Take out the term 'sucking' in blood-sucking, and you just might be a bit closer to the truth about vampires.
Yes, they do exist, but not in the popular scary way that most people perceive them to be.
In the paper Do We Always Practice What We Preach? Real Vampires' Fears of Coming out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals published in the online journal Critical Social Work, researchers from the Idaho State University found out more about the lifestyles of self-identified vampires and encourage health care providers to try to erase the typical vampire notion that affects judgement towards these actually normal people.
The vampire fad is seen in people normally dressed in black and wearing phony fangs. Contrary to this stereotype, real, authentic vampires are basically people who feed on other people's blood to adapt to a tiring lifestyle.
Associate professor of social work at the Idaho State University, DJ Williams stresses the importance of understanding some of these new identities, as well as new ways of identifying ourselves. He points out that some of these new identities do not fit into stereotypes. Especially to helping professionals, it is important to be educated on such topics.
"We live in an age of technology and live in a time when people can select new, alternate identities to fit how they understand themselves better," Williams adds.
In the study, the researchers interviewed 11 self-identified vampires and found that these vampires are more common than usually perceived. The community of authentic vampires is comprised mainly of professionals looking for 'extra energy' by feeding on the blood of other people, with consent. Contrary to popular belief, the community is made up of a group of people older than young kids exposed to pop-culture notions of vampires.
Williams noted that these authentic vampires are actually very successful people who come from just about any sort of profession - from doctors to lawyers, to candlestick makers.
To adapt to their professions that make them very tired and require much energy, self-identified vampires each get the consent of a willing adult and feed on small amounts of blood by making a tiny incision in the consenting adult's chest area, with the use of a scalpel.
Williams has been studying vampires for almost a decade now. The more important point he made in the paper co-authored by Los Angeles' Center for Positive Sexuality's Emily Prior, is that these self-identified vampires have a fear of being stereotyped by doctors because of their alternate lifestyles.
These vampires, identified with different energy needs and resort to different sources of energy, should not stop counselors and helping professionals from treating them without prejudice, Williams said. These people are no different from the rest, in the sense that they have issues similar to everybody else's - family, relationship and career issues, to name a few. Williams reminded clinicians that if they have a better understanding about this group, they can better help these individuals.
Photo: Outcast104 | Flickr
