Energy Vampires

Energy Vampires suck the life force of others. When we feel drained, abused, or resentful in our interactions with others, we may be in the presence of an energy vampire. Renee talks about her own destructive patterns both as a victim and as a perpetrator and how becoming honest, emotionally vulnerable, and growing in our ability to love is the key to health and wholeness.

Transcript

Welcome to Spiritual Psychology.

My name is Renee LaValle McKenna and I bring my 30 plus years as a recovering addict and ex-crazy person turned therapist and shamanic healer to bring you snackable teachings on spirituality,

Psychology and all things personal growth.

And today I want to talk about energy vampires.

And I used to be an energy vampire.

I've also been drained and victimized by many others who source their life energy by sucking the life force of other people.

And the topic of how we manage our life energy or exchange it with other people is really up right now with holiday parties and family gatherings that were often forced to interact with people we might not interact with on a regular basis.

I know that when my parents were alive the holidays were always excruciating for me.

Going to visit my mother who was the original energy vampire in my life and for a long time unconsciously,

I modeled the way that I managed power in intimate relationships,

Particularly with men,

Although it came up in friendships with women as well,

By using my own variation of energy vampirism that's been passed down along the family line.

We also happen to be focusing on personal power retrieval and exchange and by year-long mentorship program.

That's our focus this month.

And I'm actually looking for volunteers to do free sessions of my spiritual psychology and open-door growth work in exchange for being recorded.

I'll say more about that at the end of the podcast if you're interested.

So what is an energy vampire?

Basically someone who sucks the life force of other people as a way to nourish and sustain themselves and those who are the prey of energy vampires often become energy vampires themselves.

And I find it fascinating how just like Greek and Roman mythology are wisdom tales about the deeper wisdom of the psyche and the archetypes that move in and through us,

That our modern myths and stories in movies,

Books,

And popular culture also point to the transpersonal aspects of our human experience.

Zombies of the walking dead could be seen as a mirror for much of the zombification that's happening through drug and alcohol addiction or even just how we walk around looking at our phones rather than being present.

I was on the street in downtown San Francisco over the summer trying to get someone's attention to ask for directions and everyone had earbuds in and was in their own world.

I felt a little bit like I was in an alternate reality.

And it actually took me a while to get someone's attention.

I practically had to wave my arms and they had to pull one of their little zombie earbuds out and focus into ordinary reality to tell me which way was West.

I was having a Google Maps glitch and I couldn't tell which way my phone was pointing.

One of the things I love about being in Manhattan is the presence of people on the sidewalk and their willingness to have 10 or 30 second interactions in this really present and helpful way.

I'm not saying nobody in New York wears earbuds,

But there tends to be a level of presence on the street that's definitely different than it is on the West Coast.

And this kind of helpful,

Friendly willingness to interact that actually gives me this sense of community with humanity.

I was riding a city bike recently down Columbus Avenue.

A woman on the sidewalk with her children kindly called out,

Nice jacket,

As I rode by.

I gave her a wave.

Thank you.

Kept going.

And that is energy generosity,

Different than energy vampirism.

And again,

If you look at the myths and stories around vampires,

It'll give you a lot of information about how energy vampires operate.

And energy vampires operate much differently than trolls,

Wood nymphs,

Ogres or goblins.

All different ways to manage life energy and relationship.

Trolls tend to be kind of ignorant,

Underdeveloped oafs that'll kind of bash you with their club and take what they want.

Goblins tend to be very smart,

Usually spend time hiding in the dark,

Often isolating themselves,

Filled with anger and fear and resentment.

A lot of depressed people operate in a goblin kind of way with their energy.

Elves or wood nymphs tend to be sprightly,

Magical creatures,

Usually very spiritually connected,

With a twinkle in their eye and a little bit of trickster energy.

And energy vampires seem to be unable to connect with sources of nourishment that are authentic for them and must feed on the life force of others.

They have a lot of unresolved darkness or shadow and being in the light and the truth won't kill the person,

But it will certainly reveal and ultimately dissolve their destructive and monstrous patterns.

Vampires turn to ash with the sunlight and it will also kill them if you pierce their heart.

Because a vampire does not know how to love.

