It’s a glorious sunny summer Sunday afternoon and you’re lying in the park with an old friend. Fat insects hum through the tall grass all about you, as you talk away the day over cheese, dips and a bottle of wine. All the ingredients of a magic day are there, a day that should be uplifting and energising. So why, when you walk away do you feel so damn drained, so tired, perhaps with the beginnings of a mild headache, maybe almost a little depressed?

There have been so many books written about psychic vampires that you may be wondering why this post even exists. Well mostly because I’ve found the methods of defense presented in those erudite tomes to be largely ineffective or in some cases quite impossible. Indeed the most common advice to be found is simply to cut the person out of your life. This demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the situation. If you've got someone causing you enough problems that you’re scouring books on psychic vampires then the individual in question is almost certainly someone who is deeply connected into your life. So much so that you’d probably need to quit your job or leave the country or disown a family member or abandon a whole set of friends in order to get away.