Today's article is about the dark side of emotional contagion - something commonly called "psychic vampirism." That is, it's how some people have learned to use emotional contagion in reverse - rather than transfer energizing emotion to others, building them up and making them feel great, a psychic vampire has learned to use emotional transference to drain emotions the otherway - feeding off the emotions of those he comes into contact with, making himself feel better at the expense of his conversation partner's emotional well-being. Like the vampires of legend, a psychic vampire can "turn" you, too - with enough of your energy drained, you can become an energy drainer yourself, feeding off the positive emotions of others to sustain yourself. But, just like emotional contagion, this is not some paranormal phenomenon - rather, it's simply down to empowering and emoting, seeing and mirroring. Not the fang-y ones. Not this guy: But people who will grasp onto you and leech off your emotions? Oh yeah... thosevampires are real. The first time I encountered a person like this was in college. There was a guy on the floor of my building who would stop by whenever he was walking past my room - I always tried to keep my door open - and strike up a conversation. And the conversation would always start out harmless. But he was so NEGATIVE. By the end of a conversation with him, I would always feel drained... yet, he would always appear energized. Same deal with my roommate - in fact, he was the one who pointed it out to me: "Man, that guy is really depressing," he said one time. "Yeah, he is," I said. "It's weird, because he's really smart, and a talented singer, but he just... I don't know. Whenever he comes by, you end up feeling worse." Sucking Your EmotionsWhen you're good at using emotional contagion in a positive way, you can impress your own positive emotions on most other people without costing yourself anything emotionally. You can be an endless well of positive inspiration. That's because after a little push of positivity from you, they feel empowered, and give you positive feedback - and you create a cycle of empowering one another. It works that way when you are good with empowering and energizing via emotional contagion - people universally will tell you that just talking to you for a few minutes makes them feel better, like they can take on the world. And you come to very much enjoy empowering people - it makes you feel better too. Their empowerment serves as a sort of affirmation to you - see, people can do whatever they want! They know it - they believe it too. They just needed someone to show them the way. Some people use emotional transference the other way, though. Rather than being a well of positive inspiration, they instead transform themselves into deep, dark, empty wells, bottomless pits of despair into which they suck your positivity, leaving you bereft of emotional energy. These people are the downers. They're the ones who make you feel bad. They speak poison, shatter dreams, and make you want to give up and go home. And the most talented of them do it while making it difficult for you to tell what they're doing. Sneaky Vampire “Beware of the flatterers, they are your greatest enemies.” That was King Frederick William I of Prussia. The more powerful a man you become, the more there appear people who want to siphon off some (or all) of what you have to themselves. But even if all you have is richness of emotion, for some individuals, this is enough. Any person who is negative in any way has the ability to become a psychic vampire... an emotional leech. However, most negative people are obviously negative, and easily avoided. Not so the vampire. A psychic vampire is someone who either: Tries to put on a happy face, but ends up sucking you into his defeatism, or Knows exactly what he's doing, and sucks you willingly in to parasitize your emotional state for his own benefit These individuals start out with flattery, compliments, and other kind words. They very often are adept at picking out people's points of pride and feeding them back to them. They know how to give people those little ego boosts that make others think, "Obviously, this is a very smart fellow - look how easily he realizes my good qualities!" They very quickly, deftly, and easily check off the "empower" step on our path to emotional contagion. Further, they also carry around with them a barrel full of extravagant, fantastic promises: They are going to teach you something AMAZINGThey are going to introduce you to important contactsThey are going to help you make a lot of moneyThey are going to help you refine your [whatever] skillThey are going to invite you to the parties they go to some timeThe list goes on. Thing is - these promises almost NEVER get fulfilled. They just get made... and that's it. The psychic vampire has learned that he tends to lose people in his life, so he compensates - by promising wonderful, exciting-sounding things. These things inspire greed in others... such that, even when those others begin to feel bad, they stick around anyway, against their better judgment, because they want those things they've been promised, and they fear upsetting the vampire out of concern they might lose what's been offered. Thus, the trap is laid: the psychic vampire makes his insightful, astute observations of your good qualities, building you up and making you feel connected and open to him, and then he dangles enticing-sounding rewards - which he promises to fulfill soon - and locks you in. Then, he