You Have Met an Emotional Vampire
Ask yourself these 4 questions and acknowledge the presence of an Emotional Vampire in your life
“Emotional Vampires” is the term used to describe a variety of people whose behaviour tends to drain energy and vitality from other people. We are obviously not talking about people literally feeding on other people’s blood but, more metaphorically “feeding” on their emotions, turning the positive into negative ones. People coming in contact with these Emotional Vampires (EV) feel exhausted afterwards and don’t seem to get why.
How do they appear?
Their distinctive signs are very difficult to detect sometimes. They:
- seem to constantly need attention, diverting it from you or your problems or need to show off
- never admit if they’re wrong or take responsibility for their actions, actually dodging responsibilities or throwing them to others
- often make you feel bad about yourself or guilty
- have a taste for drama, playing the victim and the martyr, living in a constantly negative mood and complaining or criticizing a lot
- in some cases never speak directly, aim for sowing the seeds of doubt and conflict instead of being supportive, and mask useless bad comments pieces of advice, or positive criticism.
Their behaviour drains the energy from the people around them, preventing them from acting or thinking freely and naturally. All of this damage is tremendously increased if the EV happens to be a close person, like a friend, a partner, or a family member.
What damage can they cause?
The damage EVs cause to people close to them is undermining their self-esteem and confidence. They manage to make people feel somewhat guilty, unhappy and dissatisfied with themselves: somehow just wrong. An EV can also subtly sabotage a project or a relationship with their words or actions, across a more or less long time.
People tend to feel anxious, intimidated, depressed, depleted in energy and vitality, overwhelmed, insecure, stressed, and exhausted.
EVs orbit around a person to turn positive feelings into those bad ones, “sucking up” on them to feel better themselves. They have a chasm, a void inside they try to fill in this way, but they can never get enough, no one is ever enough for them, since what they need and crave to feel better cannot be taken from outside.
One may think that the EVs, sooner or later, would detect their behaviour, but never taking responsibility leads to a total lack of self-awareness or awareness of the damage they do.
Many of us have encountered at least one of them. Some of us may have noticed something wrong, but often the EVs are so good in what they do that you feel bad and can’t tell why. So, here is a list of 4 questions you can ask yourself to recognize the symptoms.
Do I…
- … Complain a lot about someone in particular? If someone with which you spend much time turns out to be the subject of many of your complaints, it’s a possible signal. If this person was good for you, you wouldn’t find so many things wrong with them.
- … Have people constantly telling me someone is not good for me? If you are fortunately surrounded by people that want what is good for you, chances are they may recognize an EV sucking on you more easily than you could do. If more people state that someone has a negative influence on me… I would at least listen to them and start analyzing.
- … Feel exhausted, anxious and depressed more than I can explain? If those are the main feeling you experience when spending much time with someone, you should take them as a huge red alert sign! Apart from people with which you have to spend time, others should bring you up and make you feel positive. If it is not like that, try to take some step back from those people… and try to understand if it is better for you this way.
- … Feel disrespected, underestimated or simply put down? An EV feels wrong and tries to feel better by making you feel the same or even worse. If you sense that someone is acting like this with you, step away.
The better arrow in your quill is staying the fuck away from them. Reasoning with them in most cases turns out to be another chance to suck on your energy, and your time.
But if you want to be sure to overcome their power over you, you need to spot them and their strategy. In this article, I propose a list of 8 different types of EVs and how to deal with each of them.
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