Narcissism Counselling
People do not usually search for narcissism counselling Perth because they are curious about a label. They search because a relationship has become confusing, cruel, addictive, or emotionally expensive. Sometimes they are worried about their own narcissistic traits and the damage those patterns are causing. More often, they are trying to recover after life with a narcissist, a controlling parent, a manipulative partner, or an ex who left them doubting their own memory, worth, and judgment.
At Energetics Institute in Inglewood, Richard and Helena Boyd work with both sides of this problem. They support people whose grandiosity, lack of empathy, shame, and defensiveness are damaging their relationship life. They also work with people recovering from narcissistic abuse, where the presenting problem may look like anxiety, collapse, grief, trauma symptoms, or a deep loss of trust in self. That difference matters, because the treatment focus is not the same.
Our practice is based at 82 Tenth Ave, Inglewood, close to Beaufort Street. Many Perth clients come here after years of trying to “be reasonable” in an unreasonable dynamic. Others arrive after a breakup, a family rupture, or a workplace betrayal that has left them wired, ashamed, and unable to make sense of what happened. They often say the same thing in different words: “I know something was wrong, but I still can’t explain it cleanly.”
What Is Narcissism?
In everyday language, people use the word narcissism loosely. In clinical terms, narcissistic personality disorder is a recognised mental health condition. Healthdirect describes narcissistic personality disorder as a condition in which a person believes they are better than others, may have an exaggerated sense of self importance, and often struggles with empathy and relationships. It also notes that while many people can show narcissistic traits from time to time, NPD causes significant problems in relationships and daily life.
The APS also notes that NPD involves a pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, entitlement, and a lack of empathy for others.
That does not mean every arrogant or difficult person has a diagnosis. It does mean that persistent narcissistic behaviour can cause serious harm, especially in intimate relationships, parenting, family life, and work.
What Narcissism Often Looks Like In Real Life
The clinical definition matters, but most people do not arrive saying, “I think this is NPD according to the criteria.” They talk about the lived pattern.
A woman may describe a partner who began with intense love bombing, certainty, charm, and future promises, then gradually moved into criticism, control, withdrawal, blame, and emotional reversal. She is now anxious, second-guessing herself, and cannot work out why she still misses someone who made her feel unsafe.
A man may come in after his adult children have pulled away. He says everyone is ungrateful and disloyal. But under that anger sits a long history of humiliation intolerance, a need for constant admiration, and a pattern where any criticism is experienced as an attack. The presenting issue is family conflict. The deeper issue is a fragile sense of self organised around superiority and defence.
A business client may describe an ex-colleague or ex partner who lied, triangulated, and rewrote events so convincingly that everyone else seemed to believe them. The result is not just anger. It is trauma, confusion, and a collapse in trust.
These are the kinds of situations that bring people into narcissism counselling.
Our Narcissism Counselling In Perth
At Energetics Institute, this work is not reduced to generic talk therapy. Richard and Helena Boyd use an integrative psychotherapy model shaped by body psychotherapy, depth work, trauma understanding, and relational patterning. That matters because narcissistic traits do not only sit in thoughts. They often sit in body states, shame responses, defensive posture, collapse, and the way a person protects themselves from underlying vulnerability.
For clients showing narcissistic patterns, the work often involves confronting the split between the public false self and the private emotional reality underneath it. That can include:
- grandiosity masking deep shame
- defensive contempt covering fear
- entitlement protecting fragile self-worth
- aggression appearing when vulnerability gets close
- a dependence on praise, approval, success, or status to hold the self together
For survivors of narcissistic abuse, the work is different. It often centres on trauma recovery, rebuilding reality-testing, restoring boundaries, processing grief, and understanding how manipulation, intermittent reward, coercion, and emotional inversion affected the nervous system.
Who Seeks This Kind Of Counselling?
This page speaks to two groups.
The first group are people worried about their own narcissistic patterns. They may notice:
- chronic relationship breakdown
- rage or withdrawal after minor criticism
- an inflated sense of being right or superior
- repeated conflict at work or home
- exploitation of others in the service of self-protection or admiration
- intense defensiveness
- difficulty feeling genuine empathy
- a need to be special, central, or unquestioned
- cycles of idealising and devaluing others
The second group are those recovering from a narcissistic relationship or family system. They may be dealing with:
- self-doubt
- trauma symptoms
- fear, shame, or confusion
- difficulty trusting their own judgment
- emotional flattening or over-alertness
- grief after a relationship that felt addictive and damaging
- PTSD-type symptoms after prolonged manipulation or coercion
In both cases, the work needs depth. It is rarely enough to hand someone a few coping tips and hope for lasting change.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder And Clinical Complexity
NPD is one of the more complex personality disorders to treat. Healthdirect notes that the main treatment for NPD is long-term psychological therapy.