begins to suck. The Emotion DrainNow that an emotional vampire has you roped in, he has you feeling empowered around him - you are powerful, recognized for your greatness, and soon will have desirable things, which he will provide. You are in command, and in control, and he is your ally. Then he begins to impress his emotions upon you. Except, unlike what you do with others when you use emotional contagion, he isn't focused on making you feel good, or excited, or glad. Instead, he only makes you feel awful. That's because this is how he feels... and he needs someone to listen to and relate to those emotions. He needs to feel like someone cares. In so doing, he feels better and better. He feels empowered. He feels relieved. But his emotions are transferred to you. The stone is moved off of his shoulders and onto yours. And the more time you spend around a person like this, the more and more drained you become. You also become very vulnerable to manipulation and cons, as your resistance to suggestion becomes worn down. You plunge further and further into ego depletion. Sometimes people doing this know what they're doing; sometimes they do not. But either way, they do it. They prey on people with a certain vulnerability... white knights, for instance, who feel they MUST save the damsel in distress. Only for that damsel to turn out to be a vampiress. I had a fellow like this as a business partner sometime back. I always steered far clear of these kinds of people ever since college, out of fear that they would drain me too much and break my spirit, which I'd worked quite hard to rebuild after climbing out of depression and slashing all negative people from my life. I decided to take a gamble - I knew the risks, but thought I was now strong enough to control them. Over a period of months though, I became very worn down and fatigued, unable to do even simple work, and started making bad financial decisions under this individual's direction. My other business partner tried to shake me out of it, and told me I was under his sway, but the vampire continued running misdirection game, saying that the third business partner was the vampire (a word he used, in fact); that HE was the one trying to drain me... even as this individual laid on endless amounts of negativity and bad emotion and snatched larger and larger sums of money from our business, while constantly saying he was only looking out for my and the business's best interests. Eventually though, he was out; he was gone. I put a stem in the bleeding and cut off his ability to leech any more out of me or the other partner, and slowly began to recover. And then one day he stopped by again, to try to get more out of me and the (then almost bankrupt) business, with a new victim in-tow... a bodybuilder, expert martial artist, and former entrepreneur now, and I could see just looking at him how drained he had become since I'd first been introduced to him weeks before. He looked like a zombie... much like I'd looked a few weeks earlier. The vampire had found another host. One day back in college, I chanced upon an article on the Internet on the term "psychic vampire." I'd never heard of it before. The article I found described psychic vampires as people who "drew energy from the auras of others," invoking mysticism - rather than psychology and sociology - as its explanation for how these individuals pilfered energy and left their victims desiccated of it. But it did have a very good suggestion: the next time you run into a psychic vampire, close off your body language. Cross your arms. Cross your legs. He will be unable to draw energy from you, and will leave. "You should try it the next time he comes by here, dude," my roommate told me after I read him the webpage, decorated in the pink and purple and green swirls typical of late-1990s website design. "I will," I resolved. Sure enough, the very next day, this fellow stopped by our open door, and started chatting. As usual, he started off with small talk, then segued into his usual morose fatalism - noting, of course, that it wasn't like he was being fatalistic; rather, that this was just the way the world is. Yet, about ten minutes into talking (he'd often stay for thirty or forty interesting-at-first, draining-later minutes), he said to me, "Are you okay today? You just feel like you're kind of closed off." "Yeah, I'm feeling a little out of sorts is all," I replied. "Oh, all right," he said, and left shortly after. My roommate and I marveled at how effective this was, and I began to cross my arms and legs every time the guy stopped by. His visits quickly became less and less frequent, and for shorter and shorter amounts of time. Eventually, he quit making them altogether. The Psychic Vampire Feeds on PermissivenessAre you a nice person? Not necessarily a pushover nice guy, mind you. Just not a raging asshole, is what I mean. If so, you're vulnerable to a psychic vampire. That's because they seem like regular, ordinary people at first - often even COOL people. They seem to have unique skills and talents, and they're obviously shrewd enough to recognize YOUR good qualities. The problem is that that's just how they weasel their way in... after that, they turn on the sob stories. These individuals are ALWAYS: Trapped in victim mentality and in need of savingImmune to efforts to permanently bolster their confidenceAlways in need of another emotional "fix" from youYou'll tend to get caught up in thinking that - just like the white knight - if only you can save this person, you will then have