Here’s a quick test you can take. Answer the following questions. Be as honest as possible:
- Do you feel like people often don’t understand you or your problems (or can’t understand them)?
- Do you feel like there are many barriers in your life that you can’t control?
- Do you often ask for help from others and/or feel like few people are willing to help you?
- Do you often feel like you don’t get the attention or appreciation you deserve?
- Do people often complain that you don’t listen to them, when in reality you feel like they don’t listen to you?
- Do you feel like most other people have a much easier life than you do?
- Do you often argue with close friends and loved ones?
- If so, is it usually their fault?
- Do they suddenly cut you off without explanation and refuse to contact you again?
- Do you often feel helpless, like you have little chance of improving your life?
If you answered “yes” to more than half of the questions above, please read this post carefully. It may be the first step to turning all of the problems around. Parts of this article may not be easy to read. But I implore you to keep an open mind and take them seriously.
If you answered “yes” to at least half of the questions above, you are likely an emotional vampire. Don’t get this wrong, it’s not your fault. It just means that you have been hurt in the past. As a result, you are unintentionally hurting those around you, who in turn push you away and hurt you even more. It’s a vicious cycle. But you can’t help it, because you’re not aware of it.
You may be saying right now, “Go to hell with this guy, what does he know? Where’s my back button?” Over the years, I’ve interacted with hundreds of people just like you. Emotional vampires are nothing new to me, and I feel like I’ve become adept at spotting them. I’ve also been involved with several of them earlier in my life and have the scars to prove it. So if you are experiencing many of the above issues in your life, or are close to someone who is, what do you have to lose if you listen to me at least until the end of the article?
Who are emotional vampires?
Emotional vampires are called emotional vampires because they tend to drain the emotional energy of everyone they come into contact with. They are exhausting. They need constant attention. They always have some major crisis or event in their life. They are experts at eliciting emotional reactions from others and then feeding off those feelings, whether they are positive or negative.
Emotional vampires drain the emotional energy out of everyone they come in contact with.
All emotional vampires suffer from low self-esteem, but not all people with low self-esteem are emotional vampires. Low self-esteem comes in several flavors and manifests itself differently from person to person, and emotional vampires are people who have a specific subset of self-esteem issues.
Emotional vampires exhibit three specific traits at once: an excessive need for validation/attention from others, a belief that little or nothing that happens is their fault, and a lack of self-awareness to recognize their self-defeating patterns. People familiar with Nathaniel Branden’s Six Pillars of Self-Esteem will recognize that these are three of the six pillars—or rather, a lack of three of the pillars.
Related : 5 Best Personal Traits for Life
This is a dangerous combination for two reasons: 1) These three traits reinforce each other and make each other stronger, and 2) They can attract and hurt the good people around them.
And make no mistake, emotional vampires are not all pathetic losers. They may be some of the most charming and successful people you’ll ever meet. Men and women, beautiful, ugly, rich, and poor, come in many shapes and sizes. But they always create toxic relationships, whether as romantic partners or friends.
Let’s dig into these traits and see if they describe you or someone you know.
- Excessive need for validation/attention from others
Conversations with emotional vampires are always dominated by one person: them. It’s all about them, their problems, how so-and-so was rude to them, how so-and-so wants to get back at them, how great they are, how pathetic they are, how everyone wants to be like them, how everyone hates them, etc.
This outpouring of selfishness is either delusional in how great they are (“Everyone on my team wanted to work with me, but I told my boss I couldn’t stand being around Dave”) or delusional in how miserable and helpless they are (“No one on the choir trip wants to share a room with me. That’s because they’re all so arrogant and prettier than me”).
These delusions of grandeur and victimization often occur in the same conversation. Either way, it only takes an hour of conversation with an emotional vampire before one of them inspires you to repeatedly bang your forehead on a hard surface. Stop the noise. Please, stop it.
Emotional vampires also tend to make big public displays to get attention. Again, these displays can be selfish or self-loathing. Think of that annoying guy in the office who stands up and makes an inappropriate announcement just to get a few laughs. Or the girl at the party who, when he makes fun of her, screams and runs out of the room in tears.
As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And when you’re as attention-starved as an emotional vampire, eliciting any kind of emotional reaction from those around you—even if it’s indignation, pity, anger, or hatred—is well worth it.
The excessive need for validation and attention is what drives people away from an emotional vampire in the first place. The constant need for affirmation drains people’s energy and patience. Emotional ups and downs, dramatic successes and failures, are all exhausting and most people (who respect themselves) are unwilling to put up with them. Therefore, they will make the obvious move to ignore the emotional vampire after meeting them, thus confirming to the vampire that people are evil, that no one loves them, that they are victims, and yes… it’s not their fault.
- Believing that their problems are not their fault
The overly demanding behavior of emotional vampires elicits negative reactions from others and pushes people away from them. But rather than considering that people responded negatively to them because what they said/did was offensive, selfish, rude, whiny, obnoxious, or annoying, they prefer to believe that everyone around them is stupid, racist, bigoted, arrogant, rude, cold, etc., etc.
This combination of behaviors is insidious. The excessive need for validation leads to antisocial behavior, which leads to negative reactions from others, which leads the emotional vampire to blame others and feel even more victimized, which in turn leads to a deeper need for validation, and then even more antisocial behavior, and so on…
The emotional vampire’s ability to justify their antisocial behavior can be impressive. It goes beyond simply projecting negative traits onto others (i.e. “My boss fired me because he’s an idiot,” not “My boss fired me because I go around calling people idiots behind their backs”).
No, the justifications can go much deeper than that: all men are pigs who just want sex, all women are entitled and arrogant, and no one can truly appreciate how wonderful/smart/funny/attractive/nice I am because everyone is so selfish. Meanwhile, it’s obvious to everyone else that these people are suffering greatly because their attitudes are bad and they’re selfish.
There is only one type of person who allows themselves to be approached by an emotional vampire: individuals with low self-esteem. Either they are so dysfunctional that they don’t notice the negative effects that the vampire’s behavior has on them, or they are emotional vampires who crave endless drama, attention, and victimization. Again, we see that emotional relationships attract likes, and the adage is true: if everyone you date is crazy, then you are probably crazy.
- Lack of Self-Awareness
One would think that an emotional vampire would eventually start to figure out the pattern they are in – certain behaviors lead to certain reactions from others, and those reactions are not pleasant, so perhaps we should re-examine our behaviors and beliefs, and that the only constant in all your relationships is yourself, and if all your relationships are bad or failing, perhaps you should start with the one thing they all have in common.
This may seem obvious, but it rarely happens to an emotional vampire. They are unable to be honest with themselves and accept responsibility for their lives. Psychologically, they need a scapegoat—whether it’s their appearance, racism, an office conspiracy against them, how their father doesn’t treat them right, or a myriad of other self-defeating beliefs. They’ve always been so outwardly focused that they’ve never developed the ability to sit back and analyze their thoughts and emotions and question their usefulness. Emotional vampires often hate being alone. They also tend to cause conflict where there isn’t already one. This is because they need to distract themselves. This lack of awareness keeps the blame game going. The blame game keeps the search for validation and attention going. The search for external validation and attention keeps the lack of self-awareness going.
