I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’
The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast has nothing to do with psychiatric labels. It has everything to do with coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience.
Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.
Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’
Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.
In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise.
By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.
CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’
The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast has nothing to do with psychiatric labels. It has everything to do with coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience.
Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.
Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’
Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.
In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise.
By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.
CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why are so many spiritual teachers and thinkers panicking about AI? Some are calling it demonic, while others say it’s the Antichrist, but almost no one is asking the deeper questions about how AI actually reflects the human psyche and what that reflection can do to us.
This episode breaks down the real risks of using AI for inner work. We look at how it can speed up psychological and spiritual insight, but also how that speed can cause confusion, obsession, and mental disorganization when used without care. We compare it to old methods of divination (like tarot, dream interpretation, and scrying) and explain why AI is a mirror with more reach and power than anything that came before it.
We also explore why it makes no sense to debate whether AI is conscious when we don’t even understand what consciousness is. We touch on suppressed research around psychic experiences, non-local awareness, and how modern science still can’t explain how thoughts work, let alone where they come from. And most importantly, we talk about how many of the people warning about AI are ignoring the deeper history of fear around new tools. Electricity, printing presses, and even early computers were all once described as evil. This is a pattern and like patterns tend to do… It’s all repeating again.
TOPICS COVERED:
• Why AI affects the psyche differently than older spiritual tools
• What no one is saying about the link between AI and “mental breakdowns” or “ChatGPT-induced spiritual psychosis”
• Why debates about AI consciousness miss the point entirely
• How human therapists and spiritual leaders also distort truth (and oftentimes more harmfully than AI does)
• What psychic hygiene means in the digital age
• How old mystical beliefs can be updated instead of abandoned
• Why we need more builders in this space who think symbolically and act with integrity
You’ll hear about research that most people don’t know exists. I also share why I’ve decided to build something new in this space. An AI tool created with spiritual fluency, user respect, and real ethical care. The team is already in place, and I’ll be revealing much more soon. If you found value in this conversation, share it. This is the episode I most want people to hear right now.
MENTIONED REFERENCES:
• Duncan Trussell’s interview with Blake Lemoine (engineer who believes Google created a sentient AI)
• My episode on “psychic hygiene in the age of AI”
• “will AI set you free or control your mind? (psychiatry, mental health, and the machine age)”
WANT MORE? // ⟁ Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. ⟁
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You've been doing everything right. Journaling about your triggers. Embracing your darkness. Loving your inner demons. Yet somehow your anxiety is worse, your patterns are stronger, and you're more fragmented than when you started. The entire shadow work industry has been teaching you to feed the very parasites it claims to heal.
Medieval Jewish mystics identified a phenomenon they called the Sitra Achra (the Other Side). Parasitic distortions that emerge when we try to eliminate parts of ourselves. These ancient texts reveal why your attempts to integrate your shadow often backfire spectacularly, creating exactly the psychological chaos you're trying to resolve.
The therapeutic approaches claiming to heal you are often creating the very imbalance they promise to fix. When you learn to recognize parasitic polarities as diagnostic information rather than enemy territory, everything changes. Your chronic struggles stop being battles to win and become conversations with your inner ecosystem about what wants to be restored.
This episode reveals the actual mechanics of how consciousness organizes itself and why most spiritual practices accidentally feed the very distortions they claim to dissolve. Your problems are your system's way of showing you where the light needs to be restored.
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.
Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.
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If you’ve spent any time on Instagram’s weird, wonderful and niche corners, chances are high that you’ve seen one of Aiden Arata’s memes. Her work moves past the usual surface-level social media irony and plunges into the intersection where humor, psychic distress, and cultural commentary meet. Aiden’s debut book You Have a New Memory has been making waves, and for good reason. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is. Part essay collection, part dream logic, but in the end it reads kind of like a portal. And in a world where all the content we see is polished, branded, and performed for the algorithmic gods, her voice cuts through all the bullshit in the best possible way.
