To grow and sustain a business, you need both time and Energy. And as a business owner and entrepreneur, you have a heightened sense of Energy than the average Joe, possessing the potential to impact the world and make a dent in the universe.
In this context, ” Energy ” is synonymous with vibrancy, vitality, and gung-ho stamina.
However, with great Energy, it comes with great attention. Some people would feel threatened by your intense level of Energy by displaying their competitiveness, defensiveness, and jealousy.
Others would try to leech onto your Energy to fulfil their emotional void through constant yearning and complaining about mundane life matters until you erupt emotionally.
Every outburst, anger, and mental discord you activate is an outflow of your life essence. And too many emotional outflows can disrupt your business goals and your ability to make a sound judgement. And due to this, some business owners fast-tracked their ageing process to look 5-10 years older than their actual age.
Today, we will discuss five tips to protect yourself from people who want to drain your precious resources – Time and Energy. We call these people emotional vampires.
So, let’s define what is an emotional vampire
Emotional vampires have a histrionic personality disorder that needs to feel influential by devouring and draining someone’s life force, intentionally or unintentionally.
Deep within, they have a void filled with emptiness, depression, and purposelessness and constantly seek remedies by making others around them upset, stressed, and anxious for attention. And when they see others emotionally broken and get subjugated by them due to their action and presence, they get a kick (thrill) out of it; their sense of achievement gets acknowledged by suppressing other people’s Energy and life force.
Emotional vampires have a dark side that they are unwilling to admit and one that mentally and psychologically consumes their own life. It is like cancer eating their flesh; as a result, they need to fulfil that constant hunger by feeding other’s people’s life force, constantly looking for the next victim.
If you want to know if you have crossed paths with one of them, check your feelings and ask yourself how you feel after interacting with them.
Do you feel…
- Emotionally drained after talking to them face-to-face or over the phone.
- Psychologically tired after interacting with them through hearing their stories, complaints, and criticism.
- Your vitality dropped after walking away from their presence?
If the answer is Yes, that my friend is an emotional vampire.
The unfortunate part is that such personality can be embedded in anyone you know: your clients, your employees, your spouse, your “good” friend, associates, family members, or even yourself.
Why Is It Important To Protect Yourself?
You need focus and attention to build, grow, and scale your business. Bit by bit, if you hang around with emotional vampires long enough, it can make you interpret events from their lens: cynicism, pessimism, and toxic thinking patterns. And if you are mentally unprotected, an Emotional Vampire can bring out the worst in you, instilling their mindset into yours: their mental chaos, negativity, and internal toxicity could make you anxious, mildly depressed, and uptight for no apparent reason.
Ultimately, one might end up miserable, drained, and bitter like them. If not, one might revert to medication to suppress anxiety or consort to breathing apparatus.
How Do You Deal With Them?
Remember, “Health is wealth“ as the saying goes; protect your Mind at all costs and put these emotional vampires in their proper place to sustain a healthy mindset.
The reality is that we can never escape from emotional vampires. There will also be the next version: if you managed to get rid of one, the next one would come later. So, you might as well turn this adversity into an opportunity; exercising healthy interaction and boundaries with an emotional vampire would be beneficial in strengthening your heightened awareness of living in the presence within your Mind: thus, helping you to live in the moment and preserve your time, focus, and Energy.
Here are five ways to manage an emotional Vampire.
#1. When Your Client Is An Emotional Vampire
Clients who are emotional vampires tend to enjoy walking all over you:
- Squeezing you for every penny.
- Enjoying the process of micro-managing you.
- Questioning your operational tactics.
- Interrogating you on every little thing you do.
- Insinuating scepticism about your output.
If your client is an emotional vampire – get rid of them and find better customers. They are not worth your time and peace of Mind. There are two words to describe them: headaches and pain in the butt.
The only way to deal with them is to kiss their A*#, bends your knees, and be compliant. Even if you lower your ego and subjugate your self-worth, it is not worth your precious life as they can discard you at the drop of a hat when a competitor could offer them a lower, cheaper, better pricing (and that comes with poor service) model.
The good news is that – you have the power to walk away and not entertain them.
Remember, Emotional Vampires hunger for self-importance because of their low self-esteem, and they will constantly find someone fresh to feed their appetite, so let’s not that be you. You will never satisfy them. Let the emotional vampires go, and you will have one significant weight off your chest. I have dealt with many, so trust me on this, let them go and free up yourself to a new form of opportunity and abundance.
#2. When Your Corporate Account has Emotional Vampires
This happens when your corporate account is an Association, Institute, Organisation, Committee, or Group, and there are two individuals on the board who constantly make your job distressful.
The solution is to satisfy the needs of the collective group and not these two toxic personalities.
