My client [name withheld] and her healer friends seem to be constantly under attack. Are they perceiving this accurately?

Your intuitive assessment was correct that this is all inspired by inner fears and they are seeing shadows, in effect, and the subconscious is creating intuitive impressions attempting to follow the instructions it perceives are wanted. So they are engaged in a kind of call and response where inner fear goes looking, expecting to see certain things, and then the subconscious dutifully supplies them, again out of fear and wishing to satisfy the executive level of the mind as if to say, “You see, I can see what you are wanting to see,” and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So there needs to be some letting go and some inner work to tame the fears, and this would help ease things and reduce the self-tormenting that is taking place.