a powerful, gifted, unique ally who will be loyal to you for life for having helped turn his or her emotional life around. Only, you can't turn it around. These people are a black hole of despair... their lives are structured in such ways that no matter how much hope, empowerment, or energy of your own you inject into them, it gets swallowed up and soon disappears into the void, and they drag themselves back to you for another hit. Just as mythical vampires are incapable of producing their own hemoglobin - or whatever it is they need from human blood - psychic vampires are incapable of producing their own positive emotions. And they must find a willing host with a rich trove of strong positive emotions to feed from. Being "Turned"Just as in legend, these kinds of vampires can turn YOU into one, too. How? After they drain you of your energy, it's quite common for you to then turn and complain about them or other things in your life to friends or girlfriends and start draining them. Following a draining, they leave feeling strong and empowered... meantime, you walk away feeling wretched, despairing, beaten, and weak. And the first thing you want to do is seek emotional reassurance from someone more supporting of you. But you don't want to do it in a healthy way... instead, you frequently end up doing to them the same thing the vampire just did to you. Why can't you just re-vampire your energy BACK from the vampire? Because she isn't open to you. She makes YOU feel open to HER, but won't allow HERSELF to be opened up to YOU. This is why your efforts to empower fall on deaf ears. This is why you're never able to fully reach her. She makes herself feel better not by the encouragement you give her, but by WINNING.She views it as her mission to convince you that she is right - whatever it is she's arguing is a worthless waste of time - and you are wrong in thinking otherwise. She seeks to draw energy from you via the winner effect. Meantime, you are trying to build her up via emotional contagion. Because she's made you feel connected with her promises (soon to be delivered) and the nice things she's sharply observed about you, you think that the two of you are linked and she is open to your suggestions. But she still views herself as the subordinate... and she is not receptive. So, you put energy into lifting her up, but she dismisses your efforts. She won't listen to you or do what you want to do. Only what SHE wants to do is okay. You try again; she dismisses. You try again; she dismisses. Gradually, the emotional losses for you pile up, fatiguing you, and draining you of testosterone, motivation, and confidence. Meanwhile, her constant shutting down of your arguments of hope with her obstinate insistence that the world is a dark, uncaring place give her WINGS and enliven her... making her feel more and more powerful and energized. She's WINNING! She's right. And YOU, my friend, are WRONG... and you KNOW it. Once you are thoroughly drained, and she's gotten everything she can get from you, she moves on... then you either sleep it off until your emotions rebound, or go on to prey on someone else close to you and suck his or her lifeblood away in turn. Identifying VampiresI have people accuse me sometimes of being too extreme in writing off certain kinds of people. Incidentally, I've noticed, the most vehement protestors of writing people off too soon all tend to be emotional vampires themselves. Fancy that. The people who need to drain others for support are the ones most frightened of getting cut off from those others. How do you know if someone is a psychic vampire or not? Easy: How do you feel whenever this person is around? Good... GREAT... or, drained? How often does this person take your suggestions? Ever? Or does he or she only shoot every single one of them down as unrealistic, impossible, or not doable for some other reason? Does this person talk to you about problems a LOT? Like, lots and lots of problems, all the time? Always something else to complain about? How often do you talk about your problems to him or her? Does he/she listen? Or run in the other direction? How many of his or her promises have ever been fulfilled anywhere close to the degree which he or she led you to imagine them being fulfilled? The first one is the only one you really need. The other questions are just bonuses. If you feel drained most of the time when interacting with someone, that person is a vampire. Break out your cross necklace. Warding Them OffUnfortunately, garlic doesn't do the trick here. What you need is simply watching for these people and not getting involved in them. Here is THE absolute NUMBER ONE sign to look for: Complainer, not fixer.That's it. If he or she NEVER FIXES STUFF but instead constantly complains about it, he or she is a vampire. Fixers don't need you to take on their pain for them. They don't need you to absorb their failures in life. They don't need you to GIVE them emotions or "stuff." All they need from you is a buddy to hang out with, or someone to critique them and tell them when they're messing up, or a boyfriend with a healthy relationship dynamic with them. That's what REAL friends and girlfriends need from you. When someone needs your ear for his paranoia, his conspiracy theories, his tales of how people are out to get him or you, his story about how the world is stacked against people like you and him... all he's trying to do is break you down until you agree with him and he gets the win and subsequent testosterone boost. And you take the hit and lose and