Is Your Husband an Energy Vampire?

Winter is never a good time for us. Apart from the cold weather, lack of sunshine, and uneventful days we have to deal with a major downer - decline in my husband's business activity and a negative shift in his income. In other words, it's cold, depressing and financially-challenging.

Unlike me, who is trying to find a shade of light and hope in any desperate situation, my husband likes to SUFFER. I mean he just succumbs to his misery and begins to radiate negativity, making the air around him gloomy and toxic. He whines, and complains, and criticizes everyone and everything from the government with their "stupid laws" to the customers who refuse to give him business. And at the end of his daily rant he pretty much declares that life sucks and he'd rather be a shepherd in some remote Montana area than live like that.

On days like these being around him is like going through purgatory. He pulls me into his drama and sucks all life and soul out of me . And the more I try to give him reasons why there's hope, and we'll pull through, and it's temporary, and we should enjoy what we have, the more drained and angry I feel myself. Talking for 10 minutes with him this morning left me shaken, and it took one hour of listening to relaxation music and reading "self-empowerment" book to feel better. But it used to take days for me to overcome this "emotional violence", when I didn't know that I needed to block his energetic vampirism and not let him drag me down.

We all occasionally deal with energy drainers. My best friend is my husband's double: on her good days she is fun to chat with, on bad - I dread picking up the phone. What I didn't know before is that I don't need to absorb their negativity. I can put up the glass wall, acknowledge to myself that someone is trying to raise their level of energy by taking some of mine, and then step away to recharge. These days, when I sense my husband's gloomy mood , I catch on faster to his maneuvers to pull me into an argument and keep my distance. I busy myself with housework when he tries to "talk". I think about something else if listening to him is unavoidable, mostly about what he is trying to do to me and how I should be resisting. I remind myself that the biggest antidote for his unhappiness is my happiness and don't let myself get angry or upset. I rush to recharge immediately after the conversation is over: read some uplifting blog or listen to my favorite music or go for a walk. By raising my awareness I learned to shorten the brooding phase and can go back to my optimistic, content self faster. His bad days are no longer my bad days.

Energy shifts are directly related to our emotions. Positive increase our amount of energy, negative - reduce it. So every time your husband does something that makes you feel bad, you are losing your energy. Every time he evokes anger, resentment, frustration, jealousy or sadness, he dims your light. The question is how much of your happy self you are willing to give away. I'm not saying it's easy to control emotions when they are under attack - I still get provoked and lose control easily. But you choose how long to stay that way. I rush to restore my energy as soon as I acknowledge the damage. I know that I can't just snap out of it or command myself to feel good, I need help. Sometimes reading a spiritual book for 15 minutes is all it takes, other times I need to speak to someone who will help me get out of the darkness, so I call my sister.

I don't know what works for you, but if your husband tends to turn into an energy vampire now and then, make sure to have an action plan that will help you minimize the impact.  Being around an energy drainer even for a shord period of time means giving him a piece of you and in order to fill up the void you need to bring your focus back to yourself as soon as possible and do the much needed healing.