Emotional Vampires: 7 Personalities That Steal Your Emotional Well-being
In this life you will have encountered people who transmit good values and positive attitudes to you and they infect you with their positivity and joy. Normally, we tend to want to be friends and be close to these types of people, for more than obvious reasons.
However, there are other types of individuals that tend to weaken our emotional state The reasons why emotional vampires cause bad feelings to flourish in other people are very varied: pessimism, egocentrism, narcissism, immaturity, lack of empathy…
Emotional vampires: people who create discomfort wherever they go
Today we delve into the personality of these emotional vampires; individuals who, unconsciously or not, They have the ability to steal energy and good spirits from the people around them, creating a halo of negativity
The main problem that emotional vampires cause is that not only are they capable of clouding the atmosphere for the duration of their presence, but, as we interact with them on a daily basis, they end up generating high levels of stress and emotional fatigue.
We must take into account that the emotional state of the people around us ends up affecting us: emotions are contagious, for better or worse. And when it happens that we are maintaining negative emotions for a certain time, the psychological problems (and even some disorders) may begin to appear.
It is for this reason that, if we have no choice but to live with an emotional vampire, we must learn to detect its distinctive features and know how to deal with its bad vibrations.
The 7 typical personalities of emotional vampires
Individuals who feed off the emotional energy of others are prone to emotionally manipulating their ‘victims’ in order to achieve their goals or purposes. They tend to approach people around them to express their negativity and take advantage of the energy of your interlocutor
Furthermore, once they have emptied their negative thoughts and emotions, they leave the scene and prepare to approach another person who can help them vent their discomfort.
A common characteristic: lack of empathy
emotional vampires They are characterized by having very little empathy They are clearly selfish since they use the presence of another person to empty all the accumulated negativity, without realizing that this will cause discomfort and discomfort to their interlocutor. They do not put themselves in the latter’s place.
Although they have certain aspects in common, emotional vampires can take various forms. That is why we have collected a total of seven typical personalities in the people who steal your optimism.
Not only is he responsible for criticizing and opposing everything you do or say, but his ultimate purpose is to make you feel inferior to him. You are always wrong and he knows the truth of everything. Furthermore, if you question his attitude, the most normal thing is for him to justify himself by telling you that “he only wants the best for you.”
If you stay around this person for a few hours, you will realize that much of what they express is reviews, reviews and more reviews Nothing seems right to him, and I’m not just referring to banal things like the latest movie he’s seen or the television series that’s trending, but he doesn’t stop trying to criticize your ideas, your tastes, or your behavior.
This type of emotional vampire is so intransigent which ends up being irritating and can lead you to a terrible emotional state. Be careful that it doesn’t infect you and you start criticizing too!
2. Pessimistic personality
The emotional vampire can also take the form of the inveterate pessimist He always sees life with the glass half empty, he seems sad, everything seems negative to him and you will have a hard time convincing him that he is being too pessimistic… because he always has a counterargument prepared that “proves” that existence is not worth it .
If you surround yourself with this type of person, It may happen that you end up convincing yourself that their vision of things is true and you end up being a pessimistic person leading you to a negative attitude, without hope for improvement and without desire to improve reality or undertake your projects.
We address the negative effects of having a pessimistic friend (among other types of toxic friends) in the following article:
“Toxic friendships: 7 signs to detect a bad friend”
3. Catastrophic personality
Emotional vampires can also be tremendous This personality takes pessimism to an extreme; for them, any event or situation takes on an apocalyptic magnitude.
His favorite topics of conversation are about catastrophes and hecatombs that they have heard about on the news or even about disasters that have not happened but that, in their convinced opinion, could happen.
These types of vampires firmly believe that life is about facing a long list of dangers and imminent misfortunes. If you are unlucky enough to meet someone like this, you will notice how you will soon feel exhausted and, in the worst case, you could begin to incorporate some of their paranoias into your mental schemes
4. Complaining and victimizing personality
He is that typical individual who He doesn’t stop complaining about everything that happens to him Whether things are going badly or well for them, they will always have reasons to complain and play the victim in front of you.
