Psychic Vampire

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When I was between 15-20 years old, I believed I was a psychic vampire. It is kind of difficult for me to share this because I have always been embarrassed about this phase in my life. Coming to terms with my autism, however, it is starting to make more sense.

In case you don't know what I mean when I say 'psychic vampire,' I believed I was someone who needed to 'feed' off of the energy of other people in order to be mentally and physically healthy. Nothing to do with drinking blood. This usually meant spending time around people and trying to socialize (poorly). You might have heard of the reality TV series 'Mad, Mad House,' where a group of people go to live in a house of eccentric others. One of the eccentric others was Don Henrie, a psychic vampire. This is not where I heard of the concept, but it is a good place to start if you are interested or confused. I don't think psychic vampirism (in the sense I'm describing it) is real anymore.

Anyhow, it wasn't the 'feeding' off of people part that made me identify with psychic vampirism as much as it was the 'otherness' part. I believed my soul was not human, and it didn't fit into my human body. Because of this, I had lower energy and needed more support from others. At the same time, my non-human soul didn't understand how to interact with other humans. I didn't get social norms, sarcasm, drama, and generally had a difficult time with expressing myself. I also had sensory difficulties, such as being averse to bright lights, being sensitive to certain textures, being able to notice small changes in the environment, etc...

Now that I'm getting older and have more information about my autism (I had no idea that I was autistic back then), I can see how some of these 'vampire' traits are really just autism traits that I misinterpreted.

I think it is interesting that, in the absence of an explanation for my struggles in childhood and high school, I came up with a solution that explained it away and made it easier for me to cope. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

While I would not have considered myself a "psychic vampire", I can relate to the feeling of otherness compared to most people. In fact, I still feel something other than human even now (though what that would be I don't know) Not any more or less than human, just different. I wasn't officially diagnosed as ASD - Level 2 until a few months ago, and that has helped me to see my own behaviors and those of average people in a different context.

I also have sensory processing issues, so it feels like I'm not fully connected to the body I occupy. Not dysmorphic, its just that it seems to take me a lot of extra effort to make it work like an average person. I also feel like I am pretending to pass as "normal" or "human" when I go out in public. (no odd behaviors, make eye contact...but not to much, animate the face etc.

I also feel that everything is too bright, too loud, too fast...too much.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

I've always felt a sense of "otherness" around coworkers, family and friends. By the time I was in high school, I thought that I was somehow "broken and defective". I was in my fifties before I received an official diagnosis. This made me feel better about myself, but only in the sense that I now have an explanation as to why life seemed to be an endless experience of me being "on the outside looking in". Nothing supernatural, just a statistical outlier.

I suppose, now that I think more on it, I do relate to the vampire bit. I prefer to go out at night, I sleep during the day. (unless life or my job demands otherwise) I do that because its easier and a lot more comfortable to be awake and in the world when its dark, quieter and there are a lot fewer people to worry about interacting with.

I'm still learning to cope with it, so I don't know how much help I can be to you, but feel free to talk to me if you'd like.

The metaphor of a vampire does creep into my mind.

There was a bullying low level supervisor in our job who could "suck the air out of the room". One occasion in particular his negativity just made the time it took for the crew to do a certain small project seem like eternity. On the way home I heard a lady on a radio talk show talk about "psychological vampires in your life". Thought to myself that that describes this supervisor guy- feeding off the energy of others. Don't know if that even is the same thing that that lady was talking about, but the metaphor worked for me about this supervisor guy.

But I don't think of myself as feeding off the emotions of others.

However I found myself getting hooked on the Twilight Saga, of all things (I guess I like Kristen Stewert), and the whole rivalry between the two guys over her: the American Indian teenage warewolf guy, and the high school vampire guy (who is actually a few centuries beyond teenage in age). The warewolf guy is textbook ADHD. And the warewolf boyfriend has certain aspie traits. So I sort slipped into viewing the stupid story as a metaphor for neurodiversity, and being about a highschool girl who likes misfit guys, and is torn between an ADHD guy and a aspie guy. Being an aspie I identify with the vampire guy. So yeah, sometimes I can indentify with vampires.

