These ‘energy vampires’ are often easy to spot: they are “the people who focus on negatives, make you feel flat or even project their own insecurities and worries onto you”, says Rhiannon Bates, business mentor and visibility coach. “It doesn’t make them bad people, just different from those who focus on positivity.”

Other triggers for energy leakage, though, can be small and therefore hard to detect, so what is the best way to work out what is draining your own personal battery? “At the right point in the therapy cycle, I ask people to draw their ‘bucket of energy’,” explains hypnotherapist and neuro-linguistic programming practitioner Robert Brennan. “I call this a behavioural map, where you write out all the things going on in your life that drain your energy on the whole.”

Your bucket, he explains, might include a difficult family relationship with a sibling or parent or your job; it might contain another ongoing worry like your housing situation or the pressure of expectations (your own or other people’s). These energy drains belong in the bottom half of the bucket: over the top, you “draw in your arrows marking your energy top-ups – friendships, time with your partner or colleagues”.

It’s important to recognise that all the drains aren’t necessarily outright negatives. “Some of the drains are also top-ups and some of the top-ups are also drains,” Brennan says, noting that parenting is a good example of the former: “It takes energy, but we get so much joy and happiness from our children that the net balance is generally positive.”

Energy leakage: how small interactions could be draining your mental battery – and what you can do about it