There are people who transmit very good vibes and fill us with their optimism to brighten our day. However, there are others who wear us down with pessimism, immaturity or selfishness. These are emotional vampires, people who extract our vital energy and use it to feed their negativity.
The problem is that emotional vampires not only cause us momentary discomfort, but by relating to them day after day, they cause us great stress and wear and tear, not only on an emotional level but also physically. In fact, we cannot forget that emotions are contagious and that negative emotional states maintained over time can lead to numerous illnesses. Therefore, the first step to deal with emotional vampires is to learn to distinguish them.
7 types of emotional vampires
People who feed off of the energy of others often resort to emotional manipulation to achieve their goals. They approach others only to extract their energy and empty their load of negativity, once they achieve this, they go for their next victim without feeling sorry or remorse. These people have very little empathy, are extremely selfish and are not able to put themselves in the other person’s place even for a second.
However, there are different types of emotional vampires, not all of them operate in the same way:
1. Pessimistic vampires. This is the typical person who sees the world in grey, for them everything is negative and making them see that it is not really like that is an impossible mission since they always have an argument at hand to prove that their life and the world are not worth living. If we maintain a prolonged relationship with this person, they can end up making us adopt their negative and pessimistic perspective, robbing us of our will to live and our hopes.
2. Catastrophic vampires. This person goes beyond pessimism; for them, any event takes on colossal negative proportions. Their conversation revolves exclusively around catastrophes and misfortunes that have occurred or may occur, even if they are quite improbable. For this person, living means facing a long chain of imminent dangers, so that just ten minutes of conversation ends up exhausting us and only serves to infect us with this distorted vision of the world.
3. The whiny vampires. This is the typical person who has the habit of complaining about everything, they complain when it rains and when it’s sunny too, when their economy is bad and when it’s good. You will never find support in them because any problem you have will always be infinitely smaller than theirs. In fact, they use you as a shoulder to cry on but they are never willing to listen to you when you need it. It is likely that one day you will approach them with a problem but end up comforting them because the grass in their garden has dried up.
4. Critical vampires. This person always has something to say against everything you say, but they don’t do it with good intentions, but only to make you feel inferior, even though they always claim that they do it “for your own good.” Spending a day with this person means listening to an endless string of criticisms because they don’t like anything, from the dinner to the movie, not to mention your behavior. Their rigidity when it comes to evaluating everything is simply irritating and exhausting.
5. Sarcastic vampires. This person hides behind a joke to launch his poisoned dart. At first glance, his words may seem funny, but in reality they contain a sarcastic and even cruel comment. The trick is that you cannot get offended because “it’s just a joke.” His main objective is to undermine your self-esteem by launching a series of ironic comments that end up hitting where it hurts the most. Associating with this type of person is like being constantly in a battle, waiting for the next blow.
6. Aggressive vampires. In this case, the person reacts disproportionately and violently to the slightest stimulus. Any word or the slightest gesture can cause a storm, so you feel like you are continually walking a tightrope. Being forced to measure each phrase and calibrate each gesture, interacting with them is deeply exhausting.
7. Helpless vampires. This is the most difficult emotional vampire to recognize because they are not aggressive, on the contrary, they constantly need help because they are not capable of taking care of themselves. You feel so sorry for them that you put yourself at their disposal, but there comes a point where their problems have consumed all your energy. This is a person who steals your time, invades your space and damages your interpersonal relationships, but when you need them, they completely forget about you.
How do emotional vampires act?
To exert their power, emotional vampires need two essential conditions: proximity and time. In other words, they need to establish certain emotional ties with the person in order to know their weak points and be able to guide them along their paths. That is why the most harmful emotional vampires are those who are in our closest environment, such as family, friends or even partners. In addition, the closer and closer the relationship, the more difficult it will be for us to discover them and the more harm they will cause us.
These people often humiliate or belittle their victims, but they always have an excuse or alibi at hand to explain their own version of events and pass themselves off as good people. In fact, in the eyes of others they may even adopt the role of victim, when in reality they are the executioner.
However, it is worth clarifying that in many cases this pattern of behavior is not conscious. That is, the emotional vampire behaves this way automatically, without thinking too much about the consequences of his actions, because it is the only way of relating that he knows, a relational style that he may have learned from his parents or that he developed as a defense mechanism from traumatic situations that he experienced in the past.
Obviously, the fact that they are not fully aware that they are stealing your energy is no reason for you to let them continue to operate with impunity. So, if you avoid a person without really knowing why, if you find it difficult to return a call or if the mere idea of finding someone is already exhausting, it is likely that you are dealing with an emotional vampire. Activate your radar and do not fall into their web.
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