A holistic guide to dealing with emotional vampires


Filed Under Relating to People | Sep 1, MDT 12:43 pm

Stopping emotional vampires I paint emotional vampirism with big, broad brush strokes. Most folks place vampirism under very tight constraints. I prefer treating the issue holistically — the people who leave us feeling drained are part of a larger system, and to effectively deal with them, we have to deal with the system that they belong to. That we belong to, actually.

We’re all members of a shared reality; we’re all subject to the same physical, natural, and psychological laws. The emotional vampires we meet are nothing more than the emissaries of these laws. This might seem like a silly distinction, and yet recognizing it can be incredibly empowering.  When you realize that it’s not the vampires that are the problem, but the laws of nature that allow them to exist, you’ll finally be in a position to really put an end to the energy leaks in your life.

It’s not enough to deal with the vampires — you got to deal with the circumstances that brought them into your life and the conditions that made you vulnerable to their presence.

Your vulnerability here is something that is uniquely your own.  Different people have different impacts on each other. Someone that leaves me feeling weak might leave you feeling empowered — and there’s rarely a simple reason behind these different reactions. Not only that, but these personal reactions are easily modified by circumstances.  Your diet, sleep schedule, personal hygiene, health, the environment your in, your recent personal history, all of these things can alter the way the people in your life make you feel.

Since no one has, as of yet, figured out all the rules and laws which govern our behavior and feelings, I can’t quite offer you a silver bullet for your problems. What I’d like to do, instead, is offer you a way of looking at them, a way that will let you avoid vampires and lure angels.

The key here is vulnerability. Knowing what you’re personally vulnerable to will allow you to make better decisions on how to live your life, on who you want in your life, and under what conditions you want to deal with the people you’ve let in.

Since we’re all vulnerable to different things under different circumstances, this will require a great deal of research and experimentation. Here are some tools and exercises that can help you map them out.

EXPERIMENT:

Steve Pavlina has pioneered the 30 day exercise. Basically, you spend thirty days trying something out to see how you react to it. It’s a methodical way of testing different lifestyle changes, and it can help you suss out what energizes you and what doesn’t.  You might find that a better diet might ward off vampire attacks, or starting an exercise regimen, or saying no more often. Once again, different things work for different people.

The Zenhabits forum is an excellent place to share the progress of your experiment. They have forums dedicated to monthly challenges, where people post about new habits they’re trying to acquire.  You don’t have to keep the habit at the end of it; after all, perhaps it just doesn’t suit you. Be open to failing.

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