Are you tired of being around someone who makes you feel drained?
You should never let someone drain your emotional energy because it ultimately affects your health and well-being.
These 19 signs that indicate people who drain your emotional energy will tell you if you are dealing with someone who drains your emotional energy.
What is an emotional drainer?
Perhaps the best way to think about people who drain your emotional energy is that they are energetic vampires. Being in their presence sucks the life out of you.
They tend to be in a state of high energy, and often the knock-on effect is that they transfer their negative emotional state onto you.
How do you know if someone is draining your emotional energy?
Being around someone who drains your emotional energy can quickly leave you feeling exhausted, frustrated, stressed, or even angry.
19 Signs Someone Is Emotionally Draining Your Energy
1) They’re Always Bringing Drama
You can often spot someone who’s draining your emotional energy from a distance because they’re going through one crisis after another.
It feels like problems and conflicts are chasing them. And that’s what they think.
They think the world is chasing them. In reality, they’re causing most of the drama around them.
People who are emotionally drained often have high-conflict personalities. So arguments, disagreements, and conflicts are never far away.
They’re the ones who end up crying at the end of a night out or fighting with their partner in front of everyone.
2) They’re Constantly Complaining About Something
Someone who’s emotionally drained will complain about everything from the weather to politics.
They can spend their entire lunch complaining about an inattentive waiter. They’ll spend hours telling you how their vacation was completely ruined because of a crying baby on the plane.
The list goes on.
Looking on the bright side of life isn’t a concept they’re familiar with. Sadly, they fail to realize that what you focus on becomes bigger.
Because they only focus on the negative side of life, that’s what’s reflected in those around them.
3) They Don’t Take Responsibility for Anything
If you ask an emotionally exhausted person if they had any role in causing a problem, they will shrug their shoulders, say “no,” and start listing reasons why everyone else is the cause.
This is because they lack self-awareness.
They blame others for their problems instead of taking personal responsibility for their actions.
Without the clarity to evaluate their behavior, they remain unaware of how it affects others.
4) They’re Always Looking for Sympathy
Emotionally exhausted personality types tend to look for sympathy when things go wrong.
They want to be comforted. They want to be told that they’re not alone. That you understand exactly where they’re coming from. That life is tough and that they deserve others’ pity.
Unfortunately, this only makes things worse. It reinforces their victim mentality.
They feel like life is something that happens to them, not something they can control.
5) They are neurotic
Neuroticism comes with a whole host of negative emotions including:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Self-consciousness
- Irritability
- Emotional instability
- Depression
Emotionally drained people can feel like they are “on edge,” and exhibit neurotic tendencies in everyday life.
They don’t respond well to stressful situations and interpret them as more threatening than they are.
What might be a minor inconvenience to most people can be hopelessly overwhelming to an emotionally drained person.
6) They make a big deal out of things that don’t matter
Catastrophizing and exaggerating things is common among emotionally drained people.
They tend to blow small issues into huge dramas. They see every little thing as a sign of impending doom.
They get upset when someone cuts them off in traffic. They panic when they miss their train home. They get angry when they find themselves stuck in a queue.
They get caught up in the small details and fail to see the bigger picture.
7) They Get Upset Easily
Emotionally drained individuals are quick to get offended by anything.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a joke or a harmless comment, they will react negatively.
They are highly sensitive and get affected by even the slightest hint of criticism.
They are quick to assume that your words have the worst intentions.
Innocent comments are often misinterpreted as being directed at them.
Because deep down they are insecure about themselves, they are on high alert and believe that everyone is out to get them.
8) They’re Pessimists
Pessimism is another common trait among emotionally drained people, or as I like to call it:
Being a little negative.
They expect the worst.
They believe life is unfair.
They’re convinced that no one will ever love them or that they’ll never be truly happy.
They’ve lost hope and resigned themselves to a life of misery.
They tell people they’re just being realistic, but they’re pessimists. They don’t realize that pessimism can lead to an early death.
9) They Have Unrealistically High Standards That No One Can Live Up To
Perfectionism is perhaps one of the most surprising signs of an emotionally drained person.
Although perfectionism is sometimes mistaken for high standards, it’s actually about impossible standards.
When perfection can’t be achieved, stress, guilt, drama, and shame ensue.
They get frustrated if they can’t achieve what they set out to do. This active stress is extremely stressful.
10) They are prone to mood swings
Mood swings are also a characteristic of emotionally drained people.
They are unpredictable and changeable.
They go from feeling good to feeling miserable in seconds.
They are prone to sudden bouts of anger and frustration.
