/g/ - girl talk

>>196103
some webpages to consider
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/emotional-freedom/201101/the-5-kinds-emotional-vampires-you-could-encounter
https://www.lifehack.org/884656/emotional-vampires

>>196104
Never heard this term before and this list struck a chord with me - abt my current relationship , lol.

Weirdly specific thread but I’ll bite. My dad is a full blown Narc with severe Military PTSD for flavor and my childhood was completely emotionally exhausting because of this. I spent almost all my waking hours in fear of setting him off, which would literally always happen no matter what, and developed a lot of issues because of it. If I accidentally slammed a kitchen cabinet I would end up cornered while he screamed about how awful I was for half an hour. I basically spent the first two decades of my life walking around like a ghost. I never felt fully present in anything I did because I had to give literally all of my energy to keep him happy. My parents made it very clear at a very young age that I was the emotional backbone of the family and that without me they would kill themselves. I only very recently cut my dad out of my life and even though there are a lot of very hard days I already have so much more energy.

The only reason I was able to keep somewhat sane and not develop a personality disorder myself was because I kept my cards very close to my chest. My parents were truly awful to me but they were sloppy too; I learned that I couldn’t rely on them pretty early. Giving them any info about who I was would backfire so I just stopped completely at age 11. I never talked to them about my dreams, my fears, what made me happy, my friends, who I was dating unless it was absolutely necessary information. It’s a painful process and lead to intimacy issues later on but it was for my survival and now that I’m an adult I feel like I’m able to identify what makes me me a lot easier than other abuse victims. I was able to retain a sense of self, which is one of the most dangerous things a Narc can take away, and it helped keep me afloat then and now that I’m transitioning out of that life. Grey rocking and acting genuinely stupid are also good ways to disarm narcs. Grey rocking is better if you have to live with them, as they won’t have anything to feed off of. I started doing this a lot more in high school and college and the narc rages from my dad lessened a lot because I wasn’t crying for him anymore. Acting stupid and oblivious to insults is a lot better for narcs you only have to interact with sometimes, because if you’re only giving positive reactions they can’t feed off that energy either. I’ve had some pretty nasty insults thrown my way that I was able to disarm because I just acted stupid and completely “misread” the situation. Whatever asshole who’s trying to tear you down usually ends up frustrated and if you’re around others they usually gravitate towards you more because you’re able to lease the tension. My parents really fucked me up but I think I have a much better sense of who I can’t and can’t trust now and it has allowed me to escape potentially abusive situations before they turn into actual abuse.

>>196103
Interesting thread and cool thread pic! This got me thinking, what if you realize that you're the emotional vampire in other people's lives (namely The Victim)?

