Psychic Narcissists? Masquerading? Empath Healers? These are all big topics. And why should you even care?

Well – because the healing techniques and approaches that psychic narcissists teach, will teach you to become like them. Whoops! Yes, for the most part, we become what we do.

There are many aspects to our self that we can become more or less of, depending on what we practice. None of us are 100% not narcissistic. Really, narcissism is a percentage, habits and thought patterns you can have (and develop) more or less of. In a way, that percentage is always increasing or decreasing, depending on your attitude and habits.

It’s like that story of the black wolf and the white wolf who are fighting on the inside – and the one you feed wins. Except, what if the black wolf thinks it’s a white wolf? Or what if the black wolf is actually the good guy, and the white wolf is full of purist b.s.?

In the world of healing, there is a deep-rooted division, that I believe most “spiritual energy healers” are on the wrong side of. Not because they are bad people (although some are) but because they focus too much on escaping things they don’t like, controlling life with their thoughts and trying to be an unrealistic version of themselves. Spirituality and energy healing become their ego playground, instead of something to help find true balance.

Psychic narcissist approaches to energy healing come at the cost of honouring and understanding feelings, being grounded in your body and being nourished from the inside out.

And this is the tricky thing about spirituality – much of it is about “celestial energies” that are “out there” and that you need to infuse yourself with. Instead of teaching you how to accept, listen to and connect with all parts of yourself. Both the pretty and the not so pretty.

This is a long article – prefer audio? There is a recording of a live class I did on this topic inside the Happy Sensitive Library, here. Not a Library Member? Become a member here and get access to bonus classes, detailed how-to courses and step-by-step plans for taking the overwhelm out of High Sensitivity.

Just Floating Away in the Spiritual Breeze!

Much of spirituality gets very floaty very quick. It teaches you to focus outside of yourself and look for nourishment outside of yourself (like you’re an empty husk that is nothing unless you’re being “filled” from sources outside of you). It teaches you to replace tangible, intuitive, bodily sensations with dogmatic principles.

It teaches that being human is somehow being tainted, and the ideal is to escape to higher planes (which feels “logical” if you feel broken or tainted and just want to escape to a better feeling place). It teaches people who are already sensitive and quick to dissociate from their bodies to do that even more.

Yet, the more floaty and disconnected you become, the more depleted you become. And then when these spiritual folk get hungry and can’t still that hunger on the inside (because they are rarely home in their body!) they try to tap into other people’s energies for a smoothy boost.

And this is the point where being a healer who can guide clients on their deepest self, gets mixed up and mixed in with being an abuser who can subtly manipulate people to give them access to their innermost resources.

Not something to emulate.

The Psychic Narcissism Illusion

Psychic narcissists often have a very shiny, impressive persona (especially online) but their “life hacks” will teach you to live in your head, not in your body:

Avoid your emotions, not understand them. Deplete your own energy, not recharge it, and make up the difference by psychically attacking other people – and/or sucking lots of energy from a tree.

All under the guise of being an “empath” who is “helping” others (including the tree) by “connecting” with them.

It’s like mosquitos posing as loving pets. Like mobsters posing as legit investment experts. Except, much of the time, the mobsters don’t fully realise that they are mobsters and many do believe they are legit investment bankers. (“I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m innocent” – that kind of thing)

Problem is – this is not the movies, there is no warning music every time a shady character steps onto the scene! So without being an absolute expert on energy, it becomes impossible to discern what is what, and who is what.

So here are 11 indicators to watch out for. Not so much in going around and pointing at other people (trust me – nobody will listen anyway), but in helping decide on the practices you yourself decide to adopt.

Because – even being a legit empath, does not automatically prevent you from becoming a psychic narcissist. It’s all down to what you chose to do and how you choose to handle energy.

(Sometimes people think: well, I AM the good person, so I could never do anything BAD like those people! But that kind of thinking shows a complete lack of understanding of the mechanism of why people do good or bad things, and what is good or bad anyhow, and how to even know)

11 “Spiritual” empath solutions that

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Psychic Narcissists Recommend

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(Go Vlad!)

