back from the borderline

You possessed knowledge as a child that you were systematically taught to abandon. You perceived realities that adults insisted did not exist. Every civilization except ours developed sophisticated frameworks for identifying and cultivating children who demonstrated expanded perceptual abilities. Our current “modern” culture pathologizes these same capacities.This transmission operates through symbolic narrative rather than direct instruction, using story and sound to bypass analytical defenses and activate dormant psychological capacities. The approach draws from pre-modern traditions that understood consciousness as malleable through mythic engagement. Instead of providing information to be processed, this audio experience creates conditions for recognition and remembrance through carefully structured resonance patterns.✧ 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.

This episode brings together two former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Stephanie Ann and Alyssa Grenfell) for a direct conversation about the psychological, emotional, and ritual structures of Mormonism and its lasting impact on women.Both guests were deeply embedded in the church for most of their lives and made the decision to leave, but their paths diverge in many meaningful ways. This conversation invites those who listen to consider how systems of control shape emotional development, distort spiritual experience, and impose gendered expectations under the guise of divine authority from a “sky-daddy” figure. Stephanie brings a perspective shaped by both mysticism and integration work. Her journey included a pivotal psychedelic experience and a prolonged period of spiritual crisis, and she now supports others in navigating similar ruptures. Alyssa’s work is rooted in research, documentation, and cultural critique. Her content reaches hundreds of thousands of viewers who are either leaving the church or seeking to understand it from the outside.What I hope emerges for you by listening to this conversation is a reflection on what is lost when a system suppresses emotional maturity and about what becomes possible when we collectively reject the inherited model of womanhood served up to us by high-control and toxically shaming patriarchal religious frameworks. In this episode, we cover:– Emotional infantilization and the performance of obedience among Mormon women– How purity culture, social hierarchy, and spiritual authority reinforce one another– The structure and secrecy of Mormon temple rituals, and their overlap with ceremonial magic– What it means to question a belief system built on exclusive truth claims– The tension between abandoning religion and staying open to spiritual or metaphysical experience– Sovereignty as a lived practice after deconstruction– The different paths people take after leaving (some toward mysticism, others toward materialism, many toward silence) Connect with my guests: – Stephanie Ann: https://www.stephanieannagain.com/ – Alyssa Grenfell: https://www.mormontruths.com/ WANT TO GO DEEPER? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to access my writing on Substack, book recommendations, and more exclusive tools for inner work. To unlock hundreds of hours of ad-free members-only content and support my work as an independent creator, join my Patreon at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discover the ancient Tibetan practice of Chöd that's revolutionizing how we approach inner work, trauma healing, and shadow integration. While Western psychology teaches you to fight your demons, this 1000-year-old wisdom tradition reveals why feeding them creates profound transformation that traditional therapy often cannot achieve.In this deep-dive episode, we explore how Machig Labdrön, an 11th-century Tibetan yogini, developed a radical approach to psychological healing that exposes the limitations of modern therapeutic modalities. Unlike CBT, DBT, or even parts work (IFS), Chöd practice embraces the terror and otherness that most approaches attempt to eliminate. We'll uncover how Tsultrim Allione adapted these teachings for Western minds and why her "demon feeding" process succeeds where conventional therapy fails. This exploration reveals how Western psychology sanitizes spiritual practices into manageable therapeutic techniques, stripping away the very elements that make transformation possible.We'll examine the fundamental differences between ancient wisdom traditions and contemporary psychological approaches, showing how reconnecting with bone-deep spiritual technologies can access possibilities that safe, rational methods simply cannot reach. The episode traces the lineage from charnel ground practices to modern applications, revealing why genuine healing often requires engaging directly with forces that exist beyond our conscious control.What You'll Learn:The 5-step demon feeding process that transforms your relationship to difficult emotions and destructive patternsHow Chöd practice connects to Kabbalistic teachings about extracting light from darknessThe critical differences between demon work and psychological "parts work" and why the distinction mattersAdvanced discernment skills for working safely with challenging psychological materialWhy the sanitization of spiritual practices in Western therapy reduces their transformative powerPractical techniques for approaching your shadow as teacher rather than enemyWhen demon work is appropriate versus when additional support is neededThe collective dimension of personal demon work and its implications for cultural healing✧ 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.

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 integrityYou’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)”• The Telepathy Tapes podcastWANT 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. ⟁ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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: How “Hot Mess Aiden” shaped the tone and form of her writingWhy the book mimics memory more than narrativeThe shift from confessional content to private creative processThe internet’s shift from Tumblr girl energy to brand identity performanceThe loneliness of constant engagement and follower analyticsWhat it means to stop oversharing without disappearing entirelyHow to live online without being consumed by it entirelyThe psychic pressure of being seen only through an old selfExplore Aiden’s workFind Aiden on Instagram: @aidenarataSubscribe to her Substack: aidenarata.substack.comBuy 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. ⟁ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dive into the intricate dance of paradox and spiritual growth. Explore how embracing opposing forces—like sanity and madness—can lead to profound healing. Discover the Rebel Mystic, the Exile, and the Alchemist within, each grappling with inner tensions that fuel personal transformation. This enlightening discussion invites you to see these complexities not as problems, but as essential terrain for emotional maturity and awakening. Unlock the art of navigating life's contradictions for deeper self-awareness.

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:How internalized “inner parents” shape your adult relationships and self-conceptWhy estrangement or “no contact” alone doesn’t resolve inherited traumaWhat it means to collude with violation, and how to interrupt the patternHow the archetype of the “truth-seer” can guide you into emotional maturityWhy symbolic separation (and not just physical distance) is key to growthHow resurrection myths (especially the Christ story) offer a map for individuation✧ 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:Why age-gap relationships are rarely mutual, even when they appear consensualHow grooming often begins with flattery, attention, and emotional bondingThe psychological traits of adults who pursue much younger partnersHow industries like fashion, film, and online queer communities create cover for exploitationWhy legal adulthood at 18 doesn’t equate to emotional or psychological readinessWhat “arrested development” looks like in romantic and sexual dynamicsSigns of a healthy vs. unhealthy age-gap relationship (and the hidden emotional costs associated with them)How spiritual loneliness and early alienation make young people vulnerable to older validationTo 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.