That aligns with practice experience. People with strong narcissistic structures do not usually seek treatment because they feel calmly motivated to change. More often, they come when something has broken down. A marriage. A family relationship. A professional reputation. Their own functioning. Sometimes the person is in personal crisis. Sometimes they are furious at everyone else and only slowly begin to see their part in the pattern.
This is why treatment has to work at more than one level. It needs to address:
- defensive organisation
- shame and humiliation sensitivity
- inability to mentalise others accurately
- disturbed attachment
- trauma or childhood trauma
- lack of reflective capacity under stress
- the gap between the public image and the private emotional life
How Richard And Helena Boyd Work With Narcissistic Patterns
This is where the practice becomes more specific.
Richard and Helena Boyd do not approach this as a simple behaviour issue. Their psychotherapy work includes body-based and depth-oriented methods. That means they pay attention not only to the story, but to how the person carries themselves while telling it. A client may speak with certainty, but the body reveals panic when admiration is withdrawn. Another may present as cold and superior, while the body shows collapse, shallow breathing, and old terror whenever accountability gets close.
One man came in saying his problem was other people’s betrayal. He listed disappointments in business, romance, and family. On the surface, every story ended with him as the wronged party. But the session changed when he described one small moment. His partner had challenged him over a lie, and he said he felt “heat behind the eyes” and an immediate need to destroy the conversation. That moment mattered. It showed where underlying feelings of shame and exposure were converting into attack. The work did not begin with arguing over labels. It began there.
Another client came in after years with a narcissistic parent. She was not seeking insight into narcissism as a concept. She wanted to know why, even in her thirties, one short message from her mother could undo her whole week. The answer was not weakness. It was conditioning, trauma, and a nervous system that had learned to prioritise danger detection over security.
What Treatment Can Involve
For clients presenting with narcissistic structures, treatment may involve:
- recognising narcissistic behaviour without collapsing into self-hatred
- linking current patterns to earlier shame, deprivation, or admiration-based survival
- increasing emotional range so rage and contempt are not the only available defences
- building reflective capacity
- strengthening genuine empathy
- reducing dependence on status, praise, or control
- learning to tolerate criticism without collapse or retaliation
- working toward accountability, repair, and humility
For survivors, treatment may involve:
- trauma stabilisation
- processing grief, fear, and anger
- rebuilding trust in one’s own perceptions
- understanding manipulation patterns such as love bombing, gaslighting, idealisation, and discard
- addressing PTSD-like symptoms
- strengthening boundaries
- supporting self esteem and a more secure internal reference point
- making sense of why the dynamic was so hard to leave
This is why one page can include both narcissism counselling and support for abuse survivors, but the therapy itself must be tailored very differently.
Effective Modalities We Use
The original page used generic terms like “group therapy” and “talk therapy” without showing what actually differentiates the practice. A more accurate description is this:
At Energetics Institute, therapy may draw from:
- body psychotherapy
- psychodynamic psychotherapy
- trauma-informed work
- relational psychotherapy
- shame-focused work
- selected skills-based approaches where useful
- couples work when relationship difficulties are central
- recovery-oriented support for those leaving narcissistic partners
We do not present this as one standard protocol. The work is adapted to the person in front of us.
Counselling For Narcissistic Abuse Victims
This is a major part of the page, and it needs to be handled with more precision than “you may be suffering from a type of PTSD.”
Long-term narcissistic abuse can leave people with trauma symptoms that strongly resemble PTSD or complex PTSD. They may not only feel sad or confused. They may live with hypervigilance, body-based fear, emotional flooding, numbness, grief, self-blame, and a collapse in trust. Healthdirect notes that personality-related disorders can have major effects on family and close relationships, and that treatment often involves long-term therapy.
At Energetics Institute, this support often includes:
- understanding coercive emotional patterns
- restoring internal stability
- helping the person stop arguing with reality in the way the relationship trained them to
- separating guilt from responsibility
- rebuilding a sense of self after prolonged control
- addressing trauma around sex, money, family, parenting, and identity
- helping children, adult children, partners, siblings, and parents recover from sustained emotional harm
This work can be especially important when the person still feels bonded to someone who repeatedly hurt them.
Support Group For Survivors
The old page referred to a survivor group in a way that sounded vague. The safer and more credible way to state this is:
Energetics Institute has offered support for survivors of narcissistic abuse, including group-based work at times. Availability can change, so the practical next step is to contact the practice directly to ask what is currently running and what form of support is most suitable.
That is more useful than making a broad claim without details.