1. Psychic Narcissists recommend: transmuting energy

They believe it’s imperative to turn “bad” energy into “good” energy. On the face of it, why would anyone disagree with that? Yet – again – this is not the movies. The good and the bad are not clear-cut and they don’t wear identity-matching outfits.

In reality, “good” versus “bad” is a very simplistic way of looking at the world. There are – in fact – both many shades of grey and good and bad sides to the same things.

So once we exit simplistic Bad Guy Movie Land – how do you know what is bad and needs to be transmuted in the first place?

Well – psychic narcissists argue this is very simple: it feels bad, so it is bad! And if you say that it doesn’t feel bad to you at all then you are just wrong! Because their way is THE ONLY WAY to look at things.

Descend upon thee throne of divine insight oh Psychic Narcissist! For thou knowest all the ins and outs of good and bad of course!

A slightly more tolerant psychic narcissist might argue that if it feels bad to you it IS bad. But ehm, how old are people who think this way, usually?

“Mommy, me not like peas! Peas bad!”

Why this technique is seductive:

Who doesn’t want to believe that they can single handedly turn bad or worthless things into good things? Alchemy was an ancient hit for a reason! That quest to turn lead into gold, find a recipe for immortality and identify the cure for all diseases had a lot of people hooked. Nothing new about that old illusion.
It keeps you super busy and distracted.
It takes something many empaths already do automatically, and elevates it to a purpose. Instead of questioning the roots of transmuting (hard!) it encourages you to do more of it (easy!) .

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

You get very very busy with transmuting work and this takes a significant toll on your body.
You get less and less practice in seeing the purpose of things you don’t understand. Instead you get stuck in “it’s my way, or I’ll transmute it away!”
You become more and more fearful due to all the bad things you notice that all need to be changed (by you!)
You start to feel more and more like an outsider.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

2. Protect yourself against “negative energy” out there

Oh yes, let’s unite to fight the bad energy. But this brings us back to problem one: what is bad and who decides?

By assuming that what feels like an attack is an attack, this approach creates a lot of problems. (You know how many conflicts started, right? Someone hears a rumor about how someone else wants to attack them, so they decide to go first, to be on the “safe” side. And then they start a war that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.)

Energy work gets pretty complicated at times and you need ways to check – not just mentally decide! – what is what. This takes real skill and practice and humility. It’s often not what you think or assume.

I mean – science doesn’t operate on a “well, it feels bad to me, so let’s just call quits on this plastic clean-up solution we started developing”. That’s for good reason! What we think or feel is not always what is happening.

You only have to think about that one person who always feels attacked when someone is just offering helpful feedback, to know how this works.

When you believe that your thoughts about reality are 100% accurate just because you said so…well, I don’t know of a better way to describe narcissism.

Sometimes people start to feel mighty special because they can feel energy better than others. But delusions and confusions exist on the energy planes too! You’re not exempt from the usual logical and human fallacies just because you’re “spiritual”.

Why this approach is seductive:

Let’s face it, everyone is convinced that there are bad people out there, but most of us also believe that we are the good ones. So believing that all problems originate from bad people who don’t want you to succeed is an easy idea to adopt.
A stressed brain is more prone to jump to blame. If you’re worried about negative energy, clearly, you’re perceiving something negative. In other words, you’re feeling stressed, and in that state, it’s easier to jump to blaming other people for how you feel.
Our world is dramatically lacking in real emotional education. Many people don’t know why we even have emotions (they’re annoying, why are they even there??). As a result, labeling uncomfortable sensations as “negative energy” seems like a smart, valid and modern approach.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

This kind of protection typically takes the form of shielding. But shielding also impacts loved ones close to you. A shield (even if it’s designed to only let love in etc) is the equivalent of walking around wrapped in barbed wire. It pushes people away.
Shielding enforces the idea that the world is an unsafe place and the practice of shielding embeds that point of view. This ultimately leads to more anxiety down the road.
Shielding can be like putting on extra thick sweaters, because you keep walking into a freezer. You don’t have to walk into the freezer but the thing is, you don’t notice that you’re walking into a freezer. All you notice is that you feel cold. Hence you must protect against all that toxic cold energy that is attacking you. By making this your go to approach, you’re stuck in a box. Outside the box, there are often other options, like choosing not to walk into a freezer.