But if the going gets tough and you are suffocating, then lose the contract or find ways to extend the contract and sell it (under transfer/assignment of appointment in your agreement) to your competitor.
Sometimes losing a business can give space for the next business opportunity. Think of your past losses; they often freed up more space and opened new doors to more favourable opportunities. Think about your previous jobs before being self-employed; think about your past relationships, business deals, and business opportunities – life always gets better after losing the former. Reflecting on the past, you have always made the right choice by losing the pain.
By letting go, you’ll feel the weight being lifted off your heart, thus giving you the space to invite more favourable time and Energy into your life.
#3 When your employee is an emotional vampire
If an employee is an emotional vampire, let them go quickly, no matter how much you lack in people or if your company is missing a set of attributes. Keeping an emotional vampire in your company is toxic to your other staff and your clients/ customers, as it will cause distress and tension to them.
Having them in your team long enough not only repels the good employees from staying in your company but also offends your significant Group of clients.
It is not worth keeping one or two toxic staff who regularly throws episodes of neuroticism and tantrums in your workplace; it will cost your health and your company in the long run.
I’ve got an article that discusses the importance of finding staff with high EQ. Click here.
#4 When your spouse is an emotional vampire
If it’s a spouse and there’s no prenuptial agreement, this will be tough. And presumably, you two have done all the talking, heart-to-heart chats, pros and cons analysis, and attended ample counselling sessions, and if you still can’t see eye to eye, then it is better to go a separate way.
The old-age wisdom that “it’s cheaper to keep them” is untrue.
Continual engagement in a relationship with an emotional vampire can lead to loss of confidence, emotional breakdown, loss of business opportunities, potentially false charges of domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual crime in an attempt to bleed you dry using the court system that favours a particular gender – causing you both mental & physical health with the thoughts of losing everything: your reputation, wealth, and kids.
Not worth it.
Consult an experienced family lawyer if you are experiencing everything I discussed above and find out how your country or state Family Law can help minimise your losses.
If you have kids, talk to a relationship counsellor or a child psychologist (if you have kids). You may get an amicable exit depending on both parties’ ability to reason. Again, prioritise your inner peace over the need for “convenience”.
It’s easier said than done; I accept that
Many business owners tragically suffered because they adopted the “it’s cheaper to keep them” mentality. Ultimately, with all their tolerance, perseverance, and endurance, their spouse ends up exercising the divorce card and lodging a few false claims against them on everything they can throw at them to get full custody and a higher divorce payout figure. And the outcome was disastrous for these business owners, especially with a lack of funds to hire expensive family lawyers.
Don’t be one of them.
Consequently, your business cannot grow when you have a relationship with an emotional vampire; they will deplete your concentration, vitality, and health: your entire well-being is affected; mental, psycho, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Soon your Time and Energy level will dissipate, too, if you do not resolve this matter asap.
Preserve your Time and Energy at all costs and prioritise your inner peace. And sometimes, when your spouse senses your conviction, there could be a chance that the situation will turn around and work out in your favour.
Besides that, there is no real solution except to take this event as your life lesson to become a better version of yourself for the next 1 to 2 years in the family law.
#5 When a family member is an emotional vampire
If it’s a family member, that’s another tough one. And my suggestion is to work it out heart to heart as I believe you two are put together for the purpose to resolve some situational matters for a cosmic reason.
There must be some unresolved conflicts in the past life between the two of you. And this is where you need to seek your higher self, transcended consciousness, buddha nature, or the holy spirit within you to come into the presence for assistance.
Ask for wisdom, compassion, and guidance to see things through. You’ve got to ask and invite the “light”, God, whoever and whichever entity you are in awe with, to guide you and cross this path of suffering.
#6 When You are the emotional vampire
When people start avoiding you and don’t want anything to do with you, it can be painful, especially if they are important people in your life.
The first step is to admit that you have a problem (congrats if you can do this!) and accept that you can change for the better (high five if you have this attitude), and seek counselling and therapy to offload your emotional discomfort. Seeking help is the first step to superior mental health.
Many high-performance celebrities engaged psychotherapists as part of their routine sanity checks. Likewise, CEO and Executive uses therapists to deal with their intense stress. Athletes employ chiropractors and physiotherapists every month for adjustment and realignment. It is a norm to seek help in today’s hectic times.
Alternatively, there are plenty of free resources on the internet. The critical point is to acknowledge, move forward, and progress upward.
In conclusion
If you want to grow your business and protect your time and Energy, you need to: –
- Prioritise your inner peace, state of mind, and internal health.
- Get rid (if you can) or manage the emotional vampires around you, and ensure they are put back in the right place.
- Time is wealth, health is wealth, your mind is wealth.
- Ask the higher force if you do not have the answer.
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