How To Slay A Psychic Vampire

Have you ever met a psychic vampire? They are the people who always leave you feeling drained, who want your time and attention incessantly, but offer nothing in return. I’m an empath, and a softie, and when I was younger this made me especially delicious, and vulnerable, to such folk. I’m older now, and I’ve learnt how to protect myself better. Maybe reading this can help you too.

My most notable encounter with an energy feeder happened about fifteen years ago. For the sake of decency, I shall protect the vampire’s identity and call her Elaine. That was not her name. I met her when I was at a difficult point in my life. I was single, after an emotionally unhealthy relationship ended, and both of my best friend’s had moved away over the previous year or so. I was working in an emotionally exhausting job supporting newly arrived refugees to settle into the country, under the brutal and inhumane NASS system. There is not a more vulnerable and desperate, yet hated and reviled client group in the country. Most people who asked me what I did for work would respond with Daily Mail fuelled vitriol when I told them, and I was listening to soul destroying accounts of rape, violence, and war every day. It was exhausting, and I was a prime victim for a hunting vampire. They circle like a shark, scenting for the blood of the wounded.

I was working late one evening, desperately trying to find accommodation for a pregnant girl who was punch drunk with exhaustion and despair. I had just placed her, and was finally locking up ready to trudge home when the phone rang. The temptation to let the answer machine answer was high, but I was standing next to the handset and a sense of responsibility and obedience caused me to answer it. The caller was a woman, Elaine, who had been a doctor with Medicine Sans Frontiers in Bosnia. She was planning to set up a counselling service for survivors of the trauma of war. She wanted to liaise with our agency to ensure she set up the best possible provision. I explained the office was closed, took her details, and assured her someone would be in touch soon to discuss it further. And so began the most bizarre episode of my life.

I can’t remember if I told my directors about the call, or just decided to follow it up on my own anyway. We didn’t have a team leader, and the charity directors were under investigation for fraud, so we dealt with most things within our team. This is another sign of vulnerability to attack- being a hero.

Anyone who has studied counselling in any form will know about the transactional analysis drama triangle, devised by Stephen Karpman to demonstrate the roles we take when we play games with each other instead of acting transparently and with self- awareness and responsibility. The triangle, with hero, victim and abuser, one on each point, offers a clear visual aid to the theory that if you will allow yourself to play one role; you will end up playing all three. The role to aspire to is the role set to one side, away from the sliding sides of the triangle. That’s the role of the reasonable adult, who refuses to play games.

I didn’t know any of this then, and regularly flung myself into the role of hero/ rescuer, and so slid into the role of victim just as easily. I like to think I never became abuser, other than to myself, but maybe I’m kidding myself, made I did harm I don’t recognise. If I did it was never intentional, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with! (I love this picture by Amy Garner that shows how we can play out each role at once)

So, the wounded, widowed doctor, who wanted to rescue me from the corrupted charity to help her do real good, just as soon as she received her compensation, was irresistible to me. Phone calls became chats over coffee, and we quickly became friends. She showered me with compliments, heralding me as someone she trusted in a world of people she didn’t. That’s a warning sign to watch out for, a slavering of praise, intermingled with dependence. It is very attractive initially, but becomes a tightening noose over time.

Insidiously our friendship became suffocating. She took me to Brussels with her to give her evidence at the war crimes tribunal, but only left the room for half an hour, so could not possibly have attended the meeting she spoke about. She showed my reams of paperwork from doctors and hospitals cataloguing her injuries, but a little voice in the back of my head reminded me of when my friend and I created letter on headed paper for her over controlling parents. Clever photocopying allowed us to create realistic letters about essential courses she had to attend, on selected dates when we wanted a night out. Don’t ever ignore your inner voice- it’s singing up for a reason, and let’s be honest, has it ever been wrong?

I hushed the voice, reminding it that she hadn’t looked for me, hadn’t been seeking help. She’d phoned the charity offering help; this was just a rough patch, just a flare up of her PTSD. This is another thing prey don’t realise about the hunters- they are fishing all the time, they bait their hooks with tantalising morsels and dangle them in fertile hunting grounds. After-hours at a charity is a good bet, anyone still there is likely to have a bit of a helper/ hero complex.