Math Intermezzo

Add point 1 to point 2 – and you end up with a system that encourages people to label any feelings that they don’t enjoy, as toxic energy (that necessarily comes from other people.)

Let me spell this out for you:

“Oh mommy, I feel bad!”

“Oh honey, do you maybe have a stomach ache because you ate too much candy at grandma’s?”

“No!!!! It’s because I absorbed too much negative energy!!!!! Me like candy.”

When reasoning about emotions and sensations becomes a simplistic: feels bad = toxic = not me, you end up with a severely restricted EQ.

I mean, how few reasonable explanations can you come up with when you assume “feels bad, so it’s toxic energy trying to attack me!”?

These are – ahem – pretty toxic and fear, stress and conflict inducing approaches to teach! It’s the worst kind of purism.

This feeds narcissism, which says:

I am good and perfect. Therefore everything I feel that feels good is ME (the good and perfect one) and everything I feel that I don’t like is THEM and toxic and I need to protect perfect little me against that toxic influx.

When someone’s first “healing steps recommendations” are by default cleanse the toxic energies + shield against the infidels! – you’re probably dealing with someone who creates more problems than they solve.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

3. Learn this and get total control

I’m all for having more control when you feel out of control. But too much control points back to narcissism: wanting everything in life to be the way you think it should be in your head.

Forget about being here to learn and experience life! You are here to impose your will! More specifically, to mold all the “toxic energy” into something you prefer. Because what you prefer IS what is right.

That narcissistic simplicity makes for excellent sales page bullet points!

Why this approach is seductive:

This is presented as a cure for feeling vulnerable. “Feeling vulnerable, emotional and out of control? These special energy techniques will put you back in the driver’s seat so you never have to feel bad again.”
It speaks to the part of you that thinks you are right, and everyone else is wrong. More superpowers to make people do “the right thing” (aka your thing?) through invisible energy work that nobody else can detect? A recipe for becoming an energetic puppetmaster? (who will only use their powers for good of course) – where is the sign up button?

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

You become more and more afraid of situations where you lack control.
If you can’t plan for or anticipate something and need to improvise, you’ll simply stay home! You refuse to put yourself in situations that require trust and spontaneity. You refuse to put yourself in situations that might overwhelm you because you’ve stopped practicing “making do in the moment”. Instead, you become more and more obsessed with control. You act from fear and want everything to be as expected. This severely limits your options in life.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

4. You are destined and meant to be a guru-like healer (or at least, they are!)

…And will present themselves as such: in typical guru attire. This can look like wearing a Mother Mary Like blue scarf – hands folded in prayer and eyes piously turned to heaven, or going full yogi.

It can also turn into slipping into a conversation that they kind of ARE Jesus, you know? Nothing odd about that.

(Or – for a more moderate seeming version of this: they’re “just” a “channel of healing”, “a divine source of love for others”, an “unblemished mirror reflecting the truth about everyone”, someone who is allergic to any and all dishonesty because they are so pure always, yadayadayada)

Why this approach is seductive:

I’ve written more about this here. Basically, you are being told that you’re very very special. Which can do seeming wonders for any low self-esteem.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

This is a quick path to ego inflation. We all have an ego, and we need it. But when our ego starts taking over, then our most comfortable thoughts become our deepest convictions. This means you start believing illusions that make you feel good.
You dramatically increase your sense of responsibility – possibly overworking yourself to “save” everyone.
By focusing on and feeding ideas about what makes you special, you lose touch with what makes you similar to everyone else. You lose your basis for really connecting person to person.
You become invested at propping up your guru image, at the cost of noticing what is really happening moment to moment.
You become a total ass.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

5. Be Very Mind Focused

Psychic narcissists focus on clearing, shifting, canceling, deleting, eradicating and removing energy but not on experiencing. Think Contamination OCD meets energy work.