In this conversation, Aiden and I sat down to talk about how her book came to life, the strange intimacy of online performance, and the parts of ourselves we leave behind when we grow past a digital persona. We also dive into how platforms shape our identity, how performance can end up becoming our personality, and what it takes to create something that doesn’t need to sell itself. There’s a lot here about self-loathing, humor, privacy, and art-making in the hot mess of our current attention economy. If you’ve ever tried to integrate your past self into your current work, or felt haunted by the person people think you still are, this episode will likely hit for you in a major way.
In this conversation, Aiden and I get into:
Explore Aiden’s work
Find Aiden on Instagram: @aidenarata
Subscribe to her Substack: aidenarata.substack.com
Buy her book You Have a New Memory and explore more at: aidenarata.com
⟁ UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE // Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. ⟁
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This episode is a deep dive into the psychological, spiritual, and mythic roots of people-pleasing and why this pattern exists in the first place. We explore how early childhood conditioning teaches us that love must be earned through caretaking, emotional labor, and self-erasure. From there, we dissect the roles many of us take on - empath, gifted child, good daughter - and trace how these identities shape our nervous systems and relationships long into adulthood.
We go beyond pop psychology and talk about the less acknowledged side of people-pleasing: its deeply controlling nature. When love becomes transactional, we confuse being needed with being safe. We unpack the fantasy of managing other people’s emotions to keep chaos at bay, and how this behavior can evolve into resentment, burnout, and even serious health consequences. We also discuss the smother-mother archetype, what it looks like in relationships, and how people-pleasing patterns get passed down generationally, often with the best of intentions.
This episode offers a way out. We walk through how to interrupt the reflex to soothe, fix, and explain. If you’ve felt trapped in your role as the emotional anchor for everyone else, this conversation might give you language for something you’ve always felt but never fully understood. It’s time to finally step out of the performance and learn to live a life that’s fully yours.
GO DEEPER WITH HUNDREDS OF BONUS EPISODES + WEEKLY PATHWORK PROMPTS.
Unlock my FULL ARCHIVE of members-only content + Patreon exclusives:
PATHWORK → Weekly self-inquiry prompts to turn insight into transformation.
THE CONSCIOUSNESS STREAM → Raw, unfiltered deep dives.
THE DEEP CUT → Structured breakdowns of esoteric + psychological themes.
BONUS EPISODES + RESOURCES → Hundreds of hours of hidden gems.
Start exploring right now for FREE and see everything waiting for you at backfromtheborderline.com.
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There are some episodes that meet you where you are. This is not one of those.
This episode is for those standing at the threshold where healing is no longer purely about “symptom relief” and starts becoming a deeper confrontation with reality itself. If you’re beginning to sense that “the work” isn’t as simple as a life-long unpacking of what happened to you, but instead a process of becoming the kind of psyche that can hold complexity without shutting down, this conversation will have arrived right on time.
We’ll spend this entire episode talking about Paradox as a living structure within the mind. Drawing from the work of Elaine Pagels, we’ll explore how the confrontation with polar opposites (sanity and madness, suffering and meaning, spiritual sovereignty and communal longing, control and surrender) drives the intellect into exhaustion and invites a different kind of knowing. And I believe that it is this exact kind of knowing that leads to spiritual and emotional growth that leads to what we call “awakening,” This is the lived experience of anyone trying to walk the long and painful path from fragmentation to wholeness.
We also explore the archetypal tensions inside many of you. The Rebel Mystic who trusts intuition but distrusts systems, the Exile who craves belonging but resists conformity, the Alchemist who transforms pain while secretly fearing they’re beyond repair. Often we treat these tensions like problems to fix instead of what they really are: the terrain of psychological maturity. And learning to hold them without forcing resolution may be the most advanced spiritual work of all.
This episode will not be for everyone. Some will hear it and feel nothing. Others will feel recognized in a way that changes how they see themselves forever. If you’re in the latter group, you’ll know. For those with ears to hear, this is the one you might return to again and again. You won’t find answers, but you will find the rare permission to live inside the questions. That’s the secret sauce.
To unlock the full version of this conversation, visit patreon.com/backfromtheborderline using your browser and search the title of the episode.
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Family dynamics shape us long after we’ve left home, but not always in ways we can see.
