I see a therapist and have the majority of my adult life. I am an intuitive energy healer and an empath who also has mediumship gifts. In other words, I work in the spiritual space, but therapy keeps me relational. 

It has me take personal responsibility, and it keeps me grounded. It helps me understand my part in the dynamics of relationships and through vulnerability, I have to be honest with myself and my therapist on how I have created the dynamic. It helps me unravel my history on a conscious level.

Someone who is clinically narcissistic (NPD), or has emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), formerly known as a borderline personality disorder, would not necessarily walk themselves into a therapist office, sit down, and be vulnerable enough to take responsibility, but as someone who runs a school in training healers, what I can tell you is a narcissist, or EUPD  person will join an energy healing training, or spiritual space because they can be wildly intuitive and gifted….but with a distorted reality.

My work is based on the chakra system, and what we know through our evolutionary path is that the upper chakras relate to spiritual connection, higher knowing, a higher perspective, intuition and connection to the realm of possibility. The lower chakras relate to our humanity, relationships, survival, vulnerability, personal responsibility, safety, sexuality, integration in social structures, and or historical wounds.

NPD and EUPD often indicate there is trauma in the lower chakras of the body and so it’s easier to dwell in the upper chakras and people can exist just fine their whole lives bypassing the lower chakras. Because we live in a world of trauma, many people do not embody their lower chakras, and that doesn’t make them narcissistic or have personality disorders. 

However, wounding can be so deep in the lower chakras of the body that blame, shame,  gaslighting and projection are our necessary defense mechanisms to protect the intimacy of the wound. There’s shame around that wound, and if we’re not taught how to work through shame and vulnerability, the natural defense mechanisms of projection,  blame and superiority will take over.

In the energy healing world, as soon as we get into the conversation of personal responsibility, direct conversation, honesty, vulnerability, and acceptance for our humanity, it touches in on these lower chakras in a way that can be threatening to someone who is narcissistic or has a EUPD. Essentially, we touch the wound. At that point, the lashing out occurs. The teacher is projected on and called wounded, narcissistic or gaslighting, the students are projected on and called unsafely or not evolved enough, and everyone else becomes the problem. 

Don’t get me wrong… we have been seeing the dismantling of narcissism in spiritual teachers and gurus for a while now, and rightfully so. Yet there is another perspective here, that narcissism and EUPD  exists in the spiritual space in the students as well. Can they heal? I don’t know. 

I’ve seen those with narcissistic tendencies heal through vulnerability, and personal responsibility when these tendencies have been learned behavior due to parents being narcissistic or through trauma healing, but I’ve also experienced the lashing out, projection, shaming, and blaming what comes out of nowhere the second you accidentally touch the wound – not realizing that it’s there.

I’m not writing this with a solution, but with a perspective in the energy healing and spiritual space, it’s important to know that developing as an intuitive comes with healing wounds, and healing wounds requires vulnerability, personal responsibility, and the willingness to process through shame and allow support and help through it. Otherwise, an intuitive can develop all types of skills and tools to help other people or to validate intuition, but it might keep an individual fragmented in the upper half of their body which has ramifications on a human level, which includes, the ability to have clear relationships with other people.

Entering into an intuitive healing or spiritual space does require the ability to take responsibility, admit your part in the manifestation of your reality, and be vulnerable enough to process the feelings that are there. Can a narcissist or borderline person do that? I’m still learning.