Spotting Your Vampire

The core of vampirism is low self-worth. Vampires are like little children desperate and hungry for love and attention.

Vampires are mythological creatures who subsist by feeding on the life essentials, like blood, of living creatures. They are animated corpses who rise from the grave at night to suck blood from sleeping people.

The idea of vampires started to become popular in the 18^th century in Western Europe. They believed vampires have no reflection in the mirror and they could be warded off by apotropiacs like garlic, wild rose branches, and hawthorn plants.

In modern fiction, vampires are depicted as suave and charismatic blood sucking creatures.

But do vampires really exist?

Of course they don’t exist in real life. But we do all have vampire attributes and we are all personal vampires to somebody.

Vampires are the difficult persons in our lives. Much like the fictional character who doesn't have a mirror reflection, difficult persons cannot self-reflect. We all are vampires at one point, to one person, to a certain level.

Personal vampires are infectious. They either attack your immune system by stressing you out or they pass on the virus to you and influence you by their ways.

There are three types of vampires:

 

1. Pure Vampires

                -always difficult to all people

                -they think and feel that they are really good people and are always right

2. Personal Vampires

                -your vampire may not be a vampire to another person

                -they press a certain personal or sensitive button in us

3. Partial Vampires

                -all of us are this

But before we judge others as vampires or tag others as difficult persons, let us first look at ourselves. Perhaps, there are also areas in our lives that we must first fix or remove before we fix others’ or remove the speck from their eyes.

It is very important that we spot the vampires in our lives so we will be able to protect ourselves with the right apotropaics or ways to ward them off, without having to hurt them or allowing ourselves to be continually hurt.

There are eight common vampires:

1. Criticizing Vampire

                -it would seem that their divine mission is to correct the world

                -they always feel the need to make others feel small so they become big in others eyes

                -they think they’re going to explode if they don’t air their criticism or unsolicited correction

2. Controlling Vampire

                -they use intimidation, guilt, anger to manipulate your emotion

                -they cannot execute their good intention without hurting others

                -they’re like children that if you don’t give in to their plea or want they will whine or cry

3. Contradicting Vampire

                -they will disagree with you because for them “it will just not work”

                -they’re not open to new ideas

                -they are “that’s difficult, let’s not do that,” as opposed to, “that’s challenging, but we can find a way and do it”

                -they’re like children trapped in adult human bodies, they have good intention but they don’t know how to execute them

4. Clinging Vampire

                -they’re like parasites looking for hosts

                -his/her self-esteem is totally dependent on others, until they smother others

5. Crying Vampire

                -they’re overly sensitive people

                -they easily get hurt and they suck the energy out of you by crying

6. Complaining Vampire

                -wherever you put them they just love complaining and whining anytime about whatever

                -they easily lose interest and tend to be unappreciative or ungrateful
                -they easily look older than their ages

                -they are not aware that they have choices… to choose to be happy or to stop or to change

7. Coward Vampire

                -they don’t know how to say NO at the right time with the right reason

                -they love pleasing other people, that they are no longer able to attend to their accepted responsibilities

                -they tend to become liabilities instead of assets

                -they easily get burnt out

8. Con Vampire

                -can be very charming, kind, and good

                -they are good at convincing people, but they are also very good at telling lies after lies after lies

                -they are capable of making people believe them in the midst of their doubts, because he is good at supporting one lie with nine others

                -pathological liars

These difficult people becomes our vampires because they suck the energy out of us when they press our personal buttons.

The core of vampirism is low self-worth. Vampires are like little children desperate and hungry for love and attention.

One of their biggest problem is they cannot see their reflections in the mirror. That is why it is very important that we actively take the role of spotting them.

Once we find them and do our best to understand them—that we all have past and wounds or are going through something difficult at that moment—then we can help them by providing the right apotropaic to help them take off their masks, cloaks, and fangs that make them vampires to others, or if not, for us to put emotional space between us and them without having to cut relationships with them.

In fiction, once a vampire always a vampire. But in real stories, there’s hope. We can change! We have choices—to grow, be happy, improve, which company to be in.

Before we spot our vampires, it is also very important that we take the time to first pause and self-reflect. Sometimes the weaknesses of others that irritate us are the same unacknowledged weaknesses that we have.

As we assess ourselves, ask the right questions and totally take off our blindfolds. We cannot lie to ourselves; not acknowledging our defects will only worsen us. Accepting that we have problems to fix is the first step to solving them, to improvement.

Our illnesses or defects are not who we are supposed to be. Rather, they are the ones keeping us from who we are supposed to be.

Also, these vampires or difficult persons will help us see ourselves clearly and know ourselves better.

We are all vampires to somebody else. But if we start thirsting for the blood of Jesus and desire to have it pour on us—on our wounds, on our confusion, on our hopelessness—Jesus’ blood can surely cleanse us and make us anew (Revelations 1:5, “To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood.”)

Jesus doesn't care where we have been and what we have been through… All He cares about and sees clearly is our potential and the direction we can take to the place we are supposed to be going—in His kingdom of eternal joy and love.

We can all change! It’s not the person per se that makes him a vampire, but his behavior. We are all boxes of possibilities… Don’t worry, we can all change for the better—if we want to and act upon it.

(Second installment, click Protecting Yourself From Vampires )