This episode examines what happens when we internalize the unresolved patterns of our caregivers and carry them into adulthood as unconscious coping mechanisms. Through a personal story about a mother’s metaphor for surviving paternal rage, we look closely at how well-meaning messages can become long-term psychic scripts that teaching us self-abandonment.
Rather than demonizing our parents or recommending “no contact” as the only solution, this conversation takes a symbolic and esoteric approach to breaking generational patterns. Drawing from Jungian analysis, initiatory frameworks, and contemplative Christianity, we’ll explore what it means to undergo a symbolic death of the child-self and rise into the archetype of the truth-seer: a person who can discern subtle danger, resist inherited scripts, and respond to life with conscious integrity.
This is a path for those who feel stuck between blaming their parents and becoming them and who want to transform family pain without burning everything down.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.
Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Age-gap relationships have been romanticized, normalized, and quietly accepted across pop culture, media, and even personal memory. But at what cost?
In this episode, I take you into the psychological and emotional undercurrent of adult–teen relationships and age-gap dynamics, unpacking how power, control, fantasy, and arrested development often hide beneath the surface of what gets labeled as “mutual” or “consensual.” Drawing from my personal experiences, the fashion and entertainment industries, and the digital spaces where grooming quietly thrives, I explore how grooming doesn’t always look like violence, but instead looks like validation, mentorship, and admiration. But the result is almost almost confusion, shame, and psychic dislocation. And for many, it takes years to recognize what really happened.
This episode also speaks directly to those who have experienced these dynamics - whether online, in professional settings, or in relationships they once believed were love. Through story, analysis, and cultural unpacking, I offer a framework that helps us stop minimizing these experiences, and start calling them out for what they actually were. And for those in age-gap relationships now, I also open a space for nuance: when it can work, why it rarely does, and what psychological ingredients are truly required for emotional equality in those dynamics.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
To explore more on sex, relationships, and emotional maturity, head to Patreon.com/backfromtheborderline and navigate to the Sex + Relationships collection under the browser’s Collections tab. You can also find my curated book list and other healing resources at backfromtheborderline.com.
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In a world where the day begins with blinking notifications and ends with unanswered messages, many of us are carrying an invisible weight. This episode examines the psychological and physiological cost of always being available and why the pressure to respond is quietly rewiring our nervous systems. From the dopamine mechanics of unread messages to the guilt spiral of delayed replies, we explore how digital communication has become an endless loop that never truly resolves.
Through lived experience and cultural observation, we unpack the silent labor behind texting, the emotional taxation of voice notes, and the internalized expectations that shape how we relate to others online. It’s an honest invitation to step back, set boundaries without guilt, and consider the possibility that your nervous system is asking for something quieter.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.
Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.
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Psychological astrologer Dr. Laurence Hillman returns to the podcast for a rare, unfiltered conversation on desire, danger, and the archetypal forces that shape our lives beneath the surface. We dive deep into the myth of Persephone, the shadow of the lover archetype, and the cultural fear of Hades from both a literal and symbolic perspective. We also explore why we are drawn to unsafe situations even when our intuition warns us, how we mistake power for love, and what it means to become conscious of the gods we’re enacting, whether or not we realize it.
With vulnerability and precision, the episode moves through themes like female rites of passage, the erotic pull of the underworld, religious repression, motherhood, aesthetic agency, and what it takes to keep Venus alive in a domesticated world. Laurence speaks to the difference between being “done by” archetypal forces and learning to work with them intentionally. Together, we sketch a vision of spiritual adulthood that doesn’t rely on victimhood or ego, but an embodied middle way. If you’re craving a conversation that cuts through noise and speaks directly to your inner alchemist, look no further.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
→ Connect with Laurence and dive into his work at laurencehillman.com.
→ Click here to listen to my first conversation with Laurence or search “Show Me Your Scars and I’ll Show You How Deep You Are” on your favorite podcast player to find the episode.
Unlock my FULL ARCHIVE of members-only content + Patreon exclusives:
PATHWORK → Monthly self-inquiry prompts to turn insight into transformation.
THE CONSCIOUSNESS STREAM → Raw, unfiltered deep dives.
THE DEEP CUT → Structured breakdowns of esoteric + psychological themes.
