Energy vampires are people who sap your emotional energy, either intentionally or unconsciously. They could be friends, family members, partners, colleagues, or neighbors, who feed on your care and attention and can leave you feeling stressed, drained, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
What they do: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines narcissism as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.” Learn the signs of narcissism here. "They're in it for the power over another person," Orloff says of narcissistic energy vampires.
An emotional vampire is someone who gaslights, manipulates, or uses other emotionally controlling tactics to diminish another person. Whether they do this intentionally or not, emotional vampires often leave others feeling depressed, anxious, and insecure.
Establish Boundaries
Once you have recognized that your friend is mentally draining, you must limit the amount of time that you spend together. After all, your own mental health depends on it. If you don't want to end the relationship, or if it's a coworker or family member, you need to establish firm boundaries.
Empaths, for example, feel what others are feeling, absorbing their energy and feeding off their mood.
Energy vampires are often personality-disordered people who tend to be: Intrusive, showing poor boundaries. Overly dramatic, making mountains out of molehills. Overly critical, finding fault with just about everyone and everything in their lives.
What might be stressful for one person can be completely manageable for another. Psychologists also suggest that conditions like emotional exhaustion can be “caught” from those around you, meaning that you're likely to pick up on and absorb the negative emotions of friends in a kind of emotional contagion.
Feeling Secure
You might find yourself turning to this person during turbulent times. They'll support you and comfort you. This will give a sense of calm, even if circumstances surrounding you are hectic. They'll always leave you feeling better about yourself after being around them.
Per Orloff, “Ordinary empathy means our heart goes out to another person when they are going through a difficult period.” Empaths, however, actually sense other people's emotions, energy and physical symptoms in their own bodies.
If you absorb the energy around you and feel what others are feeling, then you might be an empath. While there is nothing wrong with being an empath, it can take a toll on your emotional well-being.
Some people, known as dark empaths, understand the feelings of others but don't feel these feelings themselves. They might act like they care, but deep down, they don't feel sympathy for you or have a desire to help. They use their understanding of your feelings to manipulate you.
Emotional exhaustion lies at the heart of burnout. As your emotional resources are used up in trying to cope with challenging situations — such as overwhelming demands, conflict, or lack of support at work or at home — your sense of well-being and capacity to care for yourself and others is diminished.
People who are emotionally exhausted often feel hopeless, powerless, and with little to no energy to do anything. Thankfully, though, there are ways to cope with emotional exhaustion. Keep reading to learn more about how to cope with this stress and how to recover from burnout.
They're high on Neuroticism. An emotionally draining person is typically on the high end of the Neuroticism personality dimension. They're constantly negative, worried, anxious, and nervous. All of us experience these feelings from time to time, but for neurotic personalities, these experiences tend to be sticky.
An energy vampire is a device that continues to use energy and drain power, even when it is turned off. They lurk in your home, taking the form of phone chargers and cable boxes, computer cords and coffee pots. These phantom energy suckers can account for as much as 20% of your monthly electricity bill.
Narcissists' Greatest Fear
To narcissists, ordinary people (i.e., nearly everybody around them) aren't worthy of attention, so being ordinary would leave them unworthy of the spotlight and left to suffocate. Narcissists also need to feel special and superior to others.
Feeding Off of Others' Emotional Energy
When someone is sad, the narcissist views this as an opening to manipulate or make them feel worse. Either way, a narcissist uses another person's emotional energy and emotions to redirect the attention back to themself for their own gain.
Narcissists are highly sensitive to criticism or any perceived threat to their self-image, and they will go to great lengths to protect it. If you criticize them or challenge their dominance, you will trigger a defensive response.