Albert J. Bernstein - Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry

Emotional
Vampires

Dealing with People
Who Drain You Dry

Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.

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Copyright 2001 by Albert J. Bernstein. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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DOI: 10.1036/0071376569

TO LUAHNA

Without the following peoples help and support, this book could never have materialized:

Mindy Ranik came up with the title, and about 10,000 miles worth of support during the writing.

My esteemed colleagues, Luahna Ude and Bob Poole, clinicians of rare wisdom and rarer wit, shared countless insights into the minds of vampires.

Sydney Craft Rozen taught me how to write.

My agent, Sherry Bykovsky, and my editor, Betsy Brown, helped me turn a scattered pile of ideas into something resembling a book.

Most of all, I want to thank my familyLuahna, Jessica, and Joshfor putting up with me while writing, a feat requiring as much courage and forbearance as visiting Carfax Abbey at midnight.

Who are these Emotional Vampires?

There are lights again in Carfax Abbey. Rumor has it that the ruin has beenpurchased by an eccentric Eastern European nobleman. Strange creatureshave been seen at night, moving silently through the fog. People find it hardto sleep for the howling of dogs and noises that sound like fluttering of batswings against window panes. In the citys finest homes, young women havebeen awakening from feverish dreams feeling drained and listless. Somehave not awakened at all.

Something is dreadfully wrong, but the only explanation that fits thefacts sounds like superstitious prattle in daylight. Vampires are a myth, arentthey? What place is there in the modern world for undead souls who walk at