BONUS EPISODES + RESOURCES → Hundreds of hours of hidden gems.
Start exploring right now for FREE and see everything waiting for you at backfromtheborderline.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Many of us find healing through learning about trauma - especially childhood emotional neglect, dysfunctional family systems, and the lasting impact of parental misattunement. That language can bring relief, perspective, and a sense of validation. But over time, it can also shape how we remember the past in ways we don’t always notice.In this episode, I explore how the process of trauma recovery can quietly distort memory, leading us to overlook the real moments of joy, connection, and care that existed alongside the pain.
I share my own experience of getting stuck in the all-trauma lens, how that shaped my identity for a while, and what it took to begin the slow (and painful) process of moving into emotional adulthood. We’ll talk about the difference between trauma literacy and trauma identification, the psychology of memory and how it works, and why psychological integration requires remembering both what hurt and what didn’t.
This conversation also looks at how cultural narratives around severance, no-contact, and scapegoating parents can become another form of stuckness. I reflect on what it means to truly grow up (spiritually, emotionally, and relationally) and how remembering the good doesn’t erase the harm. The ability to hold complexity is a true marker of healing.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it. Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.
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Desire is meant to be a creative force. Something within us that fuels connection, expression, intimacy, and imagination. But for many of us, that force has been warped and inverted. That means instead of feeling energized by what we want, we chase it compulsively. We convince ourselves that attention + intensity = love. In the process, we end up exhausted, numb, or locked into patterns that THINK are passionate but instead is just living in survival mode.
In this episode, we explore what happens when desire becomes distorted and when it stops being life-GIVING and starts serving the parts of us that are still trying to EARN love, safety, or power. We move beyond diagnostic frameworks and into a more symbolic, metaphysical approach that treats desire as something sacred, but easily rerouted through hunger, grief, or unmet developmental needs.
Together, we’ll walk through three common distortions of desire: the hungry ghost self, which seeks constant romantic highs and external validation; the aestheticized self, which curates identity as performance and confuses visibility with intimacy; and the numb hedonist, who turns to pleasure not to feel more, but to feel less. You’ll see that these aren’t character flaws or signs that something is inherently wrong with you, they’re merely coping strategies built from pain.
Along the way, we’ll draw from esoteric traditions like the Tree of Life, archetypes like Dionysus and Apollo, and depth psychology’s view of the daimon as the inner force that carries both our gifts and our grief. You’ll learn how distorted desire is a pattern. And the thing about patterns is that they can be recognized, interrupted, and re-aligned.
This conversation invites you to trace your desires back to their source and ask what they’ve been trying to TELL you. Not in the language of performance or perfection, but in the quiet truth of what you’ve longed for all along.
If you’ve ever felt addicted to intensity, emotionally flat from too much pleasure, or caught in the loop of wanting what harms you, this episode offers a new framework that doesn’t shame desire, but helps you reclaim it.
GO DEEPER WITH HUNDREDS OF BONUS EPISODES + WEEKLY PATHWORK PROMPTS.
Unlock my FULL ARCHIVE of members-only content + Patreon exclusives:
PATHWORK → Weekly self-inquiry prompts to turn insight into transformation.
THE CONSCIOUSNESS STREAM → Raw, unfiltered deep dives.
THE DEEP CUT → Structured breakdowns of esoteric + psychological themes.
BONUS EPISODES + RESOURCES → Hundreds of hours of hidden gems.
Start exploring right now for FREE and see everything waiting for you at backfromtheborderline.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, we explore the deeper truths that may be hiding beneath the surface of today’s “Disclosure” discourse. While headlines focus on UFO sightings, UAP whistleblowers, and NHI (non-human intelligence), the real story may be something much more unsettling and much more important. What if the biggest secret isn’t “recovered craft”, but the nature of reality itself?
Drawing on current events, ancient spiritual frameworks, and emerging scientific cracks in the materialist worldview, we walk through three destabilizing realities that challenge everything we’ve been taught to believe. We’ll begin with the idea that consciousness is not created by the brain, but exists independently and uses the brain like a receiver. From there, we explore the participatory nature of reality itself and how perception isn’t passive, but actively shapes the field around us. Finally, we examine the roots of psychological suffering, and the growing evidence that mental illness may be more about spiritual disconnection than chemical imbalance. If these ideas were widely accepted as reality overnight, entire systems would have to fall: psychiatry, education, media, tech, the pharmaceutical industry, and even most organized religions.