The moment I saw this mentioned I just couldn’t stop thinking about these 3 girls I used to be friends with in school.
>The first vampire
I met was during a really low time in my childhood, i was completely isolated because a mix of a dumbass argument and racism.
We became friends because neither of us had any other option, she made me want to sleep forever, she would constantly try to make me do stuff, she was also always getting money from me and I honestly gave her the money because i thought she would pay me someday, I also pitied her a bit.
She stuck to me like a tick, also talking about wanting to get raped and such, I was weirded out because I wanted to protect the little innocence I had as much as possible.
We would be walking around the mall and she would suddenly be like:
>that guy is pretty
>I bet he wants to rape you/me/us
It was honestly gross and tiresome, nowadays I feel quite bad about it because she probably went through something really bad and didn’t know how to cope.
I cut ties with her, thankfully, because I ended up telling my parents that I preferred changing schools, she went to my house one night, after talking to my mother, because she got her number and would text her every single day, it was like 8 pm, she lived far away from my house, she was crying and told me that my new uniform was ugly and that I would never make friends at my new school.
I’m glad I never talked to her again and I never even tried looking for her, those were some really tiresome years for a kid and i refuse to relive such a thing.
>The second vampire
was a younger girl that I got to be friends with from my last year in my first school until my first year in college.
She was constantly talking about being the best at everything and she was also picking fights with her ex-best friend, I think she liked her but since being gay is wrong in our country, she took her own feelings and turned them into this tense competition mixed with obsession.
She was always trying to be the very best at anything without any sort of guidance, like, she wanted to be the best artist or to be like any artist that caught her eye, and she wouldn’t take any art courses because she wanted to be naturally great at it.
And while I understand why it’s awkward asking for your parents to pay so you can better yourself at your hobbies, and being proud of the process you’ve made on your own, she was just obnoxious about it.
She would try making me be her kind of student, but since I’ve never been that much into turning everything into a competition, I never truly paid enough attention to her pushing.
She would steal my stuff and to be honest, I was so already tired of such things that I just never called her out.
She would obsessively tell me about whatever girl she was kind of into, she would befriend that girl and then she would get obsessed with her.
Last time it was a girl that was as obsessed with her as she herself was with her.
It was awkward as fuck and she would try to get my approval on stuff like kissing the girl or even talking with her about private stuff, she would also try to push me into doing stuff like joining her in hobbies so I could hangout with both of them, and opening a whole ass YouTube channel to make “le funny” videos making fun of her obsession (girl).
I felt extremely weirded out about it because I felt more like a justification or scapegoat in case shit hit the fan with the girl she was into, and not like a friend joining her friend’s circle so we could all have fun.
We stopped talking kind of organically. I know she was a bit awkward but my friends would tell me that she was outright weird or creepy, sometimes I wonder why but I never asked for details.
>The third vampire
was a victim, i met her in my new school, she was part of the group of miscellaneous kind of people that didn’t really fit in with the bigger groups, and that of course liked Japanese cartoons and comics.
She was always making up new stories about her ex-girlfriend, I don’t even know if she was a bad guy, if she groomed her or if she was this saint who loved her back.
I just knew she was older, like 20 years old at the time and we were 16/17 years old, she was always telling me about how her ex was sick, like really sick, that she had a bunch of open heart surgeries and stuff.
She told me that her ex was abusive and then she would flip flop her stories about her.
I honestly didn’t care because I didn’t know how to even respond, one day she would miss her and love her to bits, then the next day she would be deadpan and say that her ex abused her.
I tried really hard to keep myself more close to the other people in my classroom, but talking with her was kind of like a stigma? Nobody really wanted to be her friend, and while I understand that she was tiresome at times, I felt this kind of sense of duty, trying to make her be friends with everyone else.
In the end we also stopped talking kind of organically, we never really had anything to talk about because she was the one doing the talking.
I think that dealing with emotional vampires is so difficult, back then I would just block myself and hope for the discourse of the day to end, I would also just look for excuses to not do stuff like getting into some random hobby that I didn’t care about.
Sometimes I don’t know if I was a shit friend who never talked and made others do the talking to fill the silence.

>>196106
How is it weirdly specific, we all know/knew at least one of these draining types.
>>196115
If you don't know one of these types, it could be you.
>share tips on how to avoid or disarm these types of people
Just completely stop contact with anyone who is a persistent downer. I'm lucky not to have any in my family.

>>196162
Doublepost, I can assure you you will never regret kicking those people out of your life, no matter how close friends you were and for how long. It's like a weight being lifted off of your shoulders.

>>196166
Are you introverted?

>>196106
>My parents made it very clear at a very young age that I was the emotional backbone of the family and that without me they would kill themselves.
My parents have said this to me before. It sucks. I'm sorry anon.

>>196115
I think you can always change for the better, you just gotta know how

>>196180
No, I just value my limited time on Earth too much to waste it on things that don't give enough return for the effort.

>>196184
Bless this mentality.

>>196259
tbh, I would've disagreed with this not even a year ago, but after cutting my emotional vampire friend of 10-11 years out of my life I whole-heartedly believe this to be true. He was a victim type, always would complain about being poor, not being able to get a gf, and how he felt like his life was going nowhere etc. I sorta sympathized with him for a time since I had similar issues, but whereas I could occasionally vent before trying to change things and/or focusing on what I had that did make me happy he eventually got to a point where he literally couldn't talk about anything else. The worst part was when he would use anything good that happened to me against me. I finally get a better paying job? Time for him to cry about how he's still poor. I get my first bf? Time to whine about how "pathetic" he is for being virgin at 20 years old (kek). I have some fond memories of him when we were still friends, he was closest friend I had too, but I don't regret cutting him out at all.