And as I came to dismantle and be conscious about my own patterns as an energy vampire,

My unwillingness to be vulnerable,

Truly intimate with another,

My cynicism about love was at the root of that pattern.

And because we actually need to exchange love with other humans,

Other creatures,

And the life force in this density of existence,

In the middle world as a person,

It's actually a need,

Not a want.

Just like breathing in and breathing out energetically spiritually,

We are always in an energy or power exchange with the larger consciousness system.

And when we look at our energetic patterns,

It gives us a lot of information about where we need to grow and evolve.

Because ultimately,

And almost all great spiritual growth paths point to this,

Growing in our ability to give and receive love is the ultimate evolution on this plane of existence.

And all of these dysfunctional or monstrous forms of relating with other people could be seen as dysfunctions in our ability to openly give and receive.

And when we look at the life circumstances of a person,

We can almost always come to a compassionate understanding of how they came to manage their life energy in the way that they do.

And we can certainly grow in our ability to have compassion for ourselves,

But having compassion for something doesn't actually mean it's okay to do it.

But there's natural consequences to our own dysfunction and ignorance.

Everything has a feedback loop.

We don't need to worry about trying to change or fix others.

They will have natural consequences from their behavior that often creates pain and distress.

Loneliness and suffering that makes people willing to be able to do things different.

And if they don't get it in this lifetime,

They'll probably get to repeat the pattern next time over and over again until they grow and evolve.

Certainly takes a lot of pressure off of me as a therapist and healer.

And in fact,

A lot of the energy vampires that I have been prey to have been people I was trying to help.

And although much of my motive for helping people is benevolent and rooted in generosity and goodwill,

Much of the shadow motivation,

The darker side of being a wounded healer,

Was that I was trying to do for others what I wished to experience myself.

If I give all of this love and attention to you,

Maybe I'll get some love and attention for myself.

Or if I'm completely loving and giving and selfless to you,

Maybe you'll like me in return.

And there's been a lot of work to move into a place of more unconditional giving and having healthy,

Equitable exchanges in the relationships in my life and becoming really conscious and present with my own motives and the deeper motives that I perceive in others.

That I no longer participate in relationships that are vampiric,

Whether I'm the perpetrator or the victim.

So throughout my life and well into my practice as a therapist and healer,

There had often been a percentage of people that the Buddhists call hungry ghosts.

And hungry ghost energy is a form of energetic vampirism.

And in Buddhist cosmology,

When they talk about the nine realms of hell that all exist in the middle world that we are here,

Their ways of managing energy or states of consciousness and being,

And the hungry ghost sits at a magnificent banquet,

The abundance of life,

But they are unable to eat or digest any of the amazing food before them.

And the hungry ghost has different forms depending on how you see it represented.

Sometimes their throat is too tiny to swallow or they have a fork or a spoon that's too long to be able to get it into their mouth.

And so they sit at a meal unable to eat,

Always starving.

And you may know people like this.

They're always in some kind of drama,

Trauma,

Some kind of suffering.

They always need help.

And no matter how much you help them,

Nothing changes.

And that state of disempowerment,

Of tragedy,

Of dire need is the state of being that they maintain.

And how they interact with others is by having these needs,

And their relationships with others are based on the others filling those needs for them.

One of my best friends for over 10 years was always getting her electricity shut off.

She was always in some kind of terrible dysfunctional relationship.

In fact,

The last time we interacted,

I paid half of her rent.

And I ended that relationship because I came into a new place in my own life when I started to have children,

Where I was no longer willing,

Interested,

Or even capable of giving to her in the way that we had always interacted.

We spent a lot of time talking about her problems.

I was always giving her solutions.

And I liked that.

That made me feel smart.

It made me feel valuable.

It gave me confidence that I might be able to help people professionally,

Because I wasn't a therapist at that point.

Although I was therapizing with her in almost every interaction that we had,

She was a bottomless pit of need.

And we were very codependent with each other in that way.

I needed her to need me.

Made me feel secure,

Valuable,

Necessary.

And she needed me to pour my energy into her.

And when I was no longer willing to pour,

She found someone else to do it.

And I,

Very gratefully,

Have been able to move on to more equitable relationships in my life.

As I worked more directly and consciously on my own codependency,

And evolved my skills and abilities to give and exchange love and intimacy in more mature and healthy ways.

