Birds of a feather flock together…
So they say. CHOOSE YOUR COMPANIONS WISELY.
EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES ARE REAL AND THEY ARE RUNNING RAMPANT IN THE ROOMS OF AA!
Two important rules-of-thumb; if they gossip about other people to you then they gossip about you to others. Number two, “Know people by who they show you they are not by who they tell you they are.”
What is an “emotional vampire?” An emotional vampire doesn’t know that they are sucking strength and peace from those around them. They simply have an inherent ability to push your emotional buttons. They can trigger in us the emotion of struggle and control accompanied by anger. Intolerance and a general negative excitement of sorts is what they bring out in us. Or put plainly they easily rile-us-up by their conversation.
Yes this sounds dangerously close to the “blame-game” however its something different. Once we are aware that certain people have this effect on us we can avoid them…we don’t invite them into our homes. Now if everyone pisses us off and we label the whole world, ’emotional vampire’ then we may lack the ability to take responsibility for your own feelings. Some people are just sand-paper to us.
Other people CAN CHANGE THE COARSE OF OUR LIVES. I asked my partner “why is it that I seem to absorb the people that I hang around.” When I spend time with my sister, as neurotic and confused as she is I part her company with a negative attitude and often-times I am critical of her. Whether we get along with, like, or dislike our neighbors we always take something away from our interaction with them. Perhaps that is partly one of the spiritual answers to “why” the 12 step programs work. We as humans need one another to spiritually & emotionally feed, nurture and stimulate us. We are as one, every man woman and child on this earth is our brother & sister.
Ya, ya, ya but where is the wisdom in this well-founded theory that we are all one? The wisdom is to open our minds and channel-in beneficial information from our positive friends and neighbors. And to hear with our hearts which direction we should go to find the humans that feed us Love. Time & chance figure into many aspects of our reality, don’t believe them for a minute when they echo in your ears “THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES.” Really? So if every little thing that happens on the face of this big earth is planned out by the creator then all is “providence.” In which case, we are all robots anyway so we may as well hang up our hats and go to sleep in the back seat of the car…and stay asleep. NO! Sorry I don’t buy it. If the word ‘never’ or ‘always’ is in the sentence its usually inaccurate. As the great & wise “Preacher” King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: “Time & chance play a part in everything!” Amen Solomen!
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
The kinds of people to avoid are the negative, soul sucking emotional vampires that will never be filled no matter how many victims they suck into their lair. But really these are just sick people, the complainers, the antagonizers, the creators of Kayos! Those that will stab us in the back as soon as we get half-way turned around. These are the ones that although they are a great distraction from our own pain we will have to detox from them once we break away from them.
We may feel an emotional hangover because of the way that they draw out our own lower, negative nature. This is not a blame tactic, we are always responsible for our own actions including choosing our company. In simple English they tempt us to act out in some character defect…usually gossip so we have to work harder when we are around them to keep our side of the street clean.
BUT WAIT! Let’s talk about these more Loving less fearful people that seldom engage in kayos and the manufacturing of misery. When we spend time with these people they encourage us. We open up to them because we feel comfortable talking to them, they don’t seek to find the wrong in everything we share. We share our worries and they are understanding and quick to remind us that we are good people. “Encouragement” is not a four letter word even if it seems that way in certain cultures. When we walk away from these people we feel strengthened, we feel validated, we ask ourselves why we don’t see these people more often. As providence has it I believe God puts certain people in our lives so we have half a chance to survive. IF YOU DON’T HAVE A PERSON IN YOUR LIFE LIKE THIS THEN IT’S TIME TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND GO TO A MEETING.