In a victimized person It is very difficult to find emotional support , since they will always consider that their problems are much more important than yours. You may notice that the complainer unloads all his problems on you when you talk, but rarely is he open to listening to you and offering you his arm when you need him.
In a previous article we also addressed the victim personality profile. I invite you to read it:
5. Aggressive personality
They are people who react violently without meaning to. If you say or do something that doesn’t seem right to them, you can trigger their fury, for example with a gesture that could be misinterpreted or a comment that is taken out of context.
Their reactions are disproportionate, so much so that You can have a serious problem if you are not careful with what you do Of course, being surrounded by a person who forces you to measure everything you do or say to the millimeter is not positive at all for your mental and emotional health. And, needless to say, you’re going to feel exhausted within ten minutes of starting a conversation with the aggressive emotional vampire.
6. Sarcastic personality
This is a particularly annoying vampire personality. To the sarcastic person He loves to throw ironies at you, poisoned darts, while protecting himself behind the levity of a “simple joke.” In this way, no one can blame him for her rudeness, since “it was just a joke ..:”.
Although sometimes his comments can be funny and witty, The truth is that they often exceed the limits of respect and are cruel to other people If you expose yourself too much to a person who uses sarcastic and hurtful comments, you can destroy your self-esteem. Plus, it’s exhausting: it’s like being an isolated soldier in enemy territory: you just have to pray that the bombs don’t fall on you.
7. Pusillanimous personality
They are people with different characteristics than the six other personalities that we have described. He is the emotional vampire who best knows how to go unnoticed since his behavior is not histrionic or aggressive, but rather They are shown as helpless beings without the ability to function on their own
They tend to cause pity to those around them and get others to focus their attention on them. This leads to a vicious circle : they act coy to attract attention, they achieve their goal since people pay attention to them and in this way they feel reinforced in their attitude.
The faint-hearted is an emotional vampire since he demands your attention and care out of vice. He ends up stealing your valuable time, your space, and it is not uncommon for him to not appear anywhere when you are the one who needs him.
How do emotional vampires behave?
emotional vampires They feed on two elements to be able to begin to steal emotional energy to those around them: time and proximity. It is necessary that they manage to establish certain emotional and friendship ties with the other person. From there, they tend to take advantage of their weaknesses and take advantage of them.
For this reason, it is difficult to have a good emotional state if the emotional vampire is a person who is part of our closest circle: family, friends or your romantic partner. The closer the relationship is, the more difficult it will be to avoid its harmful effects.
The emotional vampire knows how to get away
It is common for emotional vampires to try to humiliate or ignore other people, but they often hide behind justifications and pretexts to show their point of view and show themselves to people as good people.
Qualifying: some vampires may not be aware that they are stealing your emotional energy
However, it should be made clear that there may be cases in which the personality of the emotional vampire is not lived consciously. Some emotional vampires are not able to realize that they behave like this, and They do not realize the negative effects that their actions have on the people around them
The causes of vampire behavior
Sometimes, they do not realize that their behavior may be caused by situations or traumatic episodes that they experienced years ago (or perhaps also by having mimicked dysfunctional behaviors and attitudes that they saw in their parents), and the product of this is that their way of relating to other people is influenced by these defense mechanisms that they has been acquiring and consolidating as part of his personality
It is up to you to assess whether the emotional vampire deserves a second chance.
Of course, the fact that some emotional vampires are not fully aware that they are squandering your emotional well-being It is no excuse for you not to seriously consider how to resolve, in one way or another, the discomfort who believe in you.
It is a matter of detecting the problem in time and take timely and fair measures In some cases, a sincere, face-to-face talk can have an effect and redirect the situation. In other cases, perhaps the best solution for both of you is to put distance between each other.