Next, she started to use me to back up her stories, and add believability to her background. I started to get suicide threat phone calls, and I’d rush round, and then I would be the one to call the out of hours doctor, to describe her situation and pain, so they would come out and inject her with super strength painkillers. Then she would send me away again. She had a hundred reasons why other people couldn’t help her, and her demands on me became worse and worse. By now I’d handed in my notice to the charity. The terrible conditions had turned the staff against each other, and I’d tried to straddle both camps, unwilling to take sides which had resulted in my isolation from both. She had not been interested in any of this, and had disappeared on the days I needed support. I had started a new job with an agency after four weeks out of work that left me terrified I would not be able to pay my mortgage. There’d been no sign of her during my dark night of the soul. Classic psychic vampire, only interested in someone when there’s energy to extract, attention to garner, once that’s drained they lose all interest.

I met the man who would become my husband, and she had no interest in meeting him, but being loved and having a new job where I was appreciated had restored me, and she was interested in that. She started demanding my time and attention again, but I was wary now. A clearer mind had stacked up the evidence against her, and I was starting to listen to the alarm bells that were sounding, the defence of her approach to the charity had worn thin. She started to text me as her own friend from a different number, pleading with me to continue to support Elaine, but she muddled up which phone she was texting me from. This playing helpers off against each other, or the threat of it is another key warning signal, it’s a form of control.

I didn’t abandon her.

I phoned her G.P and told her all my concerns so professional help could be put in place, if it was required. Then I text both the phone numbers what I had done. I did not hear anything from her again.

That is the biggest warning flag of all, anyone who will not engage with the help and support available, but expects you to do it all for them. You see professional support will have been trained to avoid feeding the psychic vampire. They will construct the support offered around the basic remit that the supported individual takes responsibility for themselves. A genuine individual, who is going through a tough time and needs assistance will welcome this, indeed insist on it. A psychic vampire will want others to do everything for them, while claiming their victim is the only one who understands them, the only one with the exceptional skills to help them. The vampire will use your own vanity and kindness against you. Don’t let them.

This was when I started my counselling training and learned about transactional analysis, and so learned how to protect myself from further predation. I don’t rush to offer help anymore, I sign post to professionals who are paid to assist. If someone is receptive to this, then I support them to engage. I do not make myself available day and night anymore, my phone is kept on silent, and I only respond to texts. I can send these on my terms. I talk about my own needs and if the friend does not respect these, or offer care in response, then I stop responding to them. I only want friends who offer in return as much as I offer them. I still have to be wary and take care, my first instinct is still to rush in, but I have experienced total burn out now, and I am determined to never reach that point again, and that means looking after me first.

dark blessings jpg

Dark Blessings?

dark blessings jpgI’ve discovered that there are many, many unpleasant factors involved in suffering from anxiety and depression. Nowadays, my brain can betray my trust, my brain has always been one of my best features. I thought quickly, able to assess a situation faster than most; I remembered things (apart from names, always been useless with names); and I could multi task. Indeed, my brain allowed me to coast through my degree. I sat, and passed exams on anthropology books I hadn’t read (I’d quickly realised the introduction and conclusion contained the vital information needed to pass), I wrote essays on the day they needed to be handed in, chattered through lectures, and only revised minimally. My nigh on photographic memory saw me through, and my ability to blag did the rest.

Suddenly, I can’t believe my own assessment of a situation. In the past if my brain told me I’d forgotten something, I had. If it kept worrying over a situation, it meant there was something wrong, and something horrible was actually about to happen. If I was startled awake, with adrenalin flooding my system, to go over and over a small detail of the day, it meant there was something about that detail I had failed to notice at the time. It meant if I re-examined that memory, something important would reveal itself. That’s no longer the case.

There’s other delightful symptoms to my anxiety too, and they all feed into each other wonderfully. My brain has acquired the new habit of waking me up with a non-existent text, a middle of the night alarm, or an imaginary doorbell, when I don’t even have a doorbell any more. It’s just to make sure my heart is pounding and I’m thoroughly attentive, ready for the magician’s show to start, when my brain produces an array of unrequested magic tricks- creating worries out of nowhere, and disappearing all normal logic up its sleeve.

