Good-Natured, On The Outside

I started working in my parents shop and their employee and I worked in the same part of the office. We’ll call my coworker Jim. Jim was about 6 feet tall in comparison to me, being 5’2″. He seemed good-natured, altruistic, and always willing to lend a hand when I didn’t even ask… But I don’t think he could keep up with that facade.

During the first week, Jim was friendly yet cautious. He avoided making mistakes at work because me, being the managers’ daughter, was another seeing eye in his mind. As the weeks went by, Jim naturally realized that I wasn’t going to be a tattle-tale. I then felt that Jim and I were establishing a friendly bond. We made jokes, helped each other out, and at times had meaningful moments.

As more time went by, he started to make fun of me, made me feel embarrassed and weak, and developed a predatory persona. Well I guess it’s better to say that his true colors were revealing themselves. Unbeknownst to me, Jim was a hardcore energy vampire. Energy vampires and their tactics range per person, but their main intention is to drain your energy. Numerous times a day he’d sneak up on me and try to “catch” me not working. Or he would quickly rush into my physical space to catch me off guard and tell me, “You’re doing this and this wrong, no!” while adding in a “Just kidding!” and laughing after. Jim trying to reach me while I was not paying attention was the crucial part. He knew what he was doing and he calculated when to sneak up behind me so I couldn’t defend myself first.

For this particular energy vampire, Jim’s behavior grew worse overtime. The more irked I visibly became with him the more he wanted revenge for what I believe he deemed were “attacks”. As a highly sensitive empath, I could feel him calculating in his mind, “How can I get inside of her head?” any time I’d basically respond with, “What’s your problem?” to his secret jabs at getting me to feel weak.

Spiritual Violation (Trigger Warning)

One day, my spirit guide Erik Medhus from Channeling Erik told me that Jim would sneak up on me, enter my energetic field, and take away my energy. In short, he called it, “Spiritual rape”. Lo and behold, Jim did exactly that a few hours later. When my dad left for the day Jim snuck up behind me while I was energetically off guard by minding my own business. He asked me a question in a way where he knew I had to respond. By responding, he calculatingly stepped into my personal field and stole a piece of my energy. I couldn’t explain how he did it or what happened at the time, all I knew was that I felt my vulnerability and sense of self being personally violated. The same night I went home to my husband, who is my twin flame. He lovingly pulled me close as he always did. Instead of leaning into him, his act of connection triggered me and my first response was, “He’s going to violate me!”

I started to develop paranoia at the thought of him entering my mind and spiritual body and stealing a piece of me. Outside of work, I started having panic attacks. I never really got panic attacks until that point.

Monsters In Hiding

“How does one function after dealing with such a monster?” you might ask. Well, the thing is is that real monsters aren’t just the people that show up and define themselves as such. They aren’t the white supremacists that proudly wear their KKK robes. Real monsters are in hiding. They are the ones that know their level of rage will incite spectators. Instead of using their souls to help others, they conceal themselves and strike at their best opportunity: Which is at the time you least expect it.

So yes, I was able to appear cheery and helpful even when I had a horrible bully at work. To be honest I am always there to lend a hand to strangers, even when I’m at my very worst. However, Jim was silent and meticulous about how he wanted to drag me down. The assaults built slowly and developed overtime rather than occurring all at once. It started to become something that was normal to me because bullies operate from confusion to gaslight others and keep the abuse going. The longer I stayed working at my parent’s store, the more Jim ate away at my energy and sense of self. I was losing my sanity. If I had stayed longer, I would have been an empty shell of myself because he would have devoured me by then. As my guides put it, I would have been depressed and suicidal.

I quit the day I lost my mind there. I was crying while holding my knees to my chest in the bathroom. I looked to God who shed light on the fact that I wasn’t the crazy one, I was just going ballistic from the people around me that refused to accept responsibility for their torment. So, I did the sane thing. I went home and cried my eyes out saying, “I want to quit!” to my husband as he held me close. Work was livening my self-abusive patterns like a fan to growing, red embers. Case in point, I didn’t want to quit either because my source of income was crucial for the both of us during Covid-19. But my husband didn’t speak until I said I wanted out. “Then quit,” he said gently all while holding me still. So… I quit with a text message. (LOL. Sorry guys I can’t help but to find humor in everything!)

The Birth of Empaths

No one really talks about mental abuse through manipulation or psychological harm. As author of “Toxic Parenting” Susan Foreman put it, mental abuse is worse than physical abuse because of how invisible it is. Again, abusers work from a space of confusion. The invisibility of mental abuse is where they thrive, which speaks volumes of how they feel inside. To be completely lost in the depth of one’s own psyche and to feel alive only when they can take is hell.

One may guess that a caregiver abuser who operates from disorder (pun!) has trained their child to wear down their defenses for them. Maybe someone in your family used to say to you, “How could you? I’ve raised you from day one,” if you unintentionally triggered their insecurities.

Therefore, if mental abuse is something you’ve experienced throughout your childhood or even now, you’re most likely an empath. Judith Orloff, author of “The Empath’s Survival Guide” said empathetic abilities can develop through abuse because it wears down your boundaries. Therefore, you become more sensitive to others’ emotions and your own. Case in point, empaths typically don’t know how to stop giving, even if it’s detrimental to them!

Energy Vampires And Boundaries

Now I’m working at a new job and there’s yet another energy vampire. He’s not as smart as Jim, but as soon as my angels told me this new guy was deceptive, I became hyperaware of his sneaky cues. For example, he’d glance at me from time to time to try and catch me doing something wrong. When I would smile at my other coworker and not him, his face would also drop and he’d look defeated. I realized pretty quickly that was projecting his unhealed wounds from childhood onto our work’s social setting. That is, he’d literally wait for the opportune moment that one of us would make a mistake so he could tell our boss. This was so that he could get the attention he craved as a child.

Being able to experience such a ‘terrific’ energy vampire like Jim made me wiser and quicker on my feet. To catch these people for who they are, you have to trust your gut. When you get that uncomfortable pause in your stomach that makes you feel uneasy and slow down time for a fraction of a second, do not trust this person. Remember, energy vampires take energy and this can look different based on the individual. As my husband taught me, you can be friendly and show your true, genuine self. But as soon as you start to feel the uneasy pang in your intuition about a certain person, draw those boundaries up. That gives you control over a situation. Use your social setting to your advantage too because no energy vampire will show themselves in the face of shame.

Empaths and energy vampires attract each other. Like I said, empaths tend to have caregivers or parents that never respected their boundaries nor their identity. Energy vampires thus teach you how to regain your own boundaries. For me, I had to learn to draw the line between whose problems were whose. Just because an energy vampire was creating drama didn’t mean I had to be sucked into their creation. As a clairvoyant empath, I could see the bubble of paranoia and lies this new guy enclosed others with. I chose to step outside of that in my imagination to enact it in my physical world.

Because of the law of attraction, energy vampires will mirror your unhealed wounds. Thus, you need to be patient with yourself to undo the pain. It will look different for everyone depending on one’s context and upbringing, but for me I simply had to tell myself to stop entertaining my own insecurities. As we may know by now, this was because my insecurities mirrored his.

In short, I’m glad I met Jim. He showed me that there are tons of people out there like him and so I’m smarter and more resilient now because of him. Have you dealt with an energy vampire? What were your experiences like and how did you grow from it?