Our culture enjoys mythologizing vampires into tragic romantic figures even though they are essentially parasites that kill humans, quickly or slowly, as sources of food, and thus energy. In the end, there is very little that is romantic about being drained of your life vitality. In fact, once a vampire “sinks his or her teeth into you”, you have only three means of ending your ordeal: escape, death, or by becoming a parasite yourself.
This article will explore a very common form of vampirism we all have to combat; the energy drain that comes from people in our lives that take energy from us and give us little or nothing back in return.
In the Osho Zen tarot, there is a card, the 6 of Air, that has the phrase, the Burden. In the image below, you can see an individual toiling up a hill, which, on its own, would be a daunting task. Instead of climbing the hill alone, another individual, perfectly capable of walking, rides on the back of the first individual. To add insult to injury, there is a Rooster on top of the second individual.
Essentially, this card sends a message to the querent that they are being weighed down by someone in their life who is perfectly capable of walking on their own, but they are allowing this person to be a burden to you. When this card gets drawn, I tell the client to think about their phone ringing and looking at the caller ID and thinking, “I do not want to talk to this person”. Immediately you feel the drain on your energy.
The message of the card is “get this person off your back”. Delete their phone number out of your phone and delete them out of your life. You already know that they are an energy vampire. As is often the case the client reveals that the first person that comes to mind when I use the phone example is often their mother or father or their child.
When it turns out the most profound energy vampire in a person’s life is a parent or a child (yes, a child can be a burden and psychically drain your energy), then the work to escape or resist is profoundly karmic and spiritual in nature. It is an awful situation to know that when your parent calls or your child calls that you immediately know your energy is going to be drained talking to and dealing with them.
Without a doubt, the best solution with regard to energy vampires is to stop feeding them your energy, which means disengaging and escaping. But for many, in fact, probably for most, especially if a family member is involved, escape is too difficult an option and the spiritual test is a “Kobayashi Maru”. The Kobayashi Maru is an unwinnable test in the fictional world of Star Trek used to determine how cadets handle unavoidable failure.
If your energy vampire is a Kobayashi maru test, then you will have to learn and implement energy survival techniques to resist the drain on your energy becoming a debilitating or devastating impact on your life.
If you cannot escape and you do not want to “die” or become like the parasite stealing your energy, then you will have to find a way to store energy, shield yourself, and accept the loss of energy by offsetting the energy with greater gain elsewhere.
One of the simplest methods for avoiding the unavoidable energy vampire is to put physical distance between you and the person. In our modern age, this is not as effective as it once was, when we did not have the Internet and cell phones, but it still has its advantages. Limiting easy physical access can help because proximity in physical space is the most draining and where/how the energy vampire can do the most damage.
Use the technology to your advantage rather than letting it give people immediate and total access. Clients often have an “a-ha” moment when I tell them that they can set the parameters of each telephone call by making it their policy to let every call go to voice mail even if they can answer the phone immediately. Once the message has been left, they can listen to it as soon as the other person hangs up to find out if there is a real emergency or just another one of “those emergencies”. Energy vampires do their best feeding when they can control your response time as well as the content of the discussion.
You may know that the discussion is just a broken record of recrimination, self-pity, victimhood, criticism, or disappointment. And you may know you are going to just suck it up and take it, but you do not have to take the discussion on the vampire’s schedule. If you implement a wait to respond policy and stick to it, the vampire may give your hell about it in the beginning, but they will also have a new fear that you could decide not to return their call, which will modify their behavior down from everything is always at Defcon 1 o 2, to Defcon 4 or 5.
In vampire fictional worlds, the human food supply lasts longer if it is kept in good health. Giving the human snack nutritious meals and time to rest can keep providing the vampire what it needs without killing his or her source of nutrition. Energy vampires are predictable; their patterns become obvious over time, which means you can find ways to boost your energy before getting bitten. Meditation and/or energy movement to center your energy field can help tremendously if you can control the times of your encounter.
There is another, much more detailed article about psychic shielding that I wrote in the past, that can offer various ways to create and employ a psychic shield. One of the best methods for dealing with an energy vampire you cannot shake is to design or select a talisman specific for shielding and deflecting the attempts of an energy vampire to take your energy. It is especially helpful if you can use it as a “touchstone” when the energy vampire starts laying in on the criticism or playing the victim (when, clearly, they are not). Being able to touch a ring, bracelet, or necklace while dealing with the energy vampire can help you get through the encounter.
Offsetting is what many of us do in order to manage an energy vampire we cannot escape. Every husband who has gone to play golf or wife who has gone to play tennis, to get out of the house they share with an energy vampire, is “offsetting” by doing something they truly love to gain enough energy to return home. Just the thought of being able to escape temporarily, but most importantly, into something that charges you with joy, can give you the ability to “survive another day”.
An energy vampire will not change or be able to change its behavior so long as it has a fuel source. In most vampire fictional worlds, a vampire can only survive by consuming human blood, so there is no opportunity for the vampire to be “not a vampire”. But energy vampires can change if their vampirism is an addiction and not a condition. Break the addiction and certain energy vampires can find ways to develop healthy energy. But whether it is an addiction or a condition, once you realize you have an energy vampire in your life, the only truly safe place for you will be away from them.