To a convinced psychic narcissist, intention is everything. So if my intention is to love you, and then I drive over you with my psychic truck, it can’t possibly hurt! (How is that for a get out of jail free card!)

And if a psychic narcissist doesn’t know that they are doing something wrong, then they can’t possibly be doing anything wrong! (How handy)

Because the unknown is scary, nay toxic, nay – only something other people have to deal with.

Ironically, while much of spirituality is pretty big on the understanding that we are also shaped through our subconscious, psychic narcissists will maintain that they have a perfect view all the way to the bottom of the subconscious pool. So if they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

They boast of love, but are full of fear. Fear to sit calmly and meet the parts of themselves they do not like.

Why this approach is seductive:

Getting honest about how you really feel can be scary and confusing. This approach spiritually bypasses that problem by equating you with your conscious thoughts. You are no longer a being with multiple conflicting, overlapping and confusing dimensions, you are just a flat pancake made of straightforward love!
If our lives are influenced by a subconscious self that does things that our conscious self does not like, yikes! That means that not getting your way all the time is just part of how being a human works! Can’t have that, can’t have that, must cling to a different understanding of reality.
Diving into your deeper emotional self takes time. It means you need to slow down and put your ambitions aside from time to time to do an inner reality check. Being very mind focused allows you to keep pushing forward and not question anything. It’s definitely productive. It also kills inner growth or change, which is great, because both of those are uncomfortable.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

You lose touch with your feelings and hence, with who you are and what you really want.
You lose true empathy, because empathy is emotional resonance (it’s not a “rule” about what you should say to whom)
You start experiencing chronic health issues, the roots of which are (in part) due to repressed emotion
You start to become tired and lose your zest for life – because your emotions are also the source of your passion. By tuning out your feelings, you’re muting your natural enthusiasm.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

6. Advanced spiritual activation, energy awareness & protection, intuitive development, all for free

Who doesn’t like free?

Except when it’s garbage.

That group webinar that will teach you all you need to know to be a healing master. That simple 3 step series of 5 minute video instruction that teaches you all the energy healing secrets.

Sure, because the energy world is so simple and easy because you are so special and talented that you can learn it easy as 1,2,3. (See what they’re really selling here?)

Sorry, but you can’t just throw up a webinar and brag about how your activation methods will magically teach people something and call it a day. Or rather, you can, and some people will lap it up, and they will be the worse for it unfortunately.

This one size fits all approach assumes too much. Like giving someone new shoes when they come in with a limp. Ehm, maybe it’s a hip problem? Or a thorn in their foot?

You can’t make assumptions about what energy healing practices someone really needs based on their interest in a simple sales page, the fact that they signed up for a webinar, or have a common, vague symptom. (*hatchoo*! Oh, I think that means I’m an Angel Guide!)

A client of mine signed up for one of these free courses and while her health had been steadily improving, suddenly it was back down the drain. I did a little research into the course, explained why she needed to stop, she did, and her energy levels started to improve. But for a moment there she was dangerously close to slipping into psychic narcissism herself. Unfortunately, this can happen in a matter of weeks sometimes.

Why this approach is seductive:

It’s free
The real health costs are hard to trace back to that free course. Basically, you’ll never know what hit you.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

Especially when you’re mixing a bunch of different techniques without understanding the philosophical roots of these approaches, you can end up adopting practices that oppose your values, or that cancel each other out, or that simply don’t work.
This quick fix approach of slapping techniques onto certain symtoms, does not address why you feel how you feel. At best, you’ll be managing symptoms, while the real problem festers and continues to get worse.
You wouldn’t dream of getting a freebie DIY surgery pack somewhere in an alley when you need heart surgery, so why are you so quick to try something on the energy planes, just because it’s free? Often, there are deeper doubts that energy is even real, concerns that it’s just your imagination, and hopes for a quick DIY fix so you won’t have to talk to anyone about any of this. Energy is real, and energy work is too. It can do as much damage, as it can help you heal. Choose wisely – not just whatever pleases an empty wallet.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

7 . Be Obsessed with Being Unlimited

You mean unlimited, like 2 Unlimited? Actually, yes. Their lyrics are pretty accurate.

