Thank you for listening! We’ll be back next week with another thought-provoking conversation. Until then, protect your creative energy fiercely—it’s yours and yours alone.

Greg
00:00 - 00:23
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative WorkHour podcast. Today is episode 55 and it is June the 14th 2025. In the room today you've got myself, we've got Alessandra, we have Devin, We have Shadows and Bobby B. Today we're going to discuss energy vampires draining your creativity.

Greg
00:24 - 00:44
You know that feeling when someone walks into the room and they start complaining about everything, from the weather, to their lunch, to the existential meaning of a Tuesday afternoon, and all of a sudden you're exhausted. Well, that's not a coincidence. That's an energy vampire at work. Alessandra, we were talking about this just before, weren't we?

Alessandra
00:45 - 01:09
Yeah. So here's the thing about energy vampires. And one of our co-hosts here, Shadows, is she, she knows more than your average bear about what energy vampires are, how to spot them, how they work. So it'll be interesting to get her take, but you know, as for me and my experience with energy vampires, well, here's the thing.

Alessandra
01:09 - 01:19
Your creative energy is, well, It's not an infinite resource, is it? It's gold. It's premium. It's precious.

Alessandra
01:19 - 02:12
And the more that you let it get hijacked by the chronic whiners, the vibe killers, the emotional freeloaders, the people that think your attention is on demand, those, well, Then it's the less energy of yours that you have for what really matters in your own creative work, in your life, what you have to give to others in a healthy way. Like these people, the energy vampires, they will suck you dry of all your creative effort. So, Greg, what do we do with this topic in this episode so that we can make ourselves useful to people who hear us and make ourselves useful to ourselves to protect our energy and to surround ourselves with people that are good for us?

Greg
02:12 - 02:30
Well, the question that we're asking today is, can you think of a time when an energy vampire totally zapped your creative energy? And what did you do to get it back? You know, energy vampires. It's a big boundary thing, isn't it? For me, it speaks to boundaries.

Alessandra
02:31 - 03:10
It is about boundaries. And one of the things that is so important to realize in not being the mark or a target, one of the things about guarding yourself from energy vampires is to see them coming and what to do if you can't. because there are energy vampires walking around looking like everyday people and there are some world-class vampires that mimic you. They mirror how you speak.

Alessandra
03:11 - 03:37
how you hold your hands, how you coin a phrase. And they're, they're trickier ones. And I can't say that it was coaching per se, but I did have a conversation with shadows and this was probably three years ago. And I was in the midst of a mess where I was the mark, but I didn't understand what was taking place.

Alessandra
03:38 - 03:53
I felt like I was losing my mind. And I think in my conversation with shadows, shadows, we were, we were talking about this. You use the term energy vampire, and you kind of had to explain to me what you meant by that. What is an energy vampire?

Shadows Pub
03:53 - 04:15
That's a tough one to actually put into words. A lot of times when I pick up on an energy vampire, it's an intuition thing. Generally speaking, it's somebody who not only is taking up your time and energy, but to no good avail. Like they won't actually try to follow anything that you kind of help them with.

Shadows Pub
04:16 - 04:37
I can give you an example of one person who came to me wanting some assistance with chat GPT. And I gave them some suggestions and while I was giving them some suggestions, they were going, no, no, no, I'm going to send you, I'm going to share this, this chat with you. And I'm going to send you all this information. And I was like, no, this is the prompt you need to use.

Shadows Pub
04:37 - 04:56
She was totally ignoring what I was saying, but she still wanted my quote help. and I disconnected myself from her quickly. The simple fact that it was going to suck my time and energy and wasn't going to improve anything for her, she wasn't listening.

Alessandra
04:57 - 05:15
Do you think, Shadows, that we can become, that we can be trained to recognize energy vampire experiences faster and that we can also learn how to, even if it's messy, set boundaries more easily? I

Shadows Pub
05:16 - 05:24
think so over time. It takes a lot of self-awareness and doing what a lot of people don't do is listening to their own intuition, their gut feelings.

Alessandra
05:25 - 05:46
I like that a lot and I think what comes with learning how to take care of yourself, maybe in an experience dealing with an energy vampire, is it requires a lot of grace. We have to give ourselves a lot of grace, don't we? What do you think, Greg, about giving ourselves grace to deal with it?

