Who is Your Emotional Vampire?
Emotional vampires. That’s how my friend described them. You see their names flash on your phone and you don’t answer. Or there is text or email that is never returned. There is something about their energy that sucks you dry. Would it be different if the vampires looked like Edward from the Twilight series? Or Eric from True Blood? Maybe.
In general, I never had an “attraction” issue with people, it was “retention” that was problematic. People seemed to disappear and I wasn’t sure why. Did I just befriend flaky people? The inconsiderate? Or was it something else?
A friend loaned me her copy of Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Stress & Fear into Vibrance, Strength & Love by Judith Orloff, M.D. Orloff describes the vampire types. In particular, these energy suckers stood out to me, among others: the sob sister who casts herself as the victim; the blamer who makes you feel guilty for not getting things right; the drama queen whose life is unbearably good or bad; and the constant talker or joke-teller who over-talks because he is nervous, a narcissist, or a control freak. As I read through the descriptions the synapses in my brain were starting to make connections. I had spent stints as one or more of these types.
Thing is, throughout my gap decade of self-help exploration I did see a therapist. When I first signed up it wasn’t that I thought I was coconuts. My now ex-husband and I were planning to start a family, and there was a legacy of bad behaviors in my childhood that I was terrified I’d perpetuate.
To me, the therapist was like my Jewish mother. She had been an art teacher, raised a family, and then went back to school become a therapist. Something about her former hippie energy worked as I sorted out the crappy things that started to happen in my life: divorce, economic uncertainty, additional unsatisfactory romances, and the inability to settle in on my career.
You would think that all the attention that I got every week from my therapist would be enough. Nah, I was just insatiable. I needed more attention from the people in my life. To somehow get consensus that my life was terrible, I had to feed, to suck, to consume.
So did someone stick a stake in me? Nope. I just started to recognize that like attracts like. Other emotional vampires showed up in my personal space. Did they seek me out? To be among the undead was exhausting. So I’m practicing setting boundaries or graciously retreating from a situation. Sometimes if you call out a vampire on her bad behavior, she’ll catch herself and do better the next time.
I quit therapy after 10 years, which I thought was entirely too long. But I felt less ashamed about the time duration when another therapist friend of mine told me she treated the same patient for 27 years. There was something comforting in knowing that in neurotic NYC, my therapy tenure was relatively average. And I'm not feeding off of others for attention as much anymore. I hope.
