Have you met any vampires lately? An odd title…
There are different types of vampires around. Some of them will suck ideas out of you, maybe you have met a few at work. They seem to take all your hard work, your good ideas, and your time, and use all of it to progress their own career and prestige at work, while you toil away in the background. Which one of you is the sucker? (sorry, terrible pun).
Maybe your vampire is someone who just seems to suck you dry by constantly needing your attention. Every day seems to bring a new crisis, and it seems to be you who steps in, gives advice and support, and uses your own energy and time to keep solving their problems. They never seem to learn from their mistakes, they just keep making them and come to you when it all goes wrong. We learn by our mistakes, let them learn the hard way. Hard lessons are not forgotten and they can be the best lessons of all.
Or perhaps they are a business colleague, always on the lookout for ways to get you to spend money on them, to create new business for them, to do lots of wonderful things for them and in return, you get-nothing. Don’t be afraid to ask ‘What’s in it for me?’
NLP teaches us that we are responsible for our actions. It is right and proper to help people who need it, but there must come a time when you have to think of your own needs too. If someone does not learn from their mistakes, why should you pick up the pieces? By doing so, they have learned that you will always bale them out. Sometimes the hardest word but the most appropriate word can be ‘No’.
As a therapist, it is my duty, and indeed my pleasure to help people. But if I show them the way forward and they choose not to take it- that is their decision and their responsibility. Yes of course I will help them pick up the pieces, after all, they will be paying me to do so. But despite that, there will come a time when I will have a moral responsibility to point out that there is no point coming to see me unless you take action and learn to CHANGE.