In this life you will have met people who transmit good values and positive attitudes to you and who infect you with their positivity and joy. Normally, we tend to want to be friends and be close to this type of person, for more than obvious reasons.

However, there is another type of individual that tends to weaken our emotional state . The reasons why emotional vampires make bad feelings flourish in other people are very varied: pessimism, self-centredness, narcissism, immaturity, lack of empathy…

Emotional vampires: people who create discomfort wherever they go

Today we delve into the personality of these emotional vampires; individuals who, unconsciously or not, have the ability to subtract energy and good cheer from the people around them, creating a halo of negativity .

The main problem that emotional vampires cause is that not only are they capable of clouding the environment for the duration of their presence, but as we relate to them on a daily basis, they end up generating high levels of stress and emotional fatigue.

We must bear in mind that the emotional state of the people around us ends up affecting us: emotions are contagious, for better or for worse. And when it happens that we are maintaining negative emotions for a certain time, psychological problems (and even some disorders) can start to appear.

This is why, if we have no choice but to live with an emotional vampire, we must learn to detect his distinctive features and know how to deal with his bad vibrations.

The 7 typical personalities of emotional vampires

Individuals who feed off the emotional energy of others are prone to emotionally manipulate their ‘victims’ in order to achieve their goals or purposes. They tend to approach people in their environment to externalize their negativity and take advantage of the energy of their interlocutor .

In addition, once they have emptied their negative thoughts and emotions, they leave the scene and set about approaching another person who can serve to unload their discomfort.

A common characteristic: lack of empathy

Emotional vampires are characterized by very little empathy . They are clearly selfish since they use the presence of another person to empty all the accumulated negativity, without realizing that this will generate discomfort and uneasiness in their interlocutor. They do not put themselves in the place of the latter.

Although they have certain aspects in common, emotional vampires can take several forms. That’s why we’ve collected a total of seven typical personalities in people who steal your optimism.

1. Critical personality

Not only does he make sure that you don’t get hurt and that you don’t say or do anything, but his ultimate purpose is to make you feel inferior to him. You are always wrong and he knows the truth about everything. Besides, if you question his attitude, he will usually justify himself by telling you that he “only wants the best for you.

If you stay close to this person for a few hours, you will realize that much of what he expresses is criticism, criticism and more criticism . Nothing seems right to him/her, and I don’t mean only banal things like the latest movie he/she has seen or the latest TV series, but he/she doesn’t stop criticizing your ideas, your tastes or your behavior.

This type of emotional vampire is so inconsequential that it ends up being irritating and can lead you to a bad emotional state. Be careful that it doesn’t infect you and start criticizing you too!

2. Pessimistic personality

The emotional vampire can also take the form of the inveterate pessimist . He always sees life with a half-empty glass, he feels sorry for himself, everything seems negative to him and it is going to be difficult to convince him that he is being too pessimistic… because he always has a counterargument ready that “proves” that existence is not worthwhile.

If you surround yourself with this type of person, you may end up convincing yourself that his vision of things is true and you end up being a pessimistic person , leading you to a negative attitude, without hope of improving and without desire to improve reality or to undertake your projects.

We address the negative effects of having a pessimistic friend (among other types of toxic friends) in the following article:

“Toxic friendships: 7 signs to detect a bad friend”

3. Catastrophic personality

Emotional vampires can also be tremendists . This personality leads to an extreme pessimism, for them, any fact or situation acquires an apocalyptic magnitude.

Their favourite conversation topics are about disasters and hecatombes they have heard about on the news or even disasters that have not happened but, in their convinced opinion, could happen.

These types of vampires firmly believe that life is about facing a long list of dangers and imminent misfortunes. If you are unlucky enough to meet someone like this, you will notice how soon you feel exhausted and, in the worst case, you might start incorporating some of their paranoia into your mental schemes .

4. Complaining and victimizing personality

He is that typical individual who does not stop complaining about everything that happens to him . Whether things are going badly or well, he will always have reason to complain and play the victim to you.

It is very difficult to find emotional support for a victim , as they will always consider their problems to be much more important than yours. You may notice that the complainant unloads all his problems when you talk, but he is seldom open to listen to you and offer you his arm when you need it.

In a previous article we also addressed the profile of a victim personality. I invite you to read it:

“The 6 most difficult personality profiles and how to deal with them”

5. Aggressive personality

They are people who react violently without any reason. If you say or do something they don’t like, you can trigger their anger, for example with a gesture that can be misinterpreted or by a comment that they take out of context.

Their reactions are disproportionate, so much so that you can have a serious problem if you are not careful about what you do . Of course being surrounded by a person who forces you to measure everything you do or say to the millimetre is not positive at all for your mental and emotional health. And, needless to say, you will feel exhausted within ten minutes of starting a conversation with the emotionally aggressive vampire.

6. Sarcastic personality

This is a particularly annoying vampire personality. The sarcastic person loves to throw ironies at you, poisoned darts, while protecting himself behind the lightness of a “simple joke”. In this way, no one can reproach him for his rudeness, since “it was just a joke..:”.

Although sometimes their comments may be funny and witty, the truth is that they often exceed the limits of respect and are cruel to other people . If you expose yourself too much to a person who uses sarcastic and hurtful comments, you can have your self-esteem undermined. Besides, it’s exhausting: it’s like being an isolated soldier in enemy territory: you just have to pray that the bombs don’t fall on you.

7. Cowardly personality

They are people with different characteristics from the six other personalities we have described. They are the emotional vampire that best knows how to go unnoticed , since their behaviour is neither histrionic nor aggressive, but rather they show themselves as helpless beings without the capacity to develop by their own means .

They often cause pity to those around them and get others to focus on them. This leads to a vicious circle : they play dumb to get attention, they achieve their purpose since people are attentive to them and thus feel strengthened in their attitude.

The faint-hearted one is an emotional vampire since he demands your attention and care because of his vice. He ends up stealing your precious time, your space, and it is not uncommon for him to be nowhere to be found when you need him.

How do emotional vampires behave?

Emotional vampires feed on two elements in order to start stealing emotional energy from those around them: time and proximity. They need to be able to establish certain emotional and friendship ties with the other person. From then on, they often take advantage of their weaknesses and make the most of them.

For this reason it is difficult to be in a good emotional state if the emotional vampire is a person who is part of our closest circle: family, friends or your romantic partner. The closer the relationship, the harder it is to avoid its harmful effects.

The emotional vampire knows how to get loose

It is common for the emotional vampire to try to humiliate or not humiliate other people, but very often they hide behind justifications and pretexts to show their point of view and to show themselves to people as good people.

Tinting: some vampires may not be aware that they are stealing your emotional energy

However, it should be made clear that there may be cases in which the personality of the emotional vampire is not lived out consciously. Some emotional vampires are not able to realize that they behave like this, and are not aware of the negative effects their actions have on the people around them .

The Causes of Vampiric Behavior

Sometimes, they do not realize that their behavior can be caused by situations or traumatic episodes that they lived through years ago (or perhaps also because they have mimicked dysfunctional behaviors and attitudes that they saw in their parents), and the product of this is that their way of relating to other people is influenced by these defense mechanisms that has been acquiring and consolidating as part of their personality .

It is up to you to assess whether the emotional vampire deserves a second chance

Of course, the fact that some emotional vampires are not fully aware that they are squandering your emotional well-being is no excuse for you not to seriously consider how to resolve, in one way or another, the discomfort they believe in you.

It is a matter of detecting the problem in time and taking the right and fair measures : in some cases a sincere and one-to-one talk can take effect and bring the situation back on track. In other cases, perhaps the best solution for both of us is to put some distance between us.