7 Psychic Vampire Symptoms: How Psychic Attacks Work

In Part 1 of this series, we explore the world of the vampire archetype, especially the energy vampire.

Here in Part 2, we’ll take a closer look at psychic vampire symptoms, including the common signs that signify we’re under attack.

We’ll also examine how psychic vampires work on an unconscious level.

Let’s dive in …

CONTENTS

What are Psychic Vampires?

A vampire is an archetype in the collective unconscious. This archetype has numerous variations including the emotional, energetic, and psychic vampire. All of these variations draw psychic energy from an individual.

That is, life force energy is transferred from one individual to another, but not vice versa.

This psychic phenomenon manifests as a function of psychological trauma. That is, trauma invites this archetypal force into the psyche and then “possesses” the individual.

7 Potential Psychic Vampires Symptoms

Please keep in mind that a phenomenon like psychic vampires occurs at an archetypal and, therefore, mostly unconscious level.

If you don’t stay aware of this, you can easily make it “personal,” which will only trigger other archetypal patterns within your psyche. (For example, you’ll become the “helpless victim” or “innocent one” archetype.)

The key is to simply observe this type of psychic phenomenon from a state of neutrality.

How do you know if an energy vampire has stolen your light and energy?

Here are seven potential psychic vampire symptoms:

Sign 1: Chronic Feelings of Fatigue

When you interact with a specific person, you’re always left feeling drained while they feel energized.

Note: Carl Jung noted that extroverts draw energy from others while introverts draw energy from themselves.¹ So at a very basic level, extroversion can be interpreted as a form of psychic vampirism. However, here, we’re examining more of the extreme cases.

Sign 2: Intense Feelings of Self-Doubt

After engaging with a psychic vampire, you wrestle with strong feelings of self-doubt and lack confidence at an almost unbearable level.

Sign 3: Unusually Poor Self-Image

You hate looking at yourself in the mirror or you reject your self-image entirely while the psychic vampire is obsessed with their image (for example, on social media).

Sign 4: Unrelenting Feelings of Shame and Guilt

It’s normal to feel shame and guilt for certain behaviors, but when you’re in the field of a psychic vampire, that feeling of shame and guilt is highly elevated; it becomes pervasive, persistent, and unrelenting.

Sign 5: A Constant Feeling of Lack

Compared to the psychic vampire, you feel like you have nothing. In fact, a theme of lack may run through much of your life experience (while the other person experiences “abundance”.)

Sign 6: Frequent Feelings of Inadequacy

When you’re around this archetype, you feel completely inadequate and incompetent.

Sign 7: A Prevailing Sense of Impending Doom

A feeling of impending doom is often an unconscious response to a psychic attack. When the body’s energy field is being invaded or drained, it can feel like “life is over” and that there’s “no reason for living.” Neurotic fear, when you feel immobilized and unable to take action, could be another related sign of a psychic attack.

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There are many other psychic vampire symptoms, and just because you’re experiencing any or all of the above, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a psychic vampire in your midst. Discernment, as always, is necessary.

But most of us can relate to the above experiences to varying degrees.

Philip Burne-Jones – The Vampire (1897)

Psychic Vampire Symptoms and Signs within Families

If you wrestle with high levels of self-doubt while your sibling or parents are bustling with confidence, more than likely, you’re under the influence of the Black Sheep archetype.

You have unknowingly become the psychic dumping ground for those around you.

This is a very common phenomenon (also related to the orphan archetype) that occurs in many homes, especially those with multiple siblings. One sibling excels to a high degree while the others languish.

On the surface, this may appear like “healthy competition,” but if you examine the family dynamics more closely, one child is stuck playing the black sheep.

The solution to this psychic dynamic is to reclaim your “inner gold”—that is, to recollect your projections.

6 Ways Psychic Vampires Draw Our Life Force

Okay, now let’s examine some of the ways the psychic vampire archetype operates.

In brief, these methods include:

Manipulation
Intimidation
Touch
Emotional Evocation
Psychic Attacks (directed thought)
Seduction

Ultimately, all of these ways represent additional psychic vampire symptoms. For example, when someone is intimidating you, psychically, they also attempting to steal your light.

Remember, the goal here is to increase our awareness of what’s happening beneath the surface.

