YOUR BEST FRIEND MAY BE A VAMPIRE

Take a look at the company you keep. How do you feel when you're with your "best friend?" When you part company, do you feel energized and upbeat or do you feel exhausted or drained?

If you feel like all the blood has been syphoned from you after being in a friend (or family member's) company, know that you've been with a psychic vampire. Vampires are everywhere. Most unhappy sick people are vampiric. And I would venture to say that we have all been vampires at one time or another. Not unusual for family members to be on a feeding frenzy and drain the life blood from each other. Same holds true for friendship circles and college roommates

It's an interesting phenomenon how we can feel not just emotionally and mentally drained by being with a vampire but also physically tired. The truth is that vampires drain our pancreatic energy, the etheric equivalent of our blood sugar. Many healers become hungry after having worked on a needy person.

Do you ever want to cross the street when you see a kvetcher approaching, a neighbor who within seconds will start spilling the beans about their sick mother, the depressed son, the car wreck their neighbor was in and the list goes on and on. I know when I meet such a person I want to run from them as fast as I can and am known to take a different route on my morning walk to avoid such encounters.

There's the familiar story of a person who feels obliged to spend time with a negative friend or relative on their birthday or Christmas. The scenario might go something like this: Aunt Sue makes no effort to be jovial. She sits there with a long face. No present in the world could make her smile. I try and try to make conversation but no one could lift her spirits. Once again another holiday is spoiled because I didn't have the heart to stay away from a family vampire.

Yet another scenario: Why do I go out to eat with Joanne? She will always pick apart the food, show her contempt for the ingredients used, and then she will criticize me for having ordered a meal with gluten and give me a disgusted look when I order apple pie to go. She can't stomach when I order a beer so I often don't order alcohol and so many times I find myself ordering things from the menu that SHE would approve of.

Vampires can only drain us if we let them. Once identified, it's a good idea to avoid them. It's hard to be in a car with a vampire going 90 miles an hour on a freeway without feeling like you'd like to press an eject button. That happened to me once. There we were cruising along after a workshop and her litany of complaints began spewing from her mouth like a rushing river.There was no way to escape the toxicity. When I exited the car, I could barely stand.

Learning deep breathing techniques when around such needy people is paramount. But vampires often catch us off guard. Important to learn visualization techniques, to become an inner judo master. But on the other side of the coin, be aware of when you are feeling empty and needy because we can all turn into vampires. It's not just "the other guy."