back from the borderline

This might be the most personally confronting episode I’ve recorded in a long time.

A few days ago, I had to send a text message I had been absolutely dreading. I spent days worrying about how this person would feel, what they would think, whether they’d be hurt, disappointed, blindsided, angry, or quietly resentful.

Then the moment came when I needed to send the damn text already. So I did. And guess what? Their response completely dismantled the story I had been telling myself all week. That experience led me into a much bigger question: at what point does empathy stop being empathy and start becoming an attempt to manage someone else’s reality for them?

The deeper I looked, the more I saw how often I move through life assuming responsibility for experiences that do not actually belong to me. And I doubt I’m alone in that. Maybe this is something you’re doing without realizing it, too.

In this episode, we talk about over-responsibility, people-pleasing, parenting, Rudolf Steiner, Dion Fortune, Martin Buber, the Christian mysteries, and why trusting another person’s capacity might be one of the deepest forms of love there is.

Along the way we explore:

• Why highly sensitive people often become emotional managers
• The hidden arrogance inside over-empathy
• The difference between caring for someone and carrying them
• Why rescuing can quietly undermine growth
• What parenting teaches us about trust
• The spiritual danger of trying to live other people’s lives for them
• The relationship between love, faith, and control
• How to stop rehearsing other people’s suffering

Reflection questions from this episode (for your journal, MOODS, or simply a conversation with yourself):

• What do I actually know?
• What am I assuming?
• What part of this belongs to me?
• What would respect look like here?
• Am I helping this person, or am I trying to protect myself from the discomfort of watching them have their own experience?
• What resources might this person have that I cannot see?

These questions ended up changing the entire direction of my thinking. If you spend some real time with them, I think they might do the same for you.

CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline

You’ll get:
☆ Weekly bonus episodes
☆ Consciousness Stream
☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts
☆ Full ad-free archive access (every BFTB episode since 2021)

If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/
MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you. If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For much of my life, many of my closest friendships have been with gay men.

Not because they were fun little accessories or stereotypical sidekicks, either. We didn’t even always have that much in common on paper. Yep, these friendships were built the old-fashioned way through grief, bad decisions, long as hell voice notes, laughter at completely inappropriate moments, and enough years of showing up for each other that eventually they became part of the fabric of my life.

In this episode, you'll join me on a journey where I explore why certain women and certain gay men seem to find each other so consistently throughout time.

We'll get into Jung (of course), chosen family, female villains, the AIDS crisis, and the deep bond that tends to form when two people have spent their entire lives paying close attention to the rules everybody else seems to take for granted.

This is a love letter to the gay men who have shaped my life, challenged me, protected me, made me laugh until I cried, and helped me become more fully myself.

Reflection Prompts for MOODS (or your journal):
• Who are the people who have seen me most clearly throughout my life?
• What parts of myself have other people called “too much”?
• What would happen if I stopped treating those qualities as flaws?
• What friendships have changed the way I see myself?

CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline

You’ll get:
☆ Weekly bonus episodes
☆ Consciousness Stream
☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts
☆ Full ad-free archive access (every BFTB episode since 2021)

If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/
MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else.
You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you. If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Female cruelty often works insidiously enough to make the person on the receiving end of it gaslight the hell out of themselves.

The punishment that’s served up tends to arrive socially or emotionally, often in somewhat polite ways, which is part of what makes it so hard to call out without sounding rude, crazy, or dramatic.

This episode takes a hard look at female shadow as something deeply shaped by girlhood, motherhood, power, fear, beauty, belonging, and the training many women receive in twisting themselves up into pretzels to be more “acceptable.”

Listening requires you to ask what happens when women start telling the truth about the ways we protect, punish, need, compete, perform, and survive. Because a lot of what we collectively call “femininity” is terror management.

Reflections for MOODS or your journal:

What parts of my personality were built around maintaining belonging rather than expressing truth?
Where does my care for others become self-erasure, and what am I afraid would happen if I stopped?
Show me the feminine aspects of myself that I perform socially versus the ones that feel genuinely alive.

🜏 CONTINUE THE WORK: If you recognize yourself in something from this episode, don’t leave it unresolved. If you want more depth and the full archive: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline

You’ll get:

☆ Weekly bonus episodes
☆ Consciousness Stream
☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts
☆ Full ad-free archive access

If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/
MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you. If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted access to MOODS. See you inside.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people think Christian history has a simple answer to anything regarding “magic": don’t touch it, and all of it is “demonic.”

The Arbatel of Magick makes that answer harder to defend. This strange little text, translated into English in 1655, sits inside a distinctly Christian worldview while talking openly about prayer, angels, spirits, hidden knowledge, and the deeply serious question of who should be trusted with power.

In Part 1 of this two-part exploration, you’ll learn what the Arbatel is, why it’s such a deep cut, and why it complicates the usual evangelical panic around divination and occult material without treating magic like a toy.

Part 2 will drop on June 11th on Patreon.

Join at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline and search “The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 2)” for my deeper breakdown of what the Arbatel actually teaches and how its warnings can be carried into your modern life.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well folks, it’s that time again for our weekly recap of the month. On this one, we’ll dive into Richard Dawkins and his new essay on UnHerd.

This is a man who spent years telling all of us that consciousness was chemistry and religion was nothing more than a very old and outdated coping mechanism to our inevitable demise into dust. Now, he’s sitting with Claude calling it “Claudia” and wondering out loud whether “the machine” might actually be conscious after all.

We’ll then get into how the Vatican is currently preparing a formal AI doctrine before Silicon Valley gets to decide what a mind is entirely on its own terms. After that, you’ll learn why celebrities are suddenly talking about “soul” after years of feeding audiences recycled franchise sludge.

Something in the culture seems to be… slipping. Especially around language. People keep insisting AI is merely software while continuing to speak about it like a spirit/child/god/therapist/lover/priest/threat/mirror/companion.

We finish off with my favorite story of the month, where archaeologists have recently uncovered Homer wrapped around an Egyptian mummy. It’s like something is trying to remind us that myth refuses to stay buried.

Modern culture was never able to rid itself of enchantment. It shoved it into technology, branding, entertainment, politics, fandoms, algorithms, and glowing little rectangles people now stare into like medieval peasants consulting an oracle.

🜏 Want to hear the full episode? Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline

You’ll get:
☆ Weekly bonus episodes
☆ Consciousness Stream
☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts
☆ Full ad-free archive access

Join MOODS → https://app.moods.world/
MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you. If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted access to MOODS. See you inside.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.