And as I have grown and evolved,

The people who used to feed on my life energy have become fewer and far between.

They've either fallen away,

Or I've ended those relationships and stopped participating in them.

Because another thing that was happening as I've looked deeply at my part in that pattern,

Is that I was dumping my life force into this bottomless pit,

Because I didn't know how to manage my own life energy.

And I was actually afraid to turn it toward my own dreams and goals.

I had been trained to support your dreams and goals,

Rather than turning that energy toward myself.

Which could have even been seen as selfish in the way that I was raised.

But self-care,

Self-nourishment,

Self-support is not selfish.

We are here to be our most authentic self in the world,

And we need to use our own life energy toward growing and developing our own gifts,

Talents,

Skills,

And following our own joy,

Rather than just being the back-end support for others.

And a lot of women particularly have been trained to do that.

And it's actually part of the shadow side of the feminine that supports the patriarchy.

That's a deeper conversation.

But if you read stories or watch movies about vampires,

The victims usually volunteer on one way or another.

In fact,

The iconic Anne Rice novel,

Interview with the Vampire,

Has just been made into an AMC series.

And there was a pretty decent rendition of it with the movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Of course,

We always like to look at Brad Pitt.

At least I do.

I haven't seen Interview with the Vampire as the AMC series yet,

But in the Anne Rice book,

The backstory of the character who is the person who's actually telling his story of how he volunteers to become a vampire,

He's the one being interviewed.

It's the Brad Pitt character in the movie.

And the movie did not do the backstory justice.

In the movie,

He becomes a vampire out of grief for the loss of the death of his wife and child.

But in the original book,

It's much more intense and probably true to how vampirism develops.

And in the original story,

There are two brothers,

Lewis and his younger brother.

And his younger brother is this naturally good and very sensitive soul.

He's very spiritual.

They live on a plantation in New Orleans,

And they inherit this plantation.

And Lewis is incredibly greedy and ambitious.

And he takes over the family business,

And he forces his brother to work with him.

And his brother has no interest in business.

He wants to pray and meditate and create art.

But the spiritual,

Creative brother does what Lewis wants.

And ultimately,

He sickens and dies because he's not following his own life path.

And those two characters could even be seen as two parts of one person.

And when we don't care for our deeper soul self and become selfish and greedy,

Trying to fill ourself with things and power in the material world,

The spiritual aspect of us sickens and perhaps will die.

And Lewis feels so guilty about his brother's death that he goes further into the dark side.

And when he is approached by the vampire Lestat,

Who offers him eternal life in exchange for being a vampire,

He says,

Sure,

Go ahead,

Bite me.

I don't give a shit.

And somewhat reluctantly becomes a vampire himself.

And so I can see that not dissimilar pattern in my early romantic relationships,

In my relationship with my mother,

In her relationship with her alcoholic father,

And probably his relationship with my great-grandmother,

Who I never met.

And I can't go back further than that because I don't have knowledge,

But I know it was passed down through family lines.

This unwillingness to be vulnerable and take the risk of genuine,

Authentic love,

Which also required a level of honesty and self-care that I didn't even know was possible.

Again,

Because I thought self-care was selfish and that how we get our needs met is by meeting the needs of others.

And then if you do that well enough,

Then they'll meet your needs.

And what I understand today is that ultimately everybody's responsible for their own life energy.

And the very potent power retrieval and exchange process that I practice with clients and I'm teaching to my mentees based on the practice of power retrieval and shamanism is a very direct way to give back that which doesn't belong to me and to take back my own life energy that I have given away to others.

It's much more effective than cord cutting in my experience in ending toxic connections and recalibrating dysfunctional relational dynamics.

When I take responsibility for me and stop taking responsibility for you,

It doesn't end the relationship unless that was totally the basis of it.

Like it was with that earlier friend I was talking about.

When I take responsibility for me and give responsibility for you,

It actually allows us to both show up with no strings attached and the possibility of a higher level,

More unconditional love.

And I do power exchanges on a fairly regular basis with almost everybody that's close to me in my life.

I do them with my children,

With my lover,

With anyone that I'm spending too much time thinking about their problems in lieu of thinking about what I need to focus on in my own life.

