"If a vampire came up to you and told you that he would die if you didn't allow him to drink your blood, most likely you wouldn't have any problem telling him no.  In our codependency however, when we do not know how to say no to other people, how to have healthy boundaries, we are set up to react to - and swing between - the extremes of the black and white, 1 or 10 spectrum of codependent behavior.  Those extremes are:  to build huge walls against connecting with other people - which sets us up to be emotional anorexics;  or to offer ourselves up as sacrificial lambs to the type of codependents that are overt emotional vampires.

I say overt because all codependents are emotional vampires to one degree or another as long as we are looking outside of ourselves for self definition and self worth.  In this chapter and the next two, I am going to use the emotional vampire theme to try to shine some Light upon both the dynamics of codependency and the process of recovery.  I am going to be talking about the roles of emotional vampire, emotional anorexic, and sacrificial lamb that we are set up to play out in our disease - and I will discuss the need to end emotional enmeshment and take emotional responsibility as a vital component in a healthy recovery process."

"The selfless martyrs are the sacrificial lambs I refer to in the heading  above.  They are the people whom the narcissistic emotional vampires - of both the aggressive and passive types - feed upon.  They are set up to think it is normal to have someone sucking the life blood out of them - constantly draining them energetically and emotionally."

"When we say, "but she's my mother / he's my father" I have to take care of them - we are not owning our choices.  The fact that they are our parents does not mean we owe them the right to abuse us.  Does not mean we have to sacrifice our lives for them.  Their codependency may cause them to believe that they sacrificed their lives for us - but like all unconscious codependents they were acting out of ego selfish reasons.  We do not owe them some debt we "have to" pay back to them at the expense of sacrificing our self.

Our parents wounded us out of their codependence.  Our families were not safe, warm, Loving sanctuaries.  The warm fuzzy cultural perspective of families is a myth.  It is a fairy tale - just like happily ever after in romantic relationships is a fairy tale. Empowerment is seeing reality clearly and owning our choices to make the best of it.  In order to see clearly we need to stop giving power to fairy tales and myths."

"One of the things that was mentioned by several of the sources that brought this topic to the forefront for me in the last several weeks, was people being told that to put their parent in a nursing home would decrease the parents life expectancy.  This may be a statistical reality - I don't know for sure.  Rather it is true, or something HMO's tell people to decrease their expenses, it is still not a reason to allow yourself to buy into being a victim.

Consider that maybe an emotional vampire will die sooner because they don't have anyone to suck the life out of.  If a vampire is going to die because you won't let them suck your blood, is that reason to let them suck your blood?"

Welcome to a page of Joy2MeU The Web Site of Spiritual Teacher, codependence counselor, grief therapist, author, Robert Burney and Joy to You & Me Enterprises Go to Home Page      Site index page Robert is the author of the Joyously inspirational book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Included on this page are quotes from both Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls and from other copyrighted work by Robert Burney.  Online pages quoted within this chapter will be linked so that they open in a separate browser window - with the exception of any web articles referenced which are quite long, or for some other reason not conducive to internal linking.  Links will be provided at the bottom of this page to any such web pages. This is Chapter 8 of a book being published online as it is written.  To find out more about the genesis of this work you can go to Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light  Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life: Author's Foreword Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 8: Codependents as Emotional Vampires By Robert Burney In order to become aligned with Truth so that we can stop the war within and change life into an easier, more enjoyable experience, it is vitally important to become clear in our emotional process and to change the reversed attitudes that we had to adopt to survive.  Those reversed attitudes are what cause our dysfunctional perspectives - which in turn, have caused us to have a lousy relationship with life. I am going to quote from a book now, and again a little later, that is my own personal favorite book of Truth.  I feel a great deal of Truth in this book.  It has guided me and helped me to remember my Truth and to become conscious of my path.  It was a very important part of my personal process of enlarging my perspective - of being able to see this life business in a larger context. It is a book called Illusions by Richard Bach.  This is one of my favorite quotations from that book. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What a caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. The "depth of your belief" is about perspective.  If we are reacting to life emotionally out of the belief systems we had imposed on us as children we will then see change as tragedy and feel that being forced to grow is shameful.  As we change our attitudes toward this life experience, when we can start viewing it as a process, a journey, then we can begin to see that what we used to perceive as problems are really opportunities for growth.  Then we can begin to realize that even though our experiences in childhood have caused to think of ourselves as, and feel like, lowly caterpillars - we are in Truth butterflies who are meant to fly. We are all butterflies.  We are all Spiritual Beings. (Text in this color is used for quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls) . . . . . . If a vampire came up to you and told you that he would die if you didn't allow him to drink your blood, most likely you wouldn't have any problem telling him no.  In our codependency however, when we do not know how to say no to other people, how to have healthy boundaries, we are set up to react to - and swing between - the extremes of the black and white, 1 or 10 spectrum of codependent behavior.  Those extremes are:  to build huge walls against connecting with other people - which sets us up to be emotional anorexics;  or to offer ourselves up as sacrificial lambs to the type of codependents that are overt emotional vampires. I say overt because all codependents are emotional vampires to one degree or another because of our emotional wounds - our emotional anorexia.  And we are set up to be emotional vampires as long as we are looking outside of ourselves for self definition and self worth.  In this chapter and the next few, I am going to use the emotional vampire / anorexic theme to try to shine some Light upon both the dynamics of codependency and the process of recovery.  I am going to be talking about the roles of emotional vampire, emotional anorexic, and sacrificial lamb that we are set up to play out in our disease - and I will discuss the need to end emotional enmeshment and take emotional responsibility as a vital elements in a healthy recovery process. This page is no longer available on the regular web site.  To view this page, it is now necessary to pay a fee for access to the Dancing in Light section of Joy2MeU.com  On this page are quotes from, and section headings of, the original article.  The page with information on how to subscribe is Dancing in Light.

Emotional Vampires and Sacrificial Lambs

self pity

A note to people with an aging parent (s)

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light
Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life
Go to Chapter 9: Codependency = emotional anorexia - Published online October 20, 2002

September 2005 - Chapters 3 through 15 of this work are now exclusively available in the Dancing in Light pay to view component of Joy2MeU.com

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Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from: Illusions  "The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach.  Copyright 1977 by Creature Enterprises, Inc.   Reprinted in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney by permission of Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, NY.