Psychic vampires are a thing, but from what I've heard of them I think it's kinda funny to equate Autistic traits with them. I get the 'otherness' part though. I think I would have been better off if I had come up with something like that though.

There was always a sense of being different but at the same time I thought how I experienced things was like everyone else. So I ended up beating myself up for not being able to handle what everyone else seemed to be. This of course led me to do everything I could to appear unfazed, unbothered, and contrary to how I actually felt. In any case the only thing I ever came up with to explain myself that wasn't self depreciating and negative, was an idea that maybe I was supposed to be a cat (or some other animal) and I'd just ended up in the wrong body.

I'm the opposite in terms of the vampire part. Other people actually make me lose my own energy so I deal with my own emotions in private.

Though I can agree a lot when it comes to not feeling human. My greatest fantasies and internal narratives always involve me being something else, un-human, like an animal or monster with some kind of ability to protect myself in the absence of an organized society. My needs are met by myself and not by a greater society.

Though due to the fact I am human and I'm biologically programmed to desire other people, that need in me is much lower than in many other people. Either that or I'm just so disconnected from others interpersonally that my brain's loneliness center gave up. As I always say, Asperger's syndrome like being on a deserted island where you know other people exist but can never contact them and feel empty.

Yes, I did this in my late teens before discovering autism. I stumbled across an old book published in the late 90's entitled "The Highly Sensitive Person" by Dr. Elaine Aaron. I was just walking past a shelf in a book store and the title jumped out at me. The book was essentially the author's explanation of this trait she believed she had discovered that affected about 20% of the population, which she labeled "high sensitivity". The basic premise was that people who are highly sensitive are very sensitive to the world around them, including physical sensations (read: sensory issues), feeling "othered" and like they don't fit in with everyone else, being highly attuned to others' unexpressed emotional states (i.e being able to "feel" the emotions others are experiencing), and generally seeming to experience life more intensely than "normal" people.

There was a quiz at the beginning of the book (linked here: https://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/) which allowed you to "self-diagnose" yourself as an HSP (although it wasn't really a "diagnosis" in that Aaron didn't believe the trait to be a disorder, rather a different way of being). The cutoff for high sensitivity was 12, and I scored a 21. If you look through the questions however, you'll see how many of them could be answered in the affirmative by people who have autism.

Regarding the "empathic" ability to "feel others' emotions", I've never been one to believe in supernatural or spiritual things, but I cannot deny that I experience this phenomenon, as does my sister. She can tell when I'm sad, even when I'm smiling and pretending to be happy. When I worked in an office, I could tell immediately upon entering the room if my colleague with whom I shared a space was having a good day, because my mood instantly changed. If she was frustrated, I would suddenly start feeling tense and anxious or on edge out of the blue, and when she was angry, I was angry, even when I had been fine five minutes before. I don't know how else to explain this experience other than to call it being "empathic".

These days I do not believe I'm a highly sensitive person, I just think I identified with it so strongly because many of the symptoms are so closely aligned with autism, but for at least a year or two, I dived headfirst into the highly sensitive community, with my traditional autistic obsession. I went through a slightly grandiose period where I believed myself to be a member of a "more enlightened" group of people, because we could "experience the world so much more deeply than non-HSP's" and were "more closely connected to nature" and "could sense others' emotions in a way that most people couldn't." I think part of it was being a teenager, and needing to feel special and important, and part of it was exultation at finally feeling like I'd found a place to fit in, after having spent my whole life being an outcast and a freak.

These days of course I know that autistics, HSPs, and every other minority or "unique" group are no more special or important than anyone else, we're just different, and we have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else, it's just that ours may not align with "typical" strengths and weaknesses.