(Is this a terrible terrible song? Yes it is. But it serves the purpose of this article quite well, so I feel called to include it. Despite feeling national shame – and a headache – every time I watch it)

No valley too deep, no mountain too high? Then why do we need sherpas? Or die before reaching the top. Or turn around because of a major blizzard safety hazard?

“We do what we want, and we do it with pride”

sidenote: will waistcoats ever be back in style?

I used to think this was just a dumb “whatever” song – but maybe they really mean it, or the fans do.

Whatever the case, psychic narcissists definitely mean it.

In their mind, limitation is the enemy of everything. They don’t want to deal with the natural limitations that come with being a spiritual being having a human existence, aka having a body.

They don’t like having a body, don’t want to spend time feeling what’s happening in their body and don’t want to listen when their body says “enough is enough”.

No! They will decide when enough is enough, and the answer is never! It’s never enough.

I mean sure, some motivation is great. But there are limits, really.

A lack of limits leads to pushing self and others to work work work, create exhaustion and strive constantly. Not healthy!

Why this technique is seductive:

If you feel pressured to achieve, anything promising no limits is seductive.
If you feel pressured to have more and more success in order to be worthy, this no limits approach will be seductive
If you struggle with saying no – to your own ideas, or the demands of others – this approach will be seductive. (You don’t need to say no to anything, because there are no limits! Just say yes yes yes!!!)

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

Part of the cure that untrained empaths desperately need, is learning to feel, acknowledge and respect limitations. Limitations in what you can do for whom. Limitations in how much you have to give. Limitations about what you can reasonably expect from others and yourself.
When you are dissociated (out of body) you can feel very energetically “one” with everything and like your personal existence doesn’t matter. While this is an interesting experience, it’s not a healthy go-to state. Yet “no limit” psychic narcissism will feed you endless reasons why it’s good, better and very spiritual to be in a zone where you don’t feel your earthly limitations. In reality, this will deplete you and force you either into illness, or to become a psychic narcissist yourself (which is when you psychically start to use others to prop you up and give you what you need).

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

8. Get All the Special Magical Abilities

Bending time, communicating with animals, talking to the angels, manifesting amazing things with no effort, becoming rich through intention, magnetically attracting blabla. It’s not that all these are necessarily unreal, but you gotta be a little skeptical of the spirituality circus. There’s a lot of ‘look at what I can do’ going on.

It all sounds very cool you know. OOOOOOHH, AHHHH! Can you really do that? Lemme see! You mean Harry Potter is FOR REAL?!!! *squee*

A guy got bitten by a toxic spider, zapped by lightning and fell into a salty lake and now he’s Empath Man. Something like that. Oh look, he’s just a regular guy but at night he fights crime in tights! In Lotus Position. In his mind.

If they could get away with posting “Archangel Michael thinks this course is the best thing since sliced bread”, they’d do it. Because, you know, they’re just spreading the light.

Why this approach is seductive:

We can all do with a little magic in our lives, am I right?
The little kid in you who still believes in fairy tales will love this.
The part of you that wants to solve all of the world’s problems will love this.
The part of you that wished life were simpler, will love this.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

By becoming more and more focused on all kinds of “cool tricks” you start to lose touch with (and lack time for) the healthy basics. You start neglecting your emotional health, lose interest in physical exercise etc, because you’d rather practice with your cool new psychic toy. There is a reason ancient gurus (as in, truly wise people) said trying to open up and learn new psychic abilities was just a big distraction from the real path (there is a crucial difference between learning to manage the abilities that are already active, versus trying to “activate” new ones to add to your collection).
Most (if not all) of these psychic abilities that psychic narcissists promote are just ways to meddle in everyone else’s business. It teaches you to shape your life by trying to control everyone else, instead of shaping your life through understanding and directing your own self.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

9. You Should ONLY Feel Good

That sounds noble and wonderful. But it’s like kids who only want to eat dessert.

