Whether in childhood (relatives) or in adulthood (family, partner or friends), these emotional vampires take advantage of the good will and empathy of their victims to stick to them and absorb all their vital energy.
They play with the emotions of their partners or their children to feed their ego, making them believe that they are the important ones, the ones who care for and support the other. They convince them that they depend on them and that they could not do anything in life if they leave their side. They take it upon themselves to cut their emotional ties to their victim with the rest of your contacts to have absolute control and not leave you any escape route. Meanwhile, the person who is under his yoke, he finds fewer and fewer outlets and feels like his life is escaping him… until he goes to therapy.
In this article we will see how we work in therapy on the case of Maríaa subjected person from the beginning of his life by his mother and, later, by an abusive boss from which he could not escape.
Do they steal your energy?
At the beginning of her therapy, María told me about a recurring dream she had; rather, she was a nightmare from which he always woke up with a terrible feeling of anguish.
In her dream, Maria was lying in an old hospital bed, very weak and with little energy to move her eyes and look around her. The room was dim, and he could smell vividly that chemical mix of strong cleaning products and medicines typical of medical centers.
Beside his bed, in the chaperone’s chair, sat a tall figure in a hat and cloak that almost hid him completely. He could only see her wrinkled hand and his long fingernails. The place where his face should be was even darker than the gloom of the room.
In addition, this sinister character sat in a strange way, squatting, with his feet on the chair and clutching his knees with his arms.
At first, Maria had the impression that this being was somehow accompanying and taking care of her. However, as she watched him and took in the details, she realized what was really happening.
In the dream, Maria had a syringe in her arm, connected to a tube, through which she supposed she was administered some kind of serum. As she followed the route, she realized that the tube was not heading towards any IV bag, but rather towards that dark being.
It was not a serum for which they gave him food or medication, what really happened is that this being was vampirizing her, he stole her vital energy to feed on her. If she tried to move, the vampire would tell her “calm down, don’t do anything, I’ll take care of you”, but he felt weaker and weaker. At this point in the dream, she Maria used to wake up sweating and distraught.
The true profile of the emotional vampire
Working, in our sessions, the symbology of this nightmare, María identified this being with several people in her life who had treated her exactly the same as this character. She was able to see her mother, her former boss, and several of her previous partners.
The pattern was much the same, they made her feel like she was weak and needy, that they cared for her and cared for her, when in reality they kept her weak and sick to take advantage of her and steal her energy.
all these people they had convinced her that she was invalid and that he needed others to be able to have a full life.
However, the fact that the vampire was feeding on her gave her the key to understanding how these people work. She wasn’t the weak one, but the others made her feel weak to keep her under their control. In reality, this being was the one that felt empty and lifeless, which is why it needed someone’s vitality to feed itself.
Of course he was old and emaciated, but not because he was a sinister being who wanted to be scary, but because it was he who was weak, about to die, and he needed to suck all the energy out of his victim to stay alive.
How to protect yourself from the emotional vampire
Maria was realizing everything she had done for the emotional vampires in her life. It was always her who He had fixed his boss’s problems, avoiding millions in losses to the company; had helped their partners to advance in their jobs, while she was stuck; during her childhood and adolescence, she had been a cook, cleaner and caretaker for her mother, neglecting their own studies.
Ultimately, he realized that she was the one who was truly valid and had plenty of capacity to develop and have a full life, while the others were the weak who needed it to maintain themselves.
After all this work, Maria told me that she had dreamed of her hospital room again, but this time, the dream had been very different.
Remembering what she had seen in her sessions, Maria repeated to herself in her mind “I can, I am the valid one”. With great effort, he managed to move his hand to pinch the tube that connected him to the vampiric being. At that moment, his life fluid stopped reaching the monster and stopped feeding it. The vampire jerked compulsively and fell to the ground screaming.
Maria was recovering her energy and was able to get out of bed. She removed the tube that she had hooked on her arm and headed for the door. She saw that, outside, there was a bright garden full of flowers. It wasn’t her that was limited, but the vampire, who didn’t even have the strength to leave the room.
“Stay here. You are not going to vampirize me anymore” she told him before leaving the room to enter the garden.
This was the last time Maria had this kind of dream. She never again dreamed of the hospital room or the vampire that sucked the life out of her.