The term emotional vampire emerged in self-help books as a didactic metaphor to designate a group of individuals with some very pronounced personality trait or with certain mental disorders that result in wasting of those who cross their path.
Emotional Vampires may be conscious or not their behavior, sometimes due to a lack of empathy and others need to own and literature vampires need to feed on the blood of their victims.
If we do an examination of conscience or an exercise in introspection we will see that we all have some trait of an emotional vampire , because no one is a person alien to emotions such as fear, lack of affection or the need not to be the only person who is. having a bad time, even in very specific or extreme circumstances.
Therefore, the classification of emotional vampires does not obey so much if we have ever felt or behaved like this, but if it is part of our personality. We must clarify that a person who is going through a duel or a delicate period and requires help from their environment is not an emotional vampire , unless they adjust to that situation and prolong it beyond what is necessary.
- Psychopaths, perverts or sociopaths . They are three types of dangerous emotional vampires, because we are talking about traits that border on morbidity. All three are characterized by an absence or severe lack of empathy , either on an interpersonal level or as a member of a society.
- Histrionics and narcissists . Both wear out their victims by their constant need for attention , which must also be inordinate. They have little tolerance for frustration and, in the case of narcissists, they may also belong to the previous group of perverts, psychopaths or sociopaths, in which case it may be that in addition to requiring attention, they demand to be feared and fail to put themselves in the shoes of their victims.
- Perfectionists . Trying to do your best is not bad, although being a perfectionist can be exhausting. What happens when someone imposes their perfectionism on others ? Let’s not think of demanding bosses but of tyrant bosses or people with rigid morals who do not accept behaviors other than those they consider correct and who makes you suffer the consequences if you do not comply with their demands.
- The one who takes your hand to drag you to the bottom with him or her. Let’s imagine that a friend or relative is having a really bad time and requires special attention or care that you would not provide in other circumstances, because they would not need it. It is normal to give help because we feel empathy. But there are people who do not want to get out of the well in which they are plunged but to sink others to keep them company. An example of this type of emotional vampire would be a person who is envious to the extreme , someone who, as the saying goes, would take one eye off as long as his neighbor went blind.
These are the most common types of emotional vampires , although there are many more. If you notice that, after being with a person, your head hurts, you have trouble sleeping or you feel exhausted and that, when trying to put distance, you resort to some kind of emotional manipulation , consciously or not, you know what happens.
