you’re NOT crazy, you’re remembering the real world.
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.🔓 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. Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.🔗 CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODEMy full archive is available at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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28:48
why personality ISN'T a prison (unless you let it be)
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.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.
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1:41:47
what you're calling a breakdown might be a dark baptism
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. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN: How to identify whether you’ve experienced a “dark baptism”Why modern society lacks the rituals to process psychological and emotional ruptureHow the nervous system encodes unprocessed rites of passage as unresolved threatWhat ancient initiation practices (from Eleusinian mystery schools to folk Catholic rites) can teach us about healing through structure, not suppressionWhy trauma often repeats itself until it’s ritualized or integratedWhat “conscious completion” is, and how to begin creating your own symbolic closureFour practical components of conscious completion: witnessing, naming, containment, and releaseWhy healing is not meant to return you to a state of “pre-trauma purity”, but more of a process of reorganization and how to begin that process yourselfUnlock 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.
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1:18:51
let them cook: shadow work, shame, and the stew of self
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. Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.🔗 CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODEMy full archive is available at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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15:01
dancing with the devil part 2: the return (how to grow the f*ck up and quit calling red flags soulmates)
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:What it really means to grow up (and why most people delay it for years)How the Maiden archetype shapes everything from pop culture to dating to “healing” trendsWhy staying psychically stuck in maidenhood becomes exhausting, not empoweringThe difference between chronological age and psychological maturityHow the culture seduces you into staying adolescent, because that version of you is easier to marketHow face the reality of the toll staying arrested in the archetype of the Maiden has taken on your voice, energy, and sense of realityWhat a conscious severance from this archetype looks like (ritual, grief, and real goodbye)How your inner Maiden can become an ally instead of a saboteur when you integrate herWhat it means to step into the archetypal role of the Mother, and why our world is starving for that presenceA final invocation to the younger self, the daughter, and the part of you that already knows this shift is overdueSubscribe to Back From the Borderline wherever you listen. New episodes drop every Tuesday. To explore hundreds of hours of ad-free bonus content and join the Patreon community, visit backfromtheborderline.com. 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 isn’t about psychiatric labels. It’s about 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.
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