Are you tired of being around someone who makes you feel drained?
You should never allow anyone to zap your emotional energy because it ultimately affects your own health and well-being.
These 19 signs of emotional drainers are sure to tell you whether you are dealing with an emotionally draining person.
What is an emotionally draining person?
Perhaps the best way to think of emotionally draining people is as energetic vampires. Being in their presence sucks the life out of you.
They tend to be in a heightened energetic state, and often. The knock-on effect is that they pass their negative emotional state on to you.
How do you tell if someone is emotionally draining you?
Being around an emotionally draining person can quickly leave you feeling exhausted, frustrated, stressed out or even angry.
19 signs of an emotionally draining person
1) They always bring the drama
You can often spot an emotionally draining person a mile off because they have crisis after crisis.
It’s almost as though trouble and strife follow them around. And that’s what they believe.
They think the world is out to get them. In reality, they cause the majority of the drama that surrounds them.
Emotionally draining people often have high conflict personalities. So arguments, fallouts, and disputes are never far away.
They are the ones that end up in tears at the end of a night out or have a big blowout with their partner in front of everyone.
2) They’re constantly complaining about something
An emotionally draining person will complain about everything from the weather to politics.
They can spend the entire lunch moaning about the unattentive waiter. They’ll spend hours letting you know how their vacation was totally ruined by a crying baby on their flight.
The list goes on and on.
Looking on the bright side of life isn’t a concept they are familiar with. Sadly what they fail to realize is that what you focus on becomes bigger.
As they have their eyes solely fixed upon the negative in life, that is what is reflected all around them.
3) They don’t take responsibility for anything
If you were to ask an emotionally draining person if they had any part in causing a problem, they’d shrug, say ‘no’ and start to reel off reasons why it was everybody else’s fault other than their own.
This is because they lack self-awareness.
They blame others for their problems instead of taking personal responsibility for their actions.
Without the clarity to be able to evaluate their own behavior, they remain clueless over how it impacts others.
4) They’re always looking for sympathy
An emotionally draining personality type tends to look for sympathy when things go wrong.
They want to be soothed. They want to be told that they’re not alone. That you understand exactly where they are coming from. That life is cruel and they deserve other people’s pity.
Unfortunately, this only serves to make matters worse. It consolidates their victim mentality.
They feel as though life is something that happens to them, and not something they have any control over.
5) They’re neurotic
Neuroticism comes will a whole host of negative emotions including:
- anger
- anxiety
- self-consciousness
- irritability
- emotional instability
- depression
Emotionally draining people can feel incredibly “highly strung”, displaying neurotic tendencies in everyday life.
They don’t respond well to stressful situations and interpret them as more threatening than they really are.
What are minor irritations to most people are hopelessly overwhelming to an emotionally draining person.
6) They make a big deal out of things that aren’t really important
Catastrophising and blowing out of proportion are common among emotionally draining people.
They tend to exaggerate small issues into huge dramas. They see every little thing as a sign of impending doom.
They get upset when someone cuts them off in traffic. They freak out when they miss their train home. They get angry when they find themselves stuck in a queue.
Basically, they get caught up in the tiny details and fail to see the much bigger picture.
7) They’re easily offended
Emotionally draining individuals are quick to take offense at everything.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a joke or a harmless comment, they’ll react negatively.
They’re hypersensitive and pick up on even the slightest hint of criticism.
They’re quick to assume the worst intentions behind your words.
They’ll often misinterpret innocent comments as being directed towards them personally.
Because deep down they are insecure within themselves, they are on high alert and think everyone is out to get them.
8) They’re pessimistic
Pessimism is another trait shared by emotionally draining personalities, or as I like to call it:
Being a bit of a negaholic.
They expect the worst to happen.
They believe that life is unfair.
They’re convinced that no one will ever love them or they are never going to be truly happy.
They’ve given up hope and resigned themselves to a life of misery.
They will tell people that they are just a realist, but they are a pessimist. They clearly don’t realize that pessimism can lead to an early death.
9) They have unrealistically high standards that no one can live up to
Perhaps one of the more surprising signs of an emotionally draining person is perfectionism.
Although perfectionism is sometimes mistaken for having high standards, it is in fact more about having impossible standards.
And when perfection cannot be met, stress, guilt, drama, and shame ensue.
They become frustrated if they cannot achieve what they set out to do. That energetic stress is incredibly draining.
10) They’re prone to mood swings
Moodiness is also a characteristic of emotionally draining people.
They are unpredictable and changeable.
They go from feeling fine to feeling miserable in seconds.
They’re prone to sudden bursts of anger and frustration.