I'm distracting myself thinking about what you need to do rather than putting that energy where it's much more beneficial into what I need to do.

And that process is available in chapter 8 of my book,

Allies and Demons,

Working with Spirit for Power and Healing.

And there's free guided audio on my website in the drop down for inner journeys to inner journey number 9,

Personal Power Retrieval and Exchange.

It's tremendous work.

Everyone benefits from it because participating in dysfunctional patterns,

If it's harming me,

You can be sure it's harming the other person as well.

And participating in harm because we're all connected is not what we want to be doing.

So when I give people back their problems,

Even though they might not like it,

It's actually beneficial for them.

That doesn't mean I'm not present with them,

That I might not still be helpful to them in some ways,

But I'm not taking responsibility for solving things for other people.

Even my children,

Giving them the skills to solve their own problems makes them independent or interdependent rather than dependent on me.

And independence and interdependence are much healthier ways of moving through the world than dependence on others.

And so the darkest vampire pattern that I had was to get involved with a man,

And I would generally be very gracious and open and vulnerable with them in the beginning.

And then once I became secure that they liked or loved or cared about me,

I would emotionally shut down.

And this was not a conscious choice in the beginning,

Although ultimately I observed the process enough that I started to consciously use it.

Because when we shut down in that way,

It triggers an abandonment response in the other person,

And they want us back.

And that wanting was what I fed on.

And I've been on both sides of that dynamic,

Was how a lot of my early addictive relationships were that one or the other of us was emotionally unavailable.

And I was either constantly seeking,

Trying to impress or obsessing about some emotionally unavailable man,

Or I had men who was seeking,

Trying to impress or obsessing about me as an emotionally unavailable woman.

And the neck bite is that initial honeymoon phase,

And the feeding on the life force happens when the person becomes emotionally unavailable,

Whether it's you or others,

And it's like a siphon hose.

It sucks the life energy.

And again,

I've been on both sides of that,

Being sucked and sucking.

And I stay as far away from that energy as possible now.

And often those are the most sexually passionate,

The most fall in love with you in three minutes intensity.

There was a certain vibration for people that were ripe for this dynamic that was almost irresistible for me until I played it out enough times that I do not want to participate in that.

And the benefits are not worth the excitement.

And I've done a lot of power retrieval and exchange work,

Both to get my own life energy back from those men in particular that I was addicted to.

And I've also had to do a lot of power exchange work,

Giving back the life energy that I sucked from others,

Perpetrating on them.

And on a soul level,

There are no victims,

Whatever the circumstances and the traumas of our life,

They are unique and particular to us,

Whether we're drawn to them or whether we sign up for them on a soul level to help us grow and evolve and develop again along this continuum to ultimate unification and unconditional love.

And wherever we're at on that continuum,

There's room for us to grow.

Now on a personality level,

We can have tremendous compassion for the suffering that we and others experience.

No one wants to be victimized on a personality or a human level,

But on a soul level,

Painful circumstances are opportunities for growth.

And owning our own dysfunction,

Owning the ways that we harm others,

Being willing to look at our selfishness,

Our fear,

Our own greed,

Our own unwillingness to love ourselves or others,

Which is a harm.

These can be very difficult things.

I've needed a lot of help,

Support and assistance from therapists,

From 12-step sponsors,

From good wise friends to be able and willing to look at my own darkness.

But when we shine the light in there,

It turns the vampire into ashes and a new day can begin because higher consciousness always trumps lower consciousness.

That is a spiritual law.

Thank you so much for listening.

Blessings on your path until we meet again.

This is Renée LaVallee McKenna for Spiritual Psychology.

Reviews

Very interesting, I’m going to listen more to your talks

A very comforting talk, knowing that what I'm feeling from some people is this form of energy vampirism. I too had a best friend who was an energy vampire, and I wanted to help them so badly, I got hurt by them again and again and ended up walking away, they blamed me for how their life was and that I wasn't helping enough. Walking away from that relationship was freeing and I gained so much strength within myself. I can now recognise when I can help others and when I need to guide them. i can now recognise that they were a lesson I needed to learn to gain strength within myself. It took me years of therapy to realise they were an emotional vampire and no matter what I did, they would never have been satisfied.

Very helpful and insightful with real life examples, thank you