Tactic 1: Manipulation

I’ve come to view praise as a highly destructive psychological pattern in modern culture.

Praise is tricky because our minds associate positive attributes with it. Parents feel good about themselves when they praise their child’s character. And the inflated child feels good when praised.

The shadow implications behind praise, however, are monumental. We’ve already learned from psychologist Carol Dweck’s research that character praising fosters a fixed mindset that impairs a child’s ability to learn and grow throughout life.

But from my experience, this is just the beginning. The unconscious intention behind most forms of praise is manipulation. That is, the Trickster archetype uses praise as a tool to get others to do what it wants as well as to steal their light.

What do I mean? Let’s look at some examples …

Praising Children

Parents praise their children to get them to behave in a certain manner.

We often raise High-Chair Tyrants by “serving” our children, and then we don’t know how to handle the tyrant’s demands.

But by praising the tyrant, and telling them they are “good,” we are subtly forcing them to repress this inner tyrant archetype.

Then, they become more compliant and repress aspects of the tyrant. This repression helps explain why the shadow in most individuals grows large by age 18.

Praising Adults

Genuine adults don’t seek or desire praise. As mature adults, we do what we do as a consequence of what we are.

The child in us, however, might have been conditioned for praise. So if someone praises us for something we are doing—for example, for being generous, diligent, or disciplined—it can activate a child archetype within us.

Magically, these innate qualities begin to leave us. Then, we struggle with discipline and critical thinking, and we don’t know why.

With the Child in charge, most of us act for the approval of others—not by our “inner directive.” In psychology, this is called being driven by extrinsic instead of intrinsic motivations.

If the child stays at the forefront of one’s consciousness, it means the Puer Aeternus archetype is in control. This is commonly referred to as the Eternal Child or Peter Pan syndrome.

Seeking approval creates an unhealthy dependency on others, stripping us of the qualities of adulthood: autonomy, responsibility, and inner strength.

Praise has a way of triggering the Innocent One archetype in us that then falls prey to the Manipulator in others. The Innocent One and the Manipulator are bipolar shadows of the Magician archetype.

Tactic 2: Intimidation

Archetypes like the Sadist, or its younger counterpart, the Bully, love using intimidation to draw energy and light from others. At its core, the bully is an energy vampire.

In a “civilized” culture, intimidation isn’t always blatant. Instead, this form of aggression expresses itself through unconscious cues: a quick downward glance, crossing the arms, a threatening tone of voice, a gentle smirk, or an air of arrogance.

The common term for this psychic vampire sign is “gaslighting” and it is extraordinarily pervasive in today’s society—on a global scale.

When someone puts another person down (judges them), they are attempting to steal their light. When someone unconsciously tells you, “Not for you,” they are trying to psychically steal from you. (For example, “You will own nothing and be happy.”)

This form of energetic and psychic vampirism most often occurs when an individual has a lot of repressed envy, fear, and anger.

When a person sees something they want in another, and they can’t fully acknowledge their desire, envy, or jealousy, they will unconsciously try to steal it from them.

Tactic 3: Touch

This psychic vampire sign is like something out of science fiction. I would never have believed it was valid before developing energetic sensitivity through various qigong and neigong practices.

While qigong is about the cultivation of life force or chi energy, there are dark art techniques for stealing energy from others. I once met a seasoned qigong practitioner who claimed to have first-hand accounts of these dark arts.

Even with the most gentle touch (or just proximity) one can steal energy from another and block the flow of energy in others as well. These patterns are quintessential of the psychic vampire.

Do you recall as a child, not wanting to be hugged by your parents or other relatives when they came over for the holidays?

Parents often shame their children for this behavior. (“Go hug your grandmother.”) As a consequence, many of us forget about our natural aversion to hugging.

But the reality is that most kids don’t want to hug and it’s not because they are being nasty, unloving, or uncaring.

Consciously, they don’t know why, but it’s because they’re still more intuitively connected to their energy field. Their unconscious (body) is telling them to stay away.

How Parents Unknowingly Take Energy From Their Children

If you’re a parent, have you ever come home from a bad day at work and couldn’t wait to hug your child?

Do you feel like hugging and being around your kid(s) instantly makes you feel better? Have you reflected on why that might be so?

