Is my new client a targeted individual? Is she just likely to have difficulties of the kind she is experiencing from being empathic and in contact with so many people due to her massage therapy work?

The latter is the case. She is not being targeted but, in effect, makes herself a target by being in proximity to the energy of many people, and that combination of wanting to interact with them and naturally wanting to tune in to the energy of the environment, wherever she might be, can create some disturbing experiences because she will pick up outside energies, and then her deep subconscious will register a cry of alarm at times when it sees something particularly unpleasant or forbidding. The answer here is simply good safety practices to ask for oversight and protection from the divine realm whenever she is engaged in any kind of intuitive outreach or where that might happen spontaneously as when doing a massage therapy session.