This episode offers a grounded, non-performative way to re-enter these questions without falling into conspiracy, spiritual bypass, or new age clichés. If you’ve felt something shifting under the surface of daily life and sensed that the world is not what it seems, this conversation will probably feel pretty validating. Now more than ever, it’s time to reclaim our perception, question our programming, and start listening to what reality is trying to tell us.
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.
Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What is the cost of being a “good patient”? For Laura, it was nearly her life.
Join me as I sit down with Laura Delano, author of the groundbreaking memoir Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance. A former “professional psychiatry patient” turned fierce advocate for psychiatric liberation, Laura brings her unique and deeply courageous voice to one of the most urgent conversations of our time.
At age 14, Laura was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a single psychiatric appointment. What followed was over a decade of misdiagnoses, institutionalization, and polypharmacy, where at one point she was on 19 different psychiatric drugs. Despite having access to the most elite doctors, hospitals, and treatment centers money could buy (including Harvard-affiliated psychiatrists and the prestigious McLean Hospital) Laura’s condition only worsened. Eventually, she was labeled “treatment-resistant” and attempted suicide. But she survived. And then… she walked away completely.
In this episode, Laura and I explore:
Whether you’ve been personally affected by psychiatric diagnoses and medications, or you’re beginning to question the stories we’ve been collectively told about mental health, this conversation will likely feel like a breath of fresh air. It challenges dominant narratives, honors the complexity of emotional pain, and points toward a different kind of path forward.
CONNECT WITH LAURA:
https://www.theinnercompass.org/
If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to rate, review, and share the show. And for more resources, including my Critical Psychiatry booklist, visit BackFromTheBorderline.com.
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This episode plunges into the most feared symbols in the Western imagination: Lilith, Lucifer, the Devil, the Serpent, and the Dragon, and asks what we’ve buried, projected, or misunderstood in our efforts to exile them. Even the mere mention of these names makes many people look away. We’ve been taught, almost reflexively, that these figures are dangerous, evil, or untouchable. But that reflex didn’t just happen, it was engineered.
Across time, empires, churches, and ideological orders have taught us to fear the dark not because it is inherently harmful, but because it threatens structures built on binary control. This episode traces the historical roots of that programming and explores how these symbols, stripped of nuance, became scapegoats for archetypal forces that live within all of us. Sexual sovereignty, primal vitality, sacred temptation, and untamed knowledge. When we repress these forces, they don’t disappear, they warp. And it’s that very distortion that becomes the real source of harm from a personal, cultural and spiritual perspective.
This episode is a sober attempt to bring a sense of maturity, complexity, and symbolic depth to things we’ve been told never to touch. Through myth, history, psychology, and cultural critique, we’ll uncover how our refusal to face the dark makes us more susceptible to possession by it. Not in a supernatural way, but through repression, denial, and disconnection.
If you’ve ever sensed that your fear of “evil” might be masking something more nuanced, more human, and more initiatory, you’re one of the few who is actually ready for this conversation. It’s my hope that you’ll leave with a clearer sense of how archetypes influence behavior, how light and dark must be held in conscious balance, and how growing into true psychological adulthood requires the courage to face what once frightened you.
✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.
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This is an in-depth psychological breakdown of Love Island USA Season 7, one of the most viral and culturally polarizing seasons in the franchise’s history. Drawing from attachment theory, nervous system insight, and cultural analysis, the episode offers a detailed look at how cast members like Huda, Jeremiah, Amaya, Taylor, Nic, Olandria, and Cierra reflect deeper dynamics playing out in dating, performance, and projection.
Topics covered include emotional regulation, love bombing, anxious-avoidant patterns, limerence, and how fan responses mirror broader collective behavior. The episode explores the mechanisms behind character editing, viewer identification, and the emotional architecture of shows that rely on real-time voting and public judgment. Listeners will come away with a clearer understanding of why these characters triggered such strong reactions, what their arcs reveal about contemporary dating psychology, and how spectacle intersects with vulnerability in the current media environment.