Parents frequently “steal” the energy from their children through hugs, kisses, and touching (without knowing it, of course).

Kissing a child on the top of the head, for example, is one common way to draw their energy.

Baihui Point at the crown of the head

The crown of the head is called the baihui point in Chinese medicine and the Taoist arts. The baihui point is the spiritual access point for a person’s higher consciousness as well.

Another way parents and elders psychically steal the energy of children, especially babies, is through their feet.

Consciously, a mother might kiss a baby’s foot because “it’s so cute.” Unconsciously, however, they are drawing energy from the child’s primary access point, called K1 in acupuncture, Yongquan, or the bubbling well.

Yougquan or Bubbling Well Point

If you’re a parent, when you feel like you’re tired or experiencing emotional imbalance, consider staying clear of your kids until you restore yourself.

Children have considerably more energy than adults (more Jing or sexual/life essence and Yang Chi), so it’s natural for adults to habitually go to “energize” themselves when they feel depleted.

Watch Out for Anger, Guilt, or Shame

If you’re a parent reading this, it’s easy to get angry about what was expressed above (representing a shadow trigger) or feel guilt and shame, perhaps even a feeling of hopelessness.

Remember that everyone unconsciously engages in these psychic activities: your parents did it to their parents … on and on throughout history. These psychic vampire symptoms are archetypal, not personal.

The idea here is to bring what’s happening unconsciously to consciousness. As you begin to detect and observe this type of psychic phenomenon, you’re already on the road to changing this unconscious archetypal pattern.

Simply start from where you are right now. The past is in the past.

Tactic 4: Emotional Evocation

The primary goal of psychic vampires is to trigger an emotional reaction—the more intense the emotion, the stronger the energetic charge.

Weaponizing Empathy

Shame and guilt are two of the most potent weapons a psychic vampire can use to sap your life force.

How could you…
You should know better…
Who do you think we are…

Phrases like these can collapse your energetic system, leaving you susceptible to further psychic attacks.

Official narratives and propaganda often use this tactic consciously.

When officialdom wants to change the behaviors of the masses, they use campaigns that associate shame and guilt with the old behaviors. (The entire “green agenda” is an expression of this type of psychic attack.)

They also evoke outrage to manipulate people and throw them out of balance.

Irritate, Annoy, Shock, and Surprise

Another tactic psychic vampires use includes irritating a person, as well as surprising, shocking, or terrifying them.

Again, with babies (who are like infinite balls of energy), beyond the perceived innocence of games like peek-a-boo, there’s a darker shadow intent.

Surprising, shocking, and tickling are effective patterns of the psychic vampire archetype. How?

Tickling itself is a behavioral pattern of the sadist archetype. It’s a form of torture, especially for a helpless baby who can’t escape or defend itself.

If you look closely (and with neutrality) in the eyes of a baby or child as you tickle them, you will see fear. Conversely, if you carefully observe in the eyes of the tickler, you’ll see a Sadist.

If you doubt that tickling induces fear, go to tickle a child and watch their shoulders. The child’s shoulders immediately rise.

Or even better, imagine someone tickling you. Notice the tension around your kidneys and the muscles surrounding your spine.

All of these indicators relate to the physiology of fear. In the dark arts, if you can evoke fear, it’s easier to psychically drain a person’s energy.

Tactic 5: Psychic Attacks

One of the most common tools of psychic vampires is the direct use of thought forms. A vampire will send “psychic signals” directed at a specific individual.

Although we might prefer to believe that our thoughts are private, this simply isn’t the case. As Nobel laureate Sir John Carew Eccles discovered decades ago, the mind is like a sending and receiving center.²

Thoughts as a Directed Weapon

We’ve all experienced a person from our past entering our stream of consciousness. These experiences aren’t random. In most cases, this occurs because the other person is thinking about you.

In the case of psychic vampires, they will repeatedly direct negative thoughts and ill wishes toward you. The challenge here is that the individual sending these negative thoughts is often unaware of it.

Again, this type of psychic attack is most often unconscious. Keep in mind that approximately 95% of thoughts occur below our conscious radar.³

In witchcraft, there are specific spells that are used to psychically draw energy from others. Because we are mostly unconscious of this occult knowledge, the archetypes within us can conduct these practices without our awareness.