Psychic Narcissists are tapping into really old ideas about a perfect heaven and they want to sell you on it (and how you can have it right now).

These courses should really be called: how to turn make-believe into making yourself believe, because lying to yourself is surprisingly easy when you commit to this patented 5-step process:

Decide that you are good and they are bad.
All that doesn’t feel good is toxic and needs to be expelled. It’s waste and not yours.
When you push away, block and transmute the things you don’t like, you are making the world a better place.
Accept that you are enlightened and done. All that is left for you to do in life is uplift other people. Your own healing is essentially complete.
When people challenge you, look down upon them from a place of Pure Love™️ and understand that these lesser beings are simply intimidated by your dazzling star essence.

Why this approach is seductive:

Who doesn’t want to feel good, and feel good more of the time? Case closed.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

You are taught to fear, judge and avoid your own feelings. Sorry, but most of those feelings will be “negative” in some way. Meaning, they are trying to get your attention about something uncomfortable, yet important.
You are encouraged to judge others for natural human feelings. You can end up “blocking” people simply for displaying feeling you don’t like.
You get stuck in binary “good versus bad” thinking, which leaves little space for real growth.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

10. Be “Perfect” and access Higher Realms

This is the spiritual version of wanting to be in the cool kids club. Except now it’s o.k. to wear wooden beads instead of leather pants or a $5000 jacket.

The goal is the same: belonging to an elite. Gaining status. Being looked up to. Making it big as an Instagram influencer:

“Oh, I am so blessed by all this attention. What am I doing in this photo? Oh, you know, just casually swimming with dolphins while I dial-in to the 21 frequencies of Divine Rainbow Light and spread awareness and enlightenment. Peace and blessings to you my followers. Even though there are thousands of you and I’ve never met any of you, I love every single one of you with my Radiant True Love of Oneness™️”

It’s an escape to paradise.

Why this approach is seductive:

Stories about paradise are very old. They’re basically coded into our shared cultural DNA. They resonate.
If you have parents who never really chose you: their face didn’t light up whenever you walked into the room, they thought you were annoying, they emotionally abused you, then this kind of spirituality gives you a “chance” to be a chosen one in a different way. I mean, if your parents treated you terribly, but parents of a higher order vouch for you, that’s pretty comforting, right? Well, the Higher Realms are filled with alternative parental figures.

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

You develop unrealistic expectations for your life and how things should be. This can either lead to “pretending” everything is wonderful, when it’s not, or constantly feeling like a failure.
You end up squashing that little intuitive voice that whispers that something is off. You want to believe in this wonderful fantasy so badly that you’ll silence your own intuition to believe it’s true. This leads to losing power, direction and inner guidance over time.

“spiritual” empath solutions that psychic narcissists recommend

11. You’re Supposed to Feel A-MAH-Zing after Client Sessions

Oh you know, they are just bursting and brimming with light. It’s all good! It’s all love! According to them it’s all the love going round that feels so amazing.

Except, when they don’t get their daily client dopamine hit, they start to feel down. So much so that Covid-19 seriously affects their emotional survivability. Somehow, they are not getting their spiritual connection hooked up. They are not getting their daily purpose vitamin-shot. They aren’t being lifted up by their meaningful soul work. They are not able to be inspired by their divine connection to their clients. Yadayadayada.

Look, if you are working with clients, of course you want to enjoy doing your work. Of course it needs to be meaningful. Of course you would feel down or scared if you can’t do your work as usual. But that’s very different from walking on air after a session. My take? You should feel more or less the same before and after a client session.

As in nothing special. You are still you, and you still have whatever going on that was going on earlier that day.

Why this idea is seductive:

Put simply, it’s hard to fathom that something that makes you feel so good, could in fact be so bad for someone else. If you enjoy it this much, surely everyone else must too right? ( Shout out to all the people “sharing” their fav music on the street for everyone to enjoy. Such a public service! )
Like with any addiction, the mind is good at coming up with stories that justify it. (I need that chocolate cake, o.k.?)