come down to his level. Misery loves company. As soon as you realize this, here's what you do: Set the person straight (they won't listen). You start by saying, "Look man, I just realized you devote ALL this time to complaining. It's really irritating. You need to either figure out how to fix this thing that's bothering you and go DO it, or shut up about it, because I'm tired of hearing it." They will usually say they will, or tell you it's so hard, or tell you they're only talking about it because YOU brought it up, or because it's some other person's fault. Whatever their reasons are for why they CAN'T or WON'T, don't listen... they're just more diversionary tactics. Start closing off your body language. Whenever this individual is around, keep your body language closed. Keep your arms crossed and, for added protection, your legs, too. The mind interprets this as a signal to not accept the information it's receiving from external sources and protects you from being as negatively affected, and an emotional vampire will pick up on this and feel his inability to get victories over you and the testosterone boosts he needs. These individuals are usually highly aware, and will often tell you outright to uncross your arms. Just give them the bored look and ignore the instruction. They need you to be open to their vampirism to get energy from you. Dial down or cut contact. The next step is just to quit seeing, taking calls from, talking to, or otherwise interacting with the individual. Tell her you've just been really busy lately. Or even tell her she's just too negative and it's making you feel really bad and you can't be around her anymore, if you want to give her a wakeup call and encourage her to straighten out her stuff (though she still won't). If you can't get away - vampire back. Occasionally you cannot get away from these people because of whatever reason - school; work; somehow you're trapped in a box with them. You can't win on defense, so what you need to do here is - unfortunately - fight fire with fire. Start unloading all your difficulties on this person, start pointing out how they've screwed you over if they have, start pointing out things they've promised and failed to deliver, start pointing out how full of hot air they are - vampires aren't used to getting called out on what they do, and they can't long tolerate it. Start demanding they do what you want and refusing to do what they want. The nice thing for you is, once you're on the offense, you'll find it energizing, because you'll be stacking up wins and drawing energy from the vampire, albeit in a hostile way (rather than the positive mutual energy buildup of emotional contagion in which both sides win more and more, vampires are one-way streets - either you win and they lose, or they win and you lose). And because you'll understand consciously what you're doing at a higher level than they do, you can consistently win against them over a prolonged period of time, and be every bit as draining to them (and more!) as they were to you. #4 is really just for emergency use only though... it's better to just get out of these situations altogether whenever you can. Occasionally you can't, and that's when you need to be able to fight fire... with inferno. Don't Be a VampireMost vampires aren't bad people. Usually they're just people who haven't figured out that complaining instead of fixing destroys their relationships and makes them and everyone else around them miserable in the process. Occasionally you will meet someone who is, in concert with being a vampire, a skilled, and veryconscious, manipulator, and simply uses psychic vampirism as a way of lowering his or her victims' defenses prior to securing money or possessions or other things from them. But most of the time, vampires are just beaten-down people with hard lives stuck in the tenacious grip of victim mentality. It's tempting to want to try and help them... but you can't. Nothing you can do will get through. I promise you. You can't tell them they're a vampire... they'll just get upset and complain that you've got it all wrong. You can't tell them they're not fixing things in their lives... they'll tell you those things CAN'T be fixed, and you're crazy if you think otherwise. All you can do is GET AWAY from them and get out of the emotionally parasitic circle that surrounds them. And if you ever notice yourself behaving like a vampire... ... if you notice yourself complaining to other people, and telling those people things are IMPOSSIBLE when they try to help or try giving you advice... ... if you notice yourself more interested in WINNING debates with other people and PROVING to them that their optimism is misplaced, and they are delusional for not realizing how bad XYZ thing is for them and you... ... if you see people repeatedly growing weary and worn out just being in your presence... ... it's time to step back, quit dumping your issues on other people, focus on fixing your stuff instead of complaining about it, and start encouraging other people to do the things they want to do and helping them to find ways to do it, instead of trying to tell them their ideas won't work and they should just do what you want them to do (or, if they really are crazy, and aren't open to exploring other options, just leave them alone to do their thing and go worry about your stuff instead). In real life, you can't stake a vampire in the heart. But you can ward him off and either get away, or make it intolerable for him to be around you. And once you do that... you're free.