Worrying as a Subtle Form of Psychic Vampirism

For example, someone who often worries about another person (including a mother) is likely unconscious of how a part of them wishes another harm (perhaps from being unconscious of their resentment).

A part of this person consciously wants the individual they are worrying about to be safe or careful, while another disowned part might want them to get hit by a car.

The individual, however, is only conscious of the positive intention because they haven’t integrated their shadow yet.

Tactic 6: Seduction

We already covered seduction as a form of psychic attack in Part 1 on energy vampires.

Modern culture is obsessed with image and sexual attraction. (This is a massive topic that deserves separate treatment.)

The intense desire for sexual attraction in an individual is largely an expression of trauma and old psychological wounds. Social media, and perhaps the Internet in general, seem to be amplifying this type of trauma.

Healing these psychic wounds is a necessary part of inner work as one moves toward mature adulthood.

The Masochist and the Addicted Lover archetype is the counterpart to the Seductress. That is, while the seductress (or Succubus archetype) wants to drain your energy, the Masochist is a willing participant.

How to Stop Being a Psychic Vampire

The first step is to realize that vampirism is a psychic fact. That is, psychic vampires express a universal archetypal pattern within the psyche.

At some level, everyone is a psychic vampire.

That is, under the right conditions, we are each susceptible to unconsciously stealing energy and light from others via the vampire archetype.

But it’s also accurate to say that no one is a psychic vampire.

Vampires, witches, and warlocks are archetypal forces that abide in us, but it’s not what we are.

If we remain unconscious of them, however, they can operate within us whether we want them to or not.

The key, then, is to become conscious of these archetypal forces within us.

How to Cultivate Your Life Force Energy

So here’s the good news: there are methods for cultivating life force energy within us.

Qigong and Nei Gong represent vast systems of theories and practices designed to open up your body’s energy channels and cultivate the energy running through you. If you’re new to qigong, I suggest you find a local class taught by a skilled practitioner.

A foundational practice in many qigong systems is called Zhan Zhuang, or standing like a tree.

Through this practice, you learn how to align your posture, sink your mind into your body, and consolidate your energy.

Of the many different styles and systems I’ve studied, Zhan Zhuang has had the most impact on me physically, mentally, and emotionally.

You can get started with this in-depth, beginner’s guide to Zhan Zhuang here.

If you’re interested in additional resources, I recommend Lam Kam Chuen’s The Way of Energy and Damo Mitchell’s Daoist Nei Gong as excellent entry points into this topic.

Should You Protect Yourself From Psychic Vampires?

Overall, I don’t like the idea of “protection” from emotional, energetic, or psychic vampires. This notion can evoke tension and fear.

Fear is how energy vampires feed on us in the first place. Fear opens the doorway to a psychic attack.

When you’re in the Center—neutral, light-hearted, open, calm, alert, and free—psychic vampires can do you no harm. All of the psychic vampire symptoms fall away.

Unconscious and repressed emotions, however, make it difficult to stay neutral.

So first, develop greater emotional awareness so we can more readily connect with how we’re feeling in the moment.

If we aren’t aware of what’s happening and how a psychic vampire is trying to hook us, there’s not much we can do.

The Innocent One, the passive shadow of the Magician archetype, wants to believe everyone (especially those closest to us) is purely good. When we identify with this innocence, we certainly won’t see what’s happening in the shadows.

How to Protect Yourself from Psychic Vampire Symptoms

That said, what can you do when you observe the psychic vampire signs listed above?

Here are five methods worth experimenting with:

Ground yourself. Root yourself in your body and connect it to the earth.
Smile inwardly at your heart. Lighten up as much as possible.
Place one or both hands over your navel region. This hand position creates an energetic seal.
Own your space. Everyone has an energetic field that extends out around them. When you root yourself in your field, only the most aggressive vampires will attempt to break it.
Try a protection mudra. There are some hand positions used in Buddhist and Hindu traditions to provide psychic protection. For example:

Perhaps the single best way to ward off psychic attacks is to stay neutral. Hold to the Center.

Have Questions or Comments about Psychic Vampire Signs?

Please use the comment section at the bottom of Part 1: The Ultimate Guide to the Vampire Archetype.

7 Psychic Vampire Symptoms and How Vampires Perform Psychic Attacks