The problems this approach creates for empaths:

There are a few empaths I’ve worked with who’d reason: O.k so I don’t want to sponge other people’s pain. But I LOVE sponging their good feelings. It makes me feel great! Why shouldn’t I do that? Hmm, lemme see. When you borrow someone else’s coat, do you give it back to them only when it doesn’t suit you, and secretly keep it when you like it? Once you start honouring energy boundaries, you need to honour all of them. You don’t get to pick and choose. However, psychic narcissist gurus would teach you how to identify any coats you like, take them home with you, and never give them back “because you deserve it”. These are the “spiritual” folks who love hanging out in high-vibe places, but somehow, after they enter the scene, the energy of the places just gets taken down a few notches. (“Honey, have you seen my coat? The expensive one? I can’t find it”)

Why Should You Care?

So, ehmm, let them do what they do, right? I mean, if someone wants to lead an online cult, they can. People are allowed to be taken in by it and try it out as a path.

Yet the sad and scary part is that just as narcissism can be learned, psychic narcissism can be learned too. These are mostly not fixed personality types, they are what people become by repeating certain habits.

What psychic narcissists teach is seductive and will appeal to people who need help, but who also really need to slow down and do things that are less insta-magic. Psychic narcissists essentially tell you that there is an easy way out.

And on the energy planes, they are running what is essentially a pyramid scheme. The more students they can “connect” with, the more energy fuel they can extract. That’s why, even when you get a lot of free stuff, it’s not really free. I wouldn’t call paying with your health free anyway.

Teachers teaching others have a responsibility to their students. But we are talking about narcissistic teachers here. They are very good at making themselves look good, which in this social media age, usually makes them very popular.

So you see, this is not a small, local scheme someone is running in the family barn. People who do this can build huge empires really quickly. Empires in which they use their students, and their best students become users too. It’s like a spreading of mass hunger.

And that means that for the people who are not on board with all this, the pressure on their energy boundaries increases.

Why this is a Hot Topic Now

I know this all sounds very melodramatic, but especially now that many people are so affected by and stressed by the effects of covid-19, people who weren’t doing well before are now doing worse.

When you have a partner who adopts these kinds of practices, it’s just a matter of time before their “spiritual practices” start eating away at you. And then there are two options: if you can’t beat them join them (spoiler alert: you can’t beat them), or leave before you get too affected.

Psychic narcissism is a bunch of narcissistic practices on the energy planes. They can be learned – and unlearned! – but most people who have learned them are in so deep that they don’t want to unlearn them. Same problem as with regular narcissism: it takes a certain amount of introspection (and lack of narcissism) to acknowledge when we have unhealthy behaviours and want to change them. Beyond a certain point, the blinders just go on.

Good people trying to learn about energy can become psychic narcissists by repeating these kinds of practices. When they feel that something is off they might be told that it’s just part of the process, or just their resistance, or just the result of cleansing… so they push on, practice harder and make things worse.

It starts with one appealing idea. And then another one that builds on that. And before you know it, you’re down the “I am mighty and special for keeping everyone’s toxic energy at bay” rabbithole. “But you don’t get to criticize what I do because I have good intentions, therefore all my actions are necessarily love”.

Does toxic energy exist?

Yes, it does. Psychic narcissists are right that a kind of toxic energy (that doesn’t disappear when taking a positive angle) does exist. Yet ironically, they are the ones spreading it. Their one-sided focus on love and light creates a massive shadow self. That shadow self does all kinds of shitty things.

Real-life metaphor time: Here in the Netherlands, we have a few traditional villages with a very strict religious moral code. And they were (and maybe still are) also the places with the biggest drug problems because the youth would just go wild on the weekends, in secret of course. Although everybody kind of knew about it.

It’s like that. All that natural human desire just ends up going underground and living it out in a dark disco, or a gnarly spiritual shadow.

Being a healthy human being means we need to constantly tune in to our whole self. That includes the parts of us we like, and the parts we don’t.

Not constantly escaping to the “higher planes” for some kind of rainbow infused perspective.