Greg
05:46 - 06:09
Oh, I think absolutely, because energy vampires are really good at what they do. They come to you in disguise, almost in sheep's clothing, and they reel you in, they get you on the hook, you get them, you know, to trust them. And that's how they kind of get their tentacles into you, you know. But you know, Alessandra, Can you think of a time when an image of vampires totally is up to your creativity?

Greg
06:09 - 06:14
And what did you do to get it back? That's the thing to get it back. How do you get it back?

Alessandra
06:15 - 06:37
Yeah, getting it back. Well, for me, what tends to happen, okay, I'm not going to just show up here and lie about it, okay? I'm going to tell you what really happens. When one gets through, because I was a little thick, or a little slow on the uptake, and one gets through and halves at me, well, once I realize it, I loop.

Alessandra
06:38 - 07:12
And by loop I mean my mind races and I review the material of that person who said this thing and I said that and this wasn't right and I could have done better and it's looping. It's going nowhere. It's looping, looping, looping, looping and I literally can make myself kind of mentally sick for a few days with that stuff. And so one of the things that I do is I just note that, yeah, I'm looping.

Alessandra
07:12 - 07:33
And I reach out to somebody and say, nothing really new happened. It's another day. And I'm still looping on this thing. Because until I recognize the looping, I can't come up with solutions because I'm stuck and all my energy is running out on this.

Alessandra
07:34 - 08:04
I don't know what to do or I should have done or so the looping just noting it is the most important thing for me. Then I can start coming up with a bunch of crappy solutions that I'm too chicken shit to do the hard thing. Now the hard thing is I bide my time. If I'm what I need to do to set the boundary if that scares me, because look, I will run from conflict any day of the week.

Alessandra
08:04 - 08:11
That is who I am. I do not want to go for a fight. I do not want to set hard boundaries. I don't want to do it.

Alessandra
08:11 - 08:33
Like, that scares me. But I figure out ways I can buy myself some time to not be around that person or buy myself some time. How might I put some boundaries around the looping, right? So, but that's me. And this is all very personal, like how you do it.

Alessandra
08:33 - 08:47
But like having somebody in my life, like, like you, Greg, Devin, Bobby, Shadows, like, it helps to put some constraints around the looping, and that it's okay to fail at setting the boundaries.

Greg
08:48 - 08:58
Thanks, Alessandra. Devin, how about you? Can you think of a time when And Energy Vampire totally zapped your creative energy. More importantly, what did you do to get that back?

Devin
08:58 - 09:31
Thanks, Greg. And first, I'd like to say, I don't think it's been mentioned, but if anyone is unclear on what an energy vampire is, you can watch the series, What We Do in the Shadows, which has your traditional vampires, as one would expect, but it also features an actual energy vampire and shows them at work. And you can see the effects and actually inside the mind of an energy vampire as he plots his attacks and finds his victims.

Devin
09:32 - 09:51
And yes, I have been the victim of an energy vampire. And what I find is first, to get my creative energy back, I have to change my state, as Tony Robbins would say. I've got to get a reset. And that usually involves, you know, it could be going for a walk.

Devin
09:51 - 10:31
For me, it could be trying to find something funny, something to make me laugh, get that sort of dopamine hit of laughter is a great way to sort of reset. And then I've got to lower my creative expectations. I've got to start with something maybe just as simple as doodling, you know, something that's I'm not going to go from an exsanguinated state, you know, crawling away from the energy vampire to, you know, creating my Magnus Magnum Opus, because there's just too big a gap. So I've got to work my way back up and let my energy supply rebuild so that I can get back to the creative state where I want to be.

Devin
10:32 - 10:55
So yeah, I've had frequent battles with energy vampires and that's my process. Changed my state, started to lower into the creative spectrum, and worked my way back up. Oh, but I think it would be great to continue this topic by actually having an energy vampire on the podcast so that we could have an interview with an energy vampire.

Greg
10:56 - 11:01
I love that. I love that. Interview with an energy vampire. Yes, that sounds slightly familiar.

Greg
11:01 - 11:10
Bobby, how about you? Can you think of a time when an energy vampire's always up to your creativity? And what did you do to get that back?

Bobby. B
11:10 - 11:34
You know, Greg, luckily, I've had some time in the buildup. And yeah, there's absolutely been energy vampires. And the struggle has been with me. And I think that's been critical because I'm one I've been one of these, you know, let me find a way to help make it all better people in the past.

Bobby. B
11:35 - 12:02
And I realize I am failing myself. I do that. So for me, it's owning my boundaries and there's always the conditional in this of what is the status in my life of the vampire. Because if it's my boss, getting away from that adjusting is different than if it's from, say, a certain family member of mine who is a lifelong energy vampire.