Next is the vomiting, I was never sick before. I hate being sick, I went years and years without vomiting. Now I puke when I clean my teeth, when I cough too hard, when I’m sat minding my own business, even when I’m fast asleep. I’m lurched into wakefulness with milliseconds to get to the loo before I turn myself inside out.

I hate the brain function slow down. I hate the way I can’t learn properly anymore. My brain used to be so quick, I was the one who would explain a concept to other people. Now I have blank spots when my concentration vanishes and it feels like trying to squeeze a huge marshmallow into a tiny jar when I’m trying to shepherd my thoughts back into cohesion. Bits keep escaping.

There’s the exhaustion, every bit of my body hurting for no reason; and the headaches that start in my shoulders and slowly paralyse me. Or in my forehead and become all I can think of.

However, the worst symptom, the absolute worst, is that happy excitement, anticipation of a long awaited delight, or pleasure in a hard won achievement brings exactly the same up surge in symptoms as negative stress. So when I launched my first novel online last Hallow’een, I was sat on the sofa, clutching my laptop and my sick bowl, sleep deprived and delicate.

Accepting there was a problem, seeing my G.P, and finding out that my fears are illogical was such a relief. I’d been taking all these extra terrors seriously, and life had become extraordinarily scary as I tried to make sense of the messages of danger. However, it was equally horrifying to discover the deception; I couldn’t trust me anymore.

I won’t let it defeat me though. I am more than the sum of my ills, I am nothing if not stubborn, and that grit will see me through. So what do I do? Do I curl up, retreating from the world? It’s very tempting, God, it’s so bloody tempting. Do I give up all together, bereft of all hope for a future free from pain and exhaustion? Do I make a ‘special’ cup of cocoa, I’ll never wake up from? I can see the temptation there too.

No, what I do is I stick out my chin, I grit my teeth, and I look up. I keep moving, no matter how little. I accept that some days I won’t be able to do much, and those days I filter my To Do list down to one, easily manageable point. That way I don’t get lost in self-hatred for not achieving anything. I accept that on PMT week I will need one day of doing absolutely nothing- my To Do item for that day will be ‘survive’.

I make sure that I appreciate something beautiful at least once every day, the green of a leaf against the blue sky, the daring silence at the centre of a song, the first sip of filter coffee my husband has made me with love. And do you know what? I love myself and my life far more now than I ever did before, so thank you anxiety for centring me back to me.

You see, that’s what’s amazing. After a lifetime of putting other people’s needs before my own, of tying myself in knots to people please, I just can’t anymore. It’s not a choice, the physical consequences of ignoring my own needs, are so awful that I won’t do it anymore. Even considering an action that isn’t in my own best interests, like applying a job that job that pays better but would chew my soul again causes a resurgence of symptoms, and guides me towards a happier work /life balance. I may be broke, but I’m happy.

For everyone’s benefit, I have to look after myself, which is bizarrely liberating. The outcome is that I’ve got to know myself better, and I rather like me. I’ve shed some extra pounds, and become much physically fitter, which I also like, I enjoy feeling ‘in’ my body again. I’ve realised that I was living in a tiny corner of my brain, not in my whole body at all. Dancing is fun again.

Writing isn’t an option, it’s no longer something I delay until a mythical, perfect tomorrow. I have to do it, my creativity is my saviour. I live in the moment more, and I’m softer for it, kinder, more fun. So, I smile my secret smile, armed my strange weapon, and face life bravely, with my dark blessings to guide me.

My House Is Trying To Kill Me

houseNo, really it is. You see, we had to sell our massive old house- the big six bed Victorian, where Being Human was filmed when a heart attack forced my husband to accept we weren’t going to foster anymore, and we weren’t moving to France either. Which had been our two year plan, to buy two houses, live in one, rent the other out once my writing had taken off and we could support ourselves between these two incomes.

