10Do you love this article?Show the author your support by hearting.
I used to need ample time to recuperate after being social.
I would often feel more depleted after being around people than I was beforehand. Yet, I knew myself to be quite the extrovert—so this puzzled me.
“Aren’t I supposed to get energy from being around people, not lose it?”
What I didn’t realize at the time was that, because I have been equipped with so many internal resources (like the ability to choose gratitude in every situation or the ability to choose how I act regardless of circumstances), my inner abundance was attracting what are known as “energy vampires.”
Energy vampires are people who take from you without consent or reciprocation. They leave you feeling drained. They suck your psychic, mental, or spiritual energy.
I have since come to understand that it wasn’t just my abundance that was attracting energy vampires—but also my feeling guilty for having this abundance and, in turn, feeling obligated to share it with those around me.
Because of this, I had weak energetic boundaries and was allowing others to “leech” all of my excess reserves so that I didn’t have to feel guilty about having so much of it.
Much of the advice that I have heard pertaining to energy vampires is of the nature of “cut those people out!”
And while this may be a helpful and sometimes necessary step, I’ve realized doing that alone is insufficient.
We also need to take a good look at why we are attracting these people into our lives.
There are ample people with inward abundance out there who are not attracting energy vampires. Why? Because they have no need for them.
So, we must ask ourselves, what need are energy vampires filling for our egos?
Are they making us feel validated because we are needed? Are they conveniently distracting us from our true purpose and allowing us to avoid responsibility for owning our power?
Are they letting us dwell in victimhood?
The truth is, we are not doing anyone a service by allowing them to leech our energy. We are reinforcing their beliefs that they are too weak to provide for themselves and we are not giving them feedback that could actually make a difference in their lives.
A true friend encourages and supports others to meet their own needs and they set boundaries so that they don’t end up resentful.
And if the energy vampire in our life is not important enough that we would be willing to have that conversation, then we need to be real with ourselves about that too.
We need to be honest with ourselves about why we are keeping people in our lives who we resent.
So, we need to get off of our high horses, get clear about what hidden payoff our egos are getting from being a source of nourishment for energy vampires, and we need to take action accordingly.
In this video, I will coach you on:
- How to identify why you attract energy vampires into your life—what might your ego be getting out of it?
- How to stop attracting them.
- How to seal off your energetic boundaries.
- How to avoid being an energy vampire yourself.
AUTHOR: BRANDILYN TEBO
IMAGE: MIKE LAY/FLICKR
No comments:
Post a Comment