They may seem like they’re always in a bad mood, or the slightest thing that happens has the potential for them to turn on you.
Emotional drainers often seem to take their moods out on those around them.
They tend to blame everyone else for their problems and they don’t realize that they themselves are responsible for their feelings.
11) It’s always “me, me, me”
One of those signs of a draining friend is that you always have to talk about their problems and never yours.
They can talk about themselves for hours, as it is their favorite subject. But they show very little interest in your life.
Emotional drainers tend to take over conversations, they don’t listen or respond appropriately, and they often seem to lack empathy.
They tend to be self-centered and selfish to be around.
They lack the ability to look beyond themselves and understand that other people are as equally important as themselves.
12) They act illogically
There is no denying that human beings are emotional creatures. It’s one of the things that make us special — being able to feel.
But emotions ultimately just signal that our bodies send to us, they are not concrete facts.
We’re all prone to getting caught up in our emotions from time to time.
But emotionally draining people can quickly get swept away by their own feelings, and lose the perspective to see how it clouds their judgment.
They may think something is true because they feel it. This can cause them to act illogically or in a way that totally lacks common sense.
The problem is that they can’t approach things with logic because they are lost in their own emotions.
13) They’re high maintenance
The problem with people who don’t take responsibility for themselves is that they expect other people to step in and do the hard work for them.
As a result, emotionally draining people can be very high maintenance.
They need constant reassurance and validation. They always want to know what others think of them. They need to be told how wonderful they are all the time.
If you are in an emotionally exhausting relationship you may find that you are the one who is expected to put in most of the effort.
They are incredibly demanding of your energy, time, and effort in an unbalanced way that feels very one sided.
14) They can be manipulative
People who are emotionally draining are often manipulative.
They use emotions and guilt to control others.
They will try to convince you that you should agree with them, even when you don’t. They’ll make you feel bad if you say no to something.
They’ll manipulate you into doing things against your better judgment. They might lie to you to get what they want.
In extreme cases, they may even try to isolate you from friends and family so that you won’t see how destructive their behavior is.
15) They are excessively emotional
Life with an emotionally draining person by your side can feel like an emotional rollercoaster.
Being a highly sensitive person comes with many positives.
For example, being intuitive, thoughtful, compassionate, loyal, empathetic, and very in tune to others’ needs.
But with emotionally draining people they’re not sensitive, they are overly emotional. And this creates the opposite effect.
They display a range of extreme emotions. They may be prone to crying at the drop of a hat or starting screaming matches when they don’t get their own way.
But they cannot see past these feelings. Rather than make them more sensitive to others, it cuts them off from seeing anyone else’s point of view other than their own.
16) They have unrealistic expectations of love and intimacy
Because emotionally draining people often lack self-responsibility, they expect others to swoop in and save them.
In relationships, this can mean they form very unrealistic impressions of what a partner should do.
One of the signs of an emotionally draining relationship is unmet expectations. It can feel like nothing is good enough for them.
So how do you fix an emotionally draining relationship?
When you’re dealing with an emotionally exhausting person it’s easy to become frustrated and even feel helpless. You may even be tempted to throw in the towel and give up.
I want to suggest doing something different.
It’s something I learned from the world-renowned shaman Rudá Iandê. He taught me that the way to find love and intimacy is not what we have been culturally conditioned to believe.
As Rudá explains in this mind blowing free video, many of us chase love in a toxic way because we’re not taught how to love ourselves first.
So, if you want to solve your connection to others, I’d recommend starting with yourself first and taking Rudá’s incredible advice.
Here’s a link to the free video once again.
17) They’re attention seekers
Emotionally draining people crave the limelight.
They need constant validation from others. And they often take advantage of those around them to get it.
They may seek out opportunities to tell everyone about their problems. Or they may complain about everything going wrong in their lives.
This is all part of their attempt to gain attention and approval.
If they cannot get positive attention, then they will often make do with negative attention instead and stir up problems.
18) They’re easily annoyed
Do you feel like you are constantly walking on eggshells around some people?
Perhaps you always feel like you have to watch what you say and do around them, as they very quickly get mad at you over nothing.
An emotionally draining person’s tendency to overreact can lead to outbursts of anger.
And they often lash out at others without thinking through what they are saying or doing.
19) They trigger your emotions
Whilst the signs of an emotionally draining person up until now have focused on them, this one is more about their impact on you.
You can tell when you are around an emotionally draining person as your body will give you plenty of clues.
You may feel drained, zapped, and defeated after spending time with them.
They might put your nerves on edge and create a sense of stress that you feel as tension in the body.
Their emotional responses may also trigger uncharacteristic emotions in you too as you react to them.