Why Some People Are So Draining & What to Do About It

You know the feeling.

You finish a conversation and something just feels off. You're not hurt exactly. You're not angry. You're just... flat. 

Like something got quietly taken from you without your permission.

Maybe it's a colleague who turns every team meeting into a drama. A family member who only calls when they need something. Or someone who has this incredible ability to make you feel responsible for how they feel and when things go wrong, somehow it always circles back to you.

If any of that sounds familiar, you're not imagining it. And you're definitely not weak for feeling it.

Over more than twenty years of coaching, working with individuals, business owners, and corporate leaders across Ireland,  this is one of the most common things people come to me with. Not always in those exact words. They might say they're exhausted, or stressed, or that they dread going into work. But when we dig into it, there's almost always a difficult person at the centre of it.

I want to talk honestly about why some people are so draining, what's actually happening in those interactions, and more importantly,  what you can do about it. Because this isn't a soft topic. It's one of the most practical things you can get a handle on if you want to build genuine resilience in your life and your work.

First, let's be honest about what "draining" actually means

Every interaction costs energy. That's just the reality of being human. The difference between a good conversation and a draining one usually comes down to one thing: reciprocity.

In a healthy interaction there's a natural flow. You give a bit, they give a bit. Even in hard conversations,  the kind where someone needs to lean on you, there's still an awareness of the other person in the room.

With a draining person, that balance is gone. The interaction consistently moves in one direction. And what's worse, it often happens subtly enough that you don't notice it until you're already running on empty.

I often talk about "energy leaks" in my coaching work. These are the people and situations that consistently cost more than they give. One difficult conversation you can handle. But the same dynamic, over weeks or months or years? That becomes one of the biggest obstacles to your resilience, your performance, and your peace of mind.

The first step is simply naming it honestly. Not to write the person off. Not to become hard or cold. But to stop pretending the dynamic isn't costing you, because you can't manage something you won't look at clearly.

The types of draining people (and you'll recognise at least one)

Not all difficult people are the same. Here are the patterns I see most often.

The permanent crisis person

There is always something going wrong for this person. Always a disaster, always an emergency, always a situation that requires your attention right now. They may not even be doing it consciously — some people just have a very high tolerance for chaos and a very low threshold for managing it alone. But if you're someone who naturally wants to help, this dynamic will quietly eat you alive.

The hard truth? You can't pour from an empty cup. And rescuing someone repeatedly doesn't actually help them,  it just teaches them that you'll always be there to catch them before they have to take responsibility.

The one who is never at fault

Every problem has an external cause. Every conflict is someone else's doing. You try to have a clear, adult conversation and somehow it gets twisted. You leave thinking,  wait, how did that become my fault?

This is one of the most exhausting patterns there is, because it messes with your own sense of reality. You start second-guessing yourself. You start wondering if maybe you are the problem. You're not. But that confusion alone is deeply wearing.

The controller

Control doesn't always look obvious. It doesn't always come with raised voices or dramatic scenes. Sometimes it looks like constant low-level criticism. Subtle comments that keep you doubting yourself. A quiet insistence on things being done a specific way. Over time, being around a controlling person can seriously erode your confidence, particularly when it's someone you respect, work for, or love.

I've worked with clients who spent years around a controller and didn't realise how much it had cost them until they were finally out of the situation. The relief alone told the story.

The emotional drain

This person needs you to be fully present, fully available, fully invested all the time. Any attempt to create a little distance is met with guilt or hurt. Any time you set a limit it becomes a whole thing.

If you are naturally empathetic (and a lot of the leaders and business owners I work with are), this type of relationship can bring you to your knees. I've seen it cause burnout just as reliably as overwork.

Why this matters more than you think

I want to say something clearly here, because I think this topic sometimes gets dismissed as being too "personal" or too soft.

It's not soft. It's one of the most practical performance issues you'll ever deal with.

When your nervous system is under constant low-level stress from a difficult relationship, at work, at home, in your team, you lose access to the clear thinking, creativity, and emotional steadiness that good leadership and a good life require. Research consistently shows that chronic interpersonal stress is one of the leading contributors to burnout. And burnout doesn't just mean you're tired. It means you're less effective, less present, less yourself.

