A psychic vampire is someone who feeds off the energy of others. They are often negative and self-pitying and spending time with them leaves us exhausted.

What is a psychic vampire?

Most of us have a psychic vampire in our lives. They moan and complain and yet, nothing we say or do seems to shift them out of their negative mindset. These kinds of people always have a problem they need help with and they always blame everyone else for their situation. They can be self-pitying, negative and sometimes nasty.

Psychic vampires will do pretty much anything to get attention because this attention and energy is what feeds them. Unfortunately, psychic vampires have not learned to take care of themselves, be responsible for their own actions and meet their own needs. This means they are constantly looking to others to make them feel better and fix their problems.

Of course, no one can fix someone else’s problems. We all have to learn to deal with our own responsibilities and issues. But the psychic vampire gets stuck in a negative cycle of needing the attention of others to feel better about themselves.

How can we protect ourselves from psychic vampires?

Ideally, we would avoid these kinds of people like the plague. However, we can’t always cut them out of our lives, nor would we necessarily want to. When we have a family member, boss, colleague who is a psychic vampire, we can’t avoid spending time with them. There may also be people in our lives who have this trait but also have positive aspects that we love. In this case, we must learn to deal with the vampire energy without being sucked dry.

Additionally, people can sometimes, understandably, get very needy when they are going through a difficult time in their lives. We want to be able to support them without exhausting ourselves.

Unfortunately, psychic vampires can easily spot who will give them the most attention. They are drawn to kind, compassionate, empathetic and generous people. If you are this kind of person, you may find that you have many energy vampires in your life. Because you are compassionate, you don’t want to cut these people out of your life. You want to help them.

But unfortunately, no amount of compassion will be enough for these kinds of people and if allowed, they will suck you dry. They may try to make you feel sorry for them or they may try to guilt-trip you into spending time with them. They can be very manipulative and play on your good nature.

So, it is important to set up some healthy boundaries to prevent energy vampires from taking all your time and energy. This way you will be able to keep enough for yourself to use towards your dreams and goals or just for fun.

Here are five ways to set up healthy boundaries so we can treat psychic vampires with compassion without getting drained by them.

1. Limit time spent with psychic vampires

Firstly, and most obviously, we might need to limit the amount of time we spend with energy vampires wherever possible. If you have a particularly needy friend or colleague, you might limit your interactions with them too, perhaps, one phone call or meeting a week. Also, it’s worth having an end to the interaction planned, such as another meeting or activity that you have to leave to attend.

2. Choose the activities carefully

In addition to limiting the time spent with a vampire, choosing the right activity can make a difference. Staying indoors with them with a film and a bottle of wine might be a bad choice as they will have you captive.

This means they can command your attention and there is little you can do to prevent them from sucking your energy dry. Choosing a more interactive activity, or meeting up in a group will make it less easy for them to monopolize your attention.

3. Practice self-care

After spending time with an energy vampire you will need time to recoup your energy. If you know you will have to spend time with a draining person, try to plan a fun or relaxing activity for afterward. Taking time to look after yourself and practicing self-compassion is especially important if you have to spend a lot of time with one, or many, energy vampires.

4. Protect your energy

When you know you will be spending time with an energy vampire, you must be clear about how much energy you are prepared to share. As well as limiting time spent with them, be clear about your own worth and value. Often psychic vampires target us because they are aware that we do not value ourselves as highly as we should.

When you think about the things you want to do with your own energy, such as projects, hobbies, goals and dreams, you realize that you don’t want to squander that energy on someone who is not going to make good use of it. If your support isn’t used wisely or appreciated, then it has been wasted.

You might also like to think of yourself surrounded by a force-field that protects you from the energy vampire. Refusing to give more energy is not selfish. In fact, giving an energy vampire too much actually prevents them from learning to take care of themselves.

5. Check you are not becoming a psychic vampire yourself.

Unfortunately, moods are catching. After spending time with an energy vampire, you will be emotionally drained and may feel negative and cranky yourself.

Be careful that the negative mood you have caught does not mean you slip into being an energy vampire yourself. You might notice that after you have spent time with a difficult colleague, you go home and snap at your partner or housemate.

Try to avoid this by taking some time to restore your energy by doing something fun or relaxing, or perhaps meditating or taking a walk in nature. This way, you won’t need to suck energy from someone else.

Closing thoughts

Using the above strategies can help us to cope with spending time with psychic vampires. However, the best way to avoid being a victim of a psychic vampire is to take care of ourselves.

When we are strong and have good self-esteem, energy vampires will realize we are not victims they can prey on. They will then tend to leave us alone. This can actually transform our relationship with psychic vampires into ones that are much healthier for us and the vampire.