So with those dreams in tatters round our ankles, and a mortgage we couldn’t afford anymore, we sold to an utterly delightful family and bought a sweet like red brick thirties semi came onto the market. We were the first and only people to view it, it was perfect with 3 double bedrooms, a kitchen that could take an island and dining table, and a lounge that was big enough for a T.V end, and a desk end, and sweeping sea views. The whole house was light and golden, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as soon as we walked through the door. All it would need to be perfect was a bit of repainting in nautical colours.

Downsizing was hard, even though we’d included a lot of the furniture in the sale of the old house, we still had an awful lot of stuff to fit into little house. The immediate solution was to store stuff in the attic so we had some space to move and sort things out. We needed a larger attic hatch and the attic boarding to allow it to be used for storage. Which is when we discovered the asbestos. No I hadn’t bothered with a full survey- a surveyor won’t move furniture or carpet, what would have been the point of wasting £1,000+ that we didn’t have? So we couldn’t fit a large attic hatch ourselves. We needed specialists. Expensive specialists.

Which is when we found that the electrics in the bathroom weren’t earthed. What a wonderful combination, unearthed electrics and water, my favourite. Because of the asbestos the electrics needed to be replaced by the specialist team, and if the bathroom electrics were in that state I didn’t fancy taking a chance on the rest of the house! So we had to pay for a complete rewire. While everything was pulled apart for the electrics to be restored, it made sense to move the boiler out of my bedroom- it was VERY noisy- and into the utility area. A far more sensible place for a boiler surely? This meant rebuilding the rear wall of the utility space though, another expensive job, and while all the other turmoil went on, we may as well move the radiators in each room to where we actually wanted them, and reskim the walls so we could paint them afterwards and finally have our perfect little home.

Everything took much longer than we expected, and we were without heating until December. The house is lovely and warm- it’s well insulated and has its cavity walls filled (See why we thought it was a safe buy?), but not having the heating on made it damp. First I got the snuffles, then my hubby got a bad case of man flu. Only it wasn’t man flu, it was pneumonia. Not on house, not on.

We had a little break then, we were out of money and patience for sharing our house with builders. Come May though, we couldn’t bear being carpetless with hacked up walls any longer. We found a new team of builders and ran up a horrible debt to get the bulk of the house and gardens finished. Two weeks they estimated to get the interior work done. Maximum. How our little house must have chuckled.

Hubby’s room went smoothly, (we have separate rooms because he’s a lark, and I’m an owl, and he snores like a steam train, also, I’m messy and he’s finicky. He has visiting rights.). With his room finished, I packed enough clothes for a week into a bag and decamped to the sofa, while all my belongings were crammed into the spare room, which will eventually become my writing room.

My room ceiling couldn’t just be skimmed though, it was sagging and needed to be pulled down and completely replaced. That was going to mean an extra couple of hundred pounds and an extra couple of nights on the sofa. Only the house had bigger plans than just a few extra nights poor sleep. Once the plaster was off the ceiling we discovered that the beams were far too thin and widely spaced. It was a miracle that the contents of the attic had not fallen through and landed on me.

This is when I started to suspect the house had it in for us. The beams were sagging so badly they’d dropped several inches and couldn’t be repaired, they had to be replaced. And the wood had to be specially ordered in. You don’t want to know how much extra that cost, and by the end of my third week of sleeping on the sofa I was seriously suffering from sleep deprivation. I was accepting night shifts at the hostel where I used to work the hope of better sleep, not just because I was so desperate for the extra money to cover our spiralling costs.

The day I moved back into my room was lovely. The colour I’d chosen is the softest grey, I can’t remember its real name, but I call it Wistful Sigh. The thick soft carpet is scrumptious under my toes, and the extra money we spent on the quality underlay was worth every penny. I don’t have curtains yet, just a blanket over the window, but you know, after the lounge, it really is luxury to have my own space and all my belongings in one place.

Phew, the end was finally in sight, they just needed to give the hall, stairs and landing a second coat of the glorious New England blue I’d chosen, while Hubby and I packed up the lounge so everything could be moved into the kitchen for a couple of days while the lounge ceiling was skimmed to get rid of the awful aertex, and it was painted a slightly greyer shade of blue than the hall. We wouldn’t have a lounge or kitchen for a few days, but that’s ok it wouldn’t take long. Can you hear the house laughing? I didn’t, I am an eternal optimist.