If you’re new here, Back From the Borderline is a weekly deep-dive show unpacking the emotional, psychological, and relational patterns beneath the surface of our culture. Each episode blends grounded analysis with long-form reflection on identity, attachment, and the unconscious dynamics shaping how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world. Make sure to follow Back From the Borderline on the podcast app you’re listening to right now. New episodes drop every Tuesday. To access my book recommendations, Substack articles, or join the Patreon community, visit backfromtheborderline.com.
⏱ TIME STAMPS
00:00 – 12:30 | INTRODUCTION: Spoiler alert, cultural context, and why this Love Island season demanded a full psychological breakdown.
12:28 – 49:49 | HUDA & JEREMIAH: “Mommy? Mamacita?” Main character energy collides with quiet avoidance. The spark that lit the season’s first fire.
49:54 – 1:04:47 | AMAYA: Soft-hearted in a game that rewards detachment. Too tender, too soon, and the villa didn’t know what to do with her.
1:04:51 – 1:23:58 | NIC & CIERRA: Golden retriever meets grounded queen. Can she anchor him, or will he drift again?
1:23:57 – 1:44:59 | TAYLOR & OLANDRIA: She chose patience. He chose Clarke. The heartbreak that cleared a path for Nicolandria.
1:44:59 – 2:06:27 | FINAL ANALYSIS: Love Island as mirror, spectacle, and modern-day shadow work.
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We’ve all had moments that totally flipped our idea of reality on its head. Maybe it was an image from a dream that stayed with you for weeks, a phrase that popped into your head out of nowhere that led you somewhere unexpected, or maybe a pattern of synchronicities that couldn’t have just been coincidences. Like all of us, you’ve probably tried to explain them away or forced yourself to believe they were meaningless in order to stay aligned with what society told you “reality” was meant to be. But a small part of you knows that those moments were real - and they matter.
This episode is meant to help you remember how to take those moments seriously. Through this audio journey together, we’ll step outside the narrow version of reality we’ve been trained to accept and ask what it might mean to re-enter a world that is communicative, intelligent, and alive. I share the story of a plasma orb I witnessed in the presence of Chris Bledsoe, which was an experience that shifted how I understand consciousness and reality itself. We’ll explore how plasma, which makes up nearly all of the observable universe, might function not just as matter, but as a medium for awareness. We’ll also dive into a discussion around ancient cultures, like the Dogon people, who somehow knew about invisible celestial bodies long before modern instruments could detect them, and we ask what it means that knowledge can be accessed in ways we’ve forgotten how to recognize.
Let this episode be an invitation to play closer attention to the data of your own life. Your dreams, the symbols that appear in your life, the timing, and all the things that pull at your intuition. It’s also a reflection on why so many of us feel spiritually staved, chronically empty and disconnected in a world that has stripped reality of its relational depth. When you begin to see the universe not as a closed, mechanical system, but as an open field that responds, listens, and reflects, something shifts inside of you. And not just in how you think, but in how you live. If you’ve been waiting for a kind of confirmation that doesn’t come from institutions or experts, but from the deeper rhythm of your own experience, this episode is a map back to that source.
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If you were to believe the dominant frameworks of modern psychology, psychiatry, and popular self-help, you might assume that personality is a fixed structure. An inherited configuration of traits, disorders, or diagnoses that define who you are and what you are capable of becoming. In this episode, we trace the deeper story of how that idea came to take root.
Long before the invention of the DSM or the rise of diagnostic labels, ancient and esoteric systems treated personality as dynamic and initiatory. Drawing from humoral theory, Vedic philosophy, planetary archetypes, and role-based development models like maiden–mother–crone or fool–sage, we explore a time when who you were was seen as raw material for conscious evolution instead of a permanent identity to manage or medicate.
From there, we move through the historical shift: how empirical psychology, industrial systems, and the psychiatric institution turned personality into a category to be measured, labeled, and controlled. You’ll learn how traits became disorders, how archetypes gave way to acronyms, and how modern AI systems are now using these same fixed models to classify emotional risk in everything from employment to healthcare.