The business owners and executives I coach in Ireland and the UK often come to me saying things like:

"I don't understand why I'm exhausted all the time. My workload hasn't changed."

"I've started dreading certain days. I can't put my finger on why."

"I feel like I'm constantly managing someone else's emotions and I have nothing left."

When we trace it back, there is almost always a specific person or pattern at the root. And once they see it clearly and start to respond differently, things shift.

That's what resilience actually looks like in practice. Not white-knuckling through it. Not becoming a harder person. It's learning to see what's happening clearly, and responding from a calmer, more grounded place.

What you can actually do about it

Here's where I want to be genuinely useful, because I think too much advice on this topic stays safely vague. Let me give you something practical.

1. See it clearly and name it to yourself

The most important first move is being honest with yourself about what's happening. Not in a dramatic way. Not to build a case against the person. Just to stop minimising it, because you can't make good decisions from a place of denial.

Ask yourself: after spending time with this person, do I consistently feel worse? More anxious? More doubtful of myself? If the answer is yes, that's your starting point.

2. Stop trying to fix them

This is the one that gets most good-hearted people stuck. If you are a natural helper, and most leaders are, you will exhaust yourself trying to help someone who hasn't asked to be helped and isn't willing to change.

Your job is not to save them. Your job is to protect your own energy and your own peace of mind. That's not selfish. That's basic self-preservation.

3. Set quiet, consistent limits

You don't have to have a big confrontation. In fact, the quieter and more matter of fact you can be about this, the better. Shorten conversations. Reduce availability. Be less forthcoming with personal information. Small, consistent adjustments over time change a dynamic far more sustainably than one dramatic conversation.

I have found this to be true in my own life as well. The most powerful limits I've ever set were the ones I barely announced,  I just started living differently.

4. Learn to respond, not react

Difficult people are often brilliant, sometimes without even knowing it, at triggering emotional reactions in you. Guilt. Defensiveness. Frustration. And when you react from that place, you're playing by their rules.

The goal is to learn to pause, to regulate, and to respond from a steadier part of yourself. This is a learnable skill. It isn't a personality trait you either have or don't. I've helped people develop this capacity who told me they were the most reactive person they knew and they transformed. It takes time and the right tools, but it absolutely can be done.

5. Get support: don't try to carry this alone

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Nobody is meant to figure these things out in isolation. Whether it's a trusted friend, a therapist, or a coach, having someone outside the situation to help you see it clearly is genuinely invaluable.

Not because you can't cope. You clearly can, or you wouldn't still be showing up every day. But because perspective is one of the most powerful tools available to you. And you can't get perspective on something you're standing inside.

A final word on resilience

I want to finish with something I really believe.

Resilience is not about becoming harder. It's not about caring less. The most resilient people I've worked with over the years care deeply,  they just know where to direct that care, and they have learned to protect their energy with the same intention they protect their time.

Dealing with difficult people is one of the most universal human challenges there is. It shows up in the boardroom and in the kitchen. It shows up in friendships and families and team meetings. And the skills you need to handle it well , clarity, calmness, healthy limits, self-awareness , can absolutely be built.

That's what this month is all about. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be writing about gaslighting, narcissistic behaviour, confidence under pressure, and what real resilience looks like in practice. Stick with me, there's a lot more coming.

Ready to go deeper?

If you've ever dealt with a narcissist, a bully, or someone who consistently makes you question your own reality, I created a masterclass specifically for this. It covers what's actually happening in these interactions, why it affects you the way it does, and, most importantly,  how to handle it with far more confidence and clarity than you have right now.

You can get access here:

→  How to Deal with Narcissists & Bullies: Mark's Masterclass

And if you'd like more content like this delivered directly to your inbox, practical, honest, no fluff, you can sign up for my free newsletter below. I write on these topics every two weeks and it's the best place to get the kind of content that doesn't always make it onto social media.

Onwards and upwards,

Mark