I did hear the worry in the builder’s voice though, as he called downstairs, he looked sad as he showed me the water running off the new electric socket box when he pulled it out of the wall. Ah, electricity and water, my favourite combination. Our new electrics, fitted less than six months had rusting metal boxes in an interior wall. We frantically looked for exterior causes. There weren’t any.

‘What’s under the laminate?’ the builder asked in a worried voice.

‘Oh, it’s concrete,’ I replied confidently. ‘I asked the seller when we viewed’.

I’d hoped there might still be the lovely original thirties parquet wooden floor to restore. The builder suggested I may have been lied to. He explained that houses from this era were sometimes built with floors tiled straight onto earth, which damp could then rise through. I didn’t need him to pull up the laminate, or show me the foil backed polystyrene to know what he’d find underneath. The only possible solution was to dig up the pantry, which was where the water seemed to be accessing the house, and lay a damp-proof course, and hope that resolved the problem. The original black and white tiles are a lovely find. It’s just a shame there’s a thick layer of black adhesive over them which is going to be a bugger to remove.

Well, there went the budget for the side garden. The one we wanted to slab for us, so we had a lovely space for barbeques and parties with our friends. All the things we’d planned to be doing now we weren’t tied down to fostering. And the couple of days we were spending without a lounge or kitchen was stretched by another five days. We were a little fraught, you know, just a smidge. Finally the pantry was finished, although it would take a month to dry, so nothing could go back into it, but that’s ok, the builder only had the lounge ceiling to skim, would only take a day or two.

Ah ha ha ha. I know! Hubby and I had a rare day off together when I heard that scared tone the builder had developed when he had to tell me there was a problem. The leak we’d discovered and fixed from the bathroom was only one of three, and they were long term problems. You know where this is going don’t you? The ceiling was completely rotten at one end, and needed replacing. We decided to bite the bullet and replace the whole thing, insulating for sound while he was at it. Hubby’s telly watching at half six in the morning would wake me now more. They also discovered that some genius had cut the beam the feet of the bath sat on down to just a couple of inches to fit in the bath waste. So the heaviest thing in the whole house was balancing on a flimsy bit of damp wood. Really house? Wasn’t that stooping a bit low? My marvellous builder saved the day though, strapping some steel strips either side to reinforce it, and fixing the other two leaks.

Which is when the house seemed to take against him instead, the one who was foiling all her fatal plans. First his wife had to be rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack, which turned out to be fluid on the lung from here she was kicked in work. A scary experience that delayed work by another five days, but we weren’t complaining, we’d been there far too recently. Then, the day he was due back, his lovely two year old dog had to be put to sleep after having massive fits.

It was still essential that the rear garden was slabbed for the dogs. They’d turned the pretty lawned area at the back of the house into a dug up Somme within a matter of days of us moving in. The next day the scalpings and other such builderly things which had been ordered for the remaining garden works were dumped on the pavement at a completely random address, on a completely random day, so the poor man had to spend the hottest day of the year shovelling several tons of scalpings (gravel sort of stuff) into bags to be transported back to the depo.

Then the decorator went AWOL for a weekend. I’m a very sanguine person, Hubby is not so much. Since his heart attack my cheerful laughing man has become much more negative and short tempered. This was about the point he became really ratty. It was also the time the house seemed to decide we were here to stay, and give up fighting us. Not before she’d passed the baton onto the car though, so the gears all failed as he drove me to work. We had to manage without a car for a week. Hubby decided he wanted to sell that one after such a betrayal, so we bought a smaller car, with lower running costs, and somehow, she got passed the baton too! Battery faults meant we were another week without a car. During this time I badly damaged my back in work, and as that got better, developed a virus.

I think what I’m trying to say is, sorry I’m late with my blog posts and newsletter, and sorry I haven’t made better progress with Book 2 of The Darkly Vampire Trilogy, but there has been a series of unfortunate events! It’s been four whole days now since anything untoward has happened. They start the garden tomorrow.