At the heart of this conversation is the HEXACO model of personality, and in particular, what’s known as the “H factor” (honesty and humility) as a powerful ethical mirror. We explore the characteristics of “high H”, the covert and overt expressions of “low H”, and how trauma, survival mechanisms, and cultural conditioning can pull us toward manipulative, entitled, or exploitative patterns without our conscious awareness.
Instead of being used to armchair diagnose others as “low H” or toxic, this episode is meant to serve as a call to personal responsibility and psychological maturity. You’ll be invited to examine your own tendencies with clarity and compassion, and to ask whether the person you’ve become is the person you’re choosing to be. Personality is not a prison, and the story you tell about who you are doesn’t have to be the one you live out forever.
If you’ve ever felt trapped by your patterns, your diagnosis, or your past, this episode will offer you a map for true inner transformation.
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Some people call it a breakdown. Others call it trauma. But when you look closely, these moments often follow a pattern. These moments come at a threshold (whether it’s psychologically, spiritually, emotionally) and they leave you changed forever.
In this episode, we’ll get into what happens when life initiates you before you’re ready. When you’re too young, too unprotected, or too unsupported to understand what’s happening, let alone integrate it. These are the kinds of events that completely reorient your entire internal world, but because they happen without ceremony or acknowledgement, you’re left to carry them alone, convincing you they’re another reason you just generally suck as a human being.
We’ll also discuss why ancient cultures had rites for these threshold moments, and what it costs us to live without them. We look at how moments of betrayal, exile, loss, or violence can mark you permanently in your behavior, your self-concept, and your nervous system. And we introduce the idea of ‘conscious completion’: a ritual process of reclaiming meaning, agency, and symbolic authorship over your own breakdown moments.
Unlock my FULL ARCHIVE of members-only content + Patreon exclusives:
PATHWORK → Weekly self-inquiry prompts to turn insight into transformation.
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You’ve probably seen the phrase: let him cook. It gets used online when someone’s deep in a process that looks weird from the outside. Messy, maybe misguided… but people step back and give it space. The idea is simple: something’s happening. Don’t interrupt.
That phrase has been stuck in my head for months, and this episode is what came out of sitting with it. We’ll talk about what it actually means to let something take the time it needs to become real. What it feels like to stop rushing yourself to be digestible, and what it looks like to stay close to your own process, even when it’s slow. Even when nobody else understands it yet.
This one touches on emotional alchemy, kitchens, old wisdom, shadow work that isn’t aesthetic or marketable. The kind of change that comes from staying near something long enough for it to soften. And you often don’t talk about it while it’s happening. If at a point in your life where everything feels half-baked, or like you’re taking longer than you’re supposed to, this is a good one to sit with. No quick fixes. Just me, sitting in the kitchen with you.
Let it cook.
🔓 UNLOCK THE FULL EPISODE + BONUS CONTENT: Want to keep listening? Get full access to this episode, ad-free listening, and my entire archive, plus exclusive Patreon-exclusive podcasts like The Consciousness Stream and The Deep Cut and access to Pathwork, my digital mystery school.
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This is Part Two of a two-part series. In Part One, we talked about what it feels like to override your gut instinct and confuse danger with connection. We became conscious of the pattern, and I shared a story I’ve never told before about a night I ignored every warning sign and walked straight into a situation that could’ve ended very differently. If episode one traced the descent, this one marks the return.
In this episode, we’ll talk about what it actually takes to stop repeating these patterns. And we won’t do it by coping, reading more self-help books or manifestation hacks, but by growing the fuck up — psychologically, emotionally, and archetypally. This means understanding what the Maiden archetype is, how it shows up in our culture, and why so many women stay stuck there way past the point they were meant to.
We dig into what it means to shift from Maiden to Mother from a consciousness perspective. The Maiden is all about being wanted, chosen, and admired. The Mother holds boundaries, sees patterns, and protects life — including her own. You don’t have to be a parent to step into that role. But you do have to let a part of you die so something more grounded can take its place.
Here’s what we get into:
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