We need to be open to learning more about the parts of ourselves we don’t yet see or feel, because we’ve dissociated from them or simply aren’t tuned in.

Wait, this doesn’t sound like a typical narcissist though…

When you think of “narcissists” you probably think of assholes in power suits. So how does this relate to spiritual leaders who give away intuitive development for free?

Look, some of these people just try too hard to be good and nice and perfect. I mean, they really want to be that! But being all light, does not make you all right.

We people are a mix of light and dark and salt and earth and love and hate. To just cut away half of the human experience and call it being a healer is misguided at best. It’s black-white thinking taken to the extreme.

Have you ever met a person with borderline personality disorder, who put you on a pedestal and called you angelic, only to yell at you that you are the devil’s butthole the moment you did something they didn’t like? That’s black-white / all or nothing thinking. People are either perfectly good, or they are evil. Energy is either pure, or it’s toxic. It’s love and light or it’s dangerous. There are no complexities, no inbetweens. Everything is purely binary.

But life isn’t that simple and energy work isn’t that simple either

Psychic narcissists are on a mission to create a flawless shiny self (love and light only oh dear ones!). That’s why I call it psychic narcissism. It really is the psychic version of that kind of lopsided narcissistic grandiosity.

But it sounds good. And it sells well. So more and more people are falling for it. Because… it’s the perfect excuse to avoid doing the real inner work.

And also, what can be less perfect than being spiritually dialed in to God?

How could you criticize someone who whispers “love and light” and “blessings to you, dear empathic one” at every opportunity?

How can a group of people who are focused on making the world a better place, be messed up themselves?

Ehm, I don’t know. Think, spiritual social justice warriors? (You know, the ones who will gang up on someone for using a word that has fallen out of recent grace, without giving a hoot about that person’s contributions, or intentions overall. They just unleash their rage in their desire to take someone down. It’s all warrior, no social or justice.)

To be clear, I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I just know that being sensitive to energy is a complex topic and simplifying it makes things worse, not better.

But they have this amazing healing story!

To make things even more complicated, psychic narcissists who are on a mission to feel Only Positive Energy are often convinced that their life is better now than it used to be.

In their old lives, pre-transformation, they felt sad or depressed or angry. But now, they feel love and light all the time!

(Are alarm bells going off in your head right now? Here, let me ding ding ding them for you)

I mean yes, drug addicts also feel better on cocaine. Does that prove that cocaine is a path to enlightenment?

You see, it’s tricky. But simple is a lot more seductive. It sells better. Especially if you can not-so-secretly believe that being an empath makes you a fabulously better person than everyone else.

Wait, where have we heard that kind of reasoning before?

But they’re successful!

Companies that exploit their workers also boast of being a success. But at what cost, to whom?

Psychic narcissism success is the success that comes from energetically exploiting others. Needing lots of other people to prop up one person’s ambitions.

Nothing about this is loving, spiritual, or worth emulating.

What can you do, to avoid getting taken in by psychic narcissist teachers?

via GIPHY

1. Make space for your feelings. Feel them, don’t just try to get rid of them.

2. Make time to slow down. Don’t keep pushing on without rest. (You can rest, you have to).

3. Avoid looking for magical ability “solutions” and spiritual escapes to higher planes. You are meant to be here, not up there. You are in fact, a spiritual being who chose to be in a human body for good reason. The purpose of incarnating into a physical body is not to escape it.

Your life is not a sophisticated version of Fort Boyard.

4. Oh, and that well-known yoga breathing exercise of “breathing in light” and “breathing out smoke”? – don’t do that. It’s the quintessential psychic narcissism tool:

It doesn’t acknowledge feelings, but only labels them as good energy (light) or bad energy (smoke)
It doesn’t help you process feelings. Instead (if you’re good at this technique) you end up treating your own emotions like garbage and pushing them either into your own energy field (clogging up your energy flow), or into the space around that – for other people to deal with.
When you push feelings away like this, your body responds with “oh hey, we sent her a message. but the message disappeared?! Oh well, let’s just resend it!” Ultimately, you just end up with more of the feeling you were trying to get rid of in the first place.