Pop Psychology, Spiritual Gaslighting, and the Danger of Half-Truths

There’s a reel going viral right now where a man, wild-eyed and certain of himself, delivers a message with full conviction: “Narcissism is NOT a disorder.” No nuance. No caveats. Just certainty. He goes on to tell his followers that narcissists can change. That it’s just beliefs. Just conditioning. Just a mindset loop they’re stuck in. And he knows this, he says, because he’s worked with people diagnosed as narcissists - and they’ve healed.

This would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Because here’s what happens when people with a surface-level understanding of psychology and an even shallower grasp of spirituality start selling themselves as experts - they confuse personal power with personal blame. They mistake pop psych slogans and half-digested spiritual teachings for enlightenment. They throw spaghetti at the wall and call it soul work. And in the process, they do real harm.

I’m not denying that narcissistic traits can be part of someone’s trauma response. I’m not denying that the mind is powerful, that healing is possible, that we can shift our beliefs and rewire our patterns. I believe in that. I believe we co-create our reality. I believe trauma loops are real. I believe in vibrational frequency and ascension and the karmic patterns we play out with others - especially in empath-narcissist dynamics, which so often serve as spiritual initiations. I believe that bad things sometimes happen to good people not because they “manifested it” but because their soul chose a path of growth through contrast. This game board of life isn’t black and white. It’s layered.

But what I don’t believe in - what I will never cosign - is this current wave of oversimplified, decontextualised, Instagram-friendly “healing content” that reduces every human experience down to “just rewire your mindset.” Especially when it’s being delivered by people who neither understand psychology nor honour the metaphysical frameworks they’re pulling from.

The man in that video, whether he realises it or not, is bypassing both the science of the mind and the truth of the soul. Because true spiritual work doesn’t dismiss trauma. It integrates it. It recognises that sometimes demons are energetic, yes - but sometimes they wear human faces. Sometimes angels are here to protect, but they won’t always intervene. Sometimes your soul chooses a path that your ego can’t rationalise, and you’re not failing if it hurts.

This obsession with “you chose this, therefore you created it, therefore you’re to blame” is spiritual gaslighting. It’s a bastardisation of universal law. Yes, we are creators. Yes, we are responsible for our energy, our choices, our patterns. But we are also swimming in ancestral karma, cultural programming, collective trauma, and spiritual warfare. It’s not just mindset. It’s multi-dimensional.

There are entities in this world - some human, some not - that feed off disempowerment, confusion, self-doubt. If you’ve ever been in a narcissistic relationship, you know this. You know how your soul gets siphoned. You know the spiritual hijacking that happens when you second-guess your own reality long enough to forget who you are. That’s not just conditioning. That’s spiritual warfare. And you don’t get out of that with affirmations and a whiteboard.

Healing is not linear. It’s not always pretty. Sometimes it’s a death before a rebirth.

Sometimes it’s crawling through the mud. Sometimes it’s waking up to the reality that the person you loved was sent to break you open. And no, it doesn’t mean you deserved it. No, it doesn’t mean you failed to vibe high enough. It means your soul came here to ascend. And sometimes, the only way out of the loop is through.

But instead of honouring that truth, pop psychology creators - like this guy - wrap everything in an aesthetically pleasing bow and sell it as certainty. “You’re not broken, just change your beliefs.” “Everything is a projection.” “Nothing is real unless you make it real.” It’s giving algorithm. It’s giving surface-level. It’s giving “I watched one Joe Dispenza video and now I’m a spiritual neuroscientist.”

Meanwhile, real people are sitting at home, raw and confused, wondering why their trauma didn’t dissolve after a mindset shift. Wondering why their abusive ex still haunts their nervous system even though they’ve journaled and tapped and visualised. Wondering why the pain didn’t disappear when they finally “owned their part in it.”

Here’s why: because trauma is real. Because abuse is real. Because while energy is at the root of all things, energy doesn’t erase consequence. Karma doesn’t dissolve on a vision board. And your subconscious doesn’t rewire just because someone on Instagram told you it could.

Pop psych is obsessed with personal responsibility, but it rarely talks about nervous system regulation. It wants to collapse everything into choice, but it ignores survival. It doesn’t understand what it feels like to dissociate because your body is trying to protect you. It doesn’t know how to hold space for someone who was spiritually cracked open and left to rebuild themselves with no map. It doesn’t get it. Because it doesn’t want to. It just wants to sell a product.

And I’m not saying everyone in the space is doing harm. There are people who blend science and soul with integrity. People who understand the weight of holding trauma. People who speak of energy with reverence, not performance. But they’re often quieter. They’re not trending. They’re not trying to be. Because truth doesn’t need a gimmick. And real healing doesn’t need to go viral.

What concerns me the most about this trend is that it feels empowering, but it actually creates more shame. It tells you that if you’re still struggling, it must be because you’re not trying hard enough. Because you didn’t shift your paradigm. Because you’re still identifying with your pain. Because you’re choosing the wrong timeline. It becomes a loop of spiritual inadequacy. You don’t heal - you hustle to perform healing.

And let’s be clear, this is how the dark works. Not through obvious evil, but through distorted light. Through the seduction of bypassing. Through the false promise of a shortcut. Through people like this man, who weaponise healing language to peddle illusion.

We are in a spiritual war. If you can’t see it, you will be seduced by it. You’ll think the narcissist is just a hurt little boy who needs a new belief system. You’ll think your CPTSD is a mindset loop. You’ll think your spiritual gifts are a curse because you haven’t yet learned how to shield. You’ll believe that if you just “ascend” hard enough, the world will stop testing you.

That’s not how this works.

Your soul chose this path. Not to be punished, but to awaken. You came here to remember who you are - not to bypass the pain, but to walk through it with clarity, protection, and purpose. You came here to see through the illusion. And part of that means learning how to discern the difference between real light and the counterfeit.

So to anyone reading this who’s been hurt by people like this, people who told you your abuse wasn’t real, or that you manifested your illness, or that your trauma is just a thought pattern - I see you. I believe you. You’re not crazy. You’re not weak. You’re not unevolved. You’re in the middle of a spiritual initiation that’s teaching you to remember your power.

Yes, you can create your reality. Yes, you can shift your frequency. But don’t let anyone tell you that your pain isn’t real just because they haven’t developed the spiritual or psychological depth to sit with it.

This path is sacred. We need to protect it.

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