They may seem to be in a bad mood all the time, or the slightest thing that happens has the potential to turn them against you.
Emotionally drained people often seem to take their mood out on those around them.
They tend to blame everyone else for their problems and don’t realize that they are responsible for their feelings.
11) It’s always “me, me, me”
One sign of a drained friend is that you always have to talk about their problems and never yours.
They can talk about themselves for hours, as it’s their favorite topic. But they don’t show much interest in your life.
Emotionally drained people tend to dominate conversations, they don’t listen or respond appropriately, and they often seem to lack empathy.
They tend to be selfish and self-centered.
They cannot look beyond themselves and understand that others are just as important as they are.
12) They act irrationally
There’s no denying that humans are emotional creatures. It’s one of the things that makes us unique—the ability to feel.
But ultimately, feelings are just a signal our bodies send us, not tangible facts.
We’re all prone to getting caught up in our emotions from time to time.
But emotionally drained people can quickly get caught up in their feelings, losing perspective to see how they cloud their judgment.
They may believe something is true because they feel it. This can cause them to act irrationally or in a way that completely lacks common sense.
The problem is that they can’t process things logically because they’re lost in their own emotions.
13) They’re high maintenance
The problem with people who don’t take responsibility for themselves is that they expect others to step in and do the hard work for them.
As a result, people who are emotionally draining can be extremely high-maintenance.
They need constant reassurance and validation. They always want to know what others think of them. They need to be told how great they are all the time.
If you’re in an emotionally draining relationship, you may find that you’re the one who’s expected to put in the most effort.
They make extreme demands on your energy, time, and effort in an unbalanced, one-sided way.
14) They Can Be Manipulative
People who are emotionally draining are often manipulative.
They use emotions and guilt to control others.
They’ll try to convince you that you should agree with them, even when you don’t. They’ll make you feel bad if you say no to something.
They’ll manipulate you into doing things against your better judgment. They may lie to you to get what they want.
In extreme cases, they may try to isolate you from friends and family so you don’t see how destructive their behavior is.
15) They’re Overly Emotional
Living with an emotionally exhausted person by your side can feel like an emotional rollercoaster ride.
Being a highly sensitive person comes with many positives.
For example, being intuitive, thoughtful, empathetic, loyal, compassionate, and highly attuned to the needs of others.
But with emotionally exhausted people, they’re not sensitive; they’re overly emotional. This creates the opposite effect.
They display a range of extreme emotions. They may be prone to crying at any moment or starting screaming matches when they don’t get what they want.
But they can’t see beyond these emotions. Instead of making them more sensitive to others, this cuts them off from seeing anyone’s perspective other than their own.
16) They Have Unrealistic Expectations of Love and Intimacy
Because emotionally exhausted people often lack self-responsibility, they expect others to step in and save them.
In relationships, this can mean that they form very unrealistic impressions of what their partner should do.
Unmet expectations are a sign of an emotionally draining relationship. You may feel like nothing is ever good enough for you.
So how do you fix a relationship that drains your emotional energy?
When you’re dealing with an emotionally draining person, it’s easy to feel frustrated and even helpless. You may even be tempted to give up.
I’d like to suggest you do something different.
I learned this from world-renowned shaman Rhoda Yandi. He taught me that the path to finding love and intimacy is not what our culture has taught us to believe.
As Rhoda explains in this amazing free video, many of us chase love in a toxic way because we haven’t learned how to love ourselves first.
So if you want to fix your relationship with others, I recommend starting with yourself and following Rhoda’s wonderful advice.
Here’s a link to the free video again.
17) They Seek Attention
People who are emotionally drained crave the spotlight.
They need constant validation from others. They often take advantage of those around them to get it.
They may look for opportunities to tell everyone about their problems. Or they may complain about everything that’s going wrong in their lives.
It’s all part of their attempt to get attention and approval.
If they can’t get positive attention, they often settle for negative attention instead and stir things up.
18) They Get Irritated Easily
Do you feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells around certain people?
You may always feel like you have to monitor what you say and do around them because they get angry with you so quickly over nothing.
The tendency of an emotionally drained person to overreact can lead to outbursts of anger.
They often lash out at others without thinking through what they’re saying or doing.
19) They Trigger Your Emotions
While the signs of an emotionally drained person so far have focused on them, this one is more about their effect on you.
You can tell when you’re around someone who is emotionally drained because your body will give you plenty of clues.
You may feel drained, exhausted, and defeated after spending time with them.
They may put your nerves on edge and create a sense of tension that you feel as tension in your body.
Their emotional responses may also trigger unusual feelings in you as well when you interact with them.
