation ... I think my husband's definition of self is so tied to what he sees as important moral values ... that to him, if our son uses bad language (and that's not the only or biggest violation of our values that this son has done in the past couple of years!), he is rejecting his father personally. My husband has actually been very supportive of our son through the pregnancy-out-of-marriage, the "shotgun" wedding, and now the divorce/abandonment by the wife. I don't know if I could have been that supportive if all along I was feeling personally rejected because my son messed up like he has.
I don't mean to hijack this thread, it belongs to you, but I started musing on what you said and that is what came into my mind.