Bobby. B
12:03 - 12:07
So forget about, you know, my boss element for a minute. For

Greg
12:07 - 12:07
all the

Bobby. B
12:07 - 12:24
others, I tell them just directly, I can't go there with you right now. Call me back. Later or I'll call you back later. And if they continue to pursue I simply tell them you're not hearing me.

Bobby. B
12:24 - 12:39
We'll talk later and disconnect. And if they are there physically with me. I will turn around and walk away so that they can visually see that I'm not going to go down this path. That's where I'm at.

Greg
12:40 - 12:59
Thanks Bobby. Shadows, I know you shared a lot earlier but is there a specific time that you can think of that comes to mind or maybe a great example of when an energy vampire totally zapped your creative energy and what did you do to get it back? The getting back is really kind of what I'm wanting to hear about.

Shadows Pub
13:00 - 13:09
There's been several of them over the years. I always look at energy like time. Once it's gone, it's gone. But you can rebuild it if you get an opportunity to recharge.

Shadows Pub
13:10 - 13:22
So that's usually what I have to do to recharge. And by the way, just for total clarity, I am not associated with making In the Shadows. But it sounds like a good movie. Not for you.

Shadows Pub
13:22 - 13:24
No, I think it'd be a good one to listen to.

Alessandra
13:27 - 13:42
We do like to tease shadows about, we like to show movies once a month in the Creative Work Hour community. And she let it be known really quickly that she does not do horror films, okay? Oh, so good. Or green beans.

Alessandra
13:43 - 13:45
Or green beans. No horror

Greg
13:46 - 13:47
films, no green beans.

Alessandra
13:48 - 13:52
What about you, Greg? You're not getting out of here so easily.

Greg
13:53 - 14:03
You know, I'm thinking about it, and there is actually a good example. It's actually a mutual vampire friend. Can you have mutual energy vampires? I guess you can't now.

Greg
14:04 - 14:23
But yeah, it was about three years ago. And I was involved with somebody who turned out to be a bit of a fraudster. But at the time, people thought this person was a very respectable pillar of the community. And I got involved with that person doing some work for their organization for them, free of charge.

Greg
14:23 - 14:40
And some reason along the lines, in discussing that the person said to me, you know, I can't do these coaching calls free for you anymore. I'm going to have to start charging you for that. And that it didn't click. And I was like, there's something not right.

Greg
14:40 - 15:32
I'm helping the person I'm doing something free to help their organization would I need to start paying for it because they can't keep doing this for free and I think I talked to you about it Alessandra and it was probably around the time with the the shadows thing I don't know I'm taking a guess but it could have been right and so you know I think finding someone that you that you can trust and I've got people on creative work out that I can trust that have got good BS meters that are gonna tell me how it is not necessarily might not like what they've got to say but I know that they'll they'll speak truth and I implicitly trust that so I think that's the most important thing is talking to someone and getting a reality check because these people these vampires man they'll check you in and you will not realize it and once they've got their fangs in you they're gonna bleed you dry slowly.

Greg
15:33 - 15:35
Alessandra any closing thoughts on this?

Alessandra
15:35 - 16:09
I think part of the part of the the anatomy of an energy vampire is they're they're extremely good at gaslighting because just in your own self-defense if you're like where I grew up we would say that ain't right that ain't right And it's as though the energy vampire will anticipate that and make you the crazy one. And that's the essence of the gaslighting that comes with it. So all I'm saying is don't fight that.

Alessandra
16:09 - 16:42
Just use that as confirmation that exactly like what Shadows was saying, trust your intuition, and if there is someone who thinks that your attention is something available to them on demand, well, they got another thing coming. And if they gaslight you, that is further confirmation that your intuition was absolutely right. Your creative energy is priceless. Your creative energy is precious.

Alessandra
16:44 - 17:13
It is fleeting and no one but no one is entitled to it but you. Greg, thank you so much for creating this space, producing this podcast for us, using your own creative energy and protecting it so that we can make this where we ourselves can be useful to other creatives, to each other, and to ourselves. It makes me wonder though, what time is it?

Greg
17:14 - 17:38
It's that time again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else but you didn't. How about you? Can you think of a time when an energy vampire totally zapped your creativity and what did you do to get it back let us know you can visit us on creativeworkhour.com in the meantime come back next week and we'll be here with another discussion question.