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back from the borderline

mollie adler
back from the borderline
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  • the real reason you’re afraid of the devil (you’re possessed, and it looks nothing like the movies)
    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.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.
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  • the psychology of love island USA S7: why it broke the internet (and what it says about us)
    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 STAMPS00:00 – 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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About back from the borderline

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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