dancing with the devil part 1: the descent (why you keep ignoring your gut instinct and mistaking danger for ‘chemistry’)

Cassie Ventura recently testified against Sean “Diddy” Combs, and as the coverage picked up, so did the usual commentary. People are asking the same questions they always do: Why didn’t she leave? Why stay that long? Why ignore the red flags? This episode opens up the actual reasons. Not just in Cassie’s case, but in situations a lot of us have lived through. We talk about what happens when your gut tells you something is off, but you don’t (or can’t) listen. What kind of early conditioning trains you to override that signal. Why some of us stay in dangerous situations, even when we know better.I tell a story I’ve never shared before. A night out in LA, years ago. I met someone. He had money, charm, presence. There were warning signs, but I ignored every single one. That night could have gone a very different way, and it’s only now that I understand why I didn’t walk away sooner. This episode is about instinct, trauma, compliance, and the patterns that take over when you’ve never been shown how to protect yourself. It’s also about the trance that gets created when danger looks exciting and when you’ve been taught to confuse adrenaline with connection.Here’s what we cover:How trauma rewires your ability to feel and act on instinctThe cultural messages that tell women to be chill, likable, and accommodatingWhy intensity often gets mistaken for intimacyThe pull of the “psychopomp” archetype (what it is and how it shows up in real life) The early signs of soul fragmentation and what it actually feels like in your bodyWhat it means to give your energy away in a half-conscious stateHow shame settles in when no one names what happenedWhat starts to shift when you finally doThis is Part One of a two-part series. It lays out the pattern. Next week, in Part Two, we’ll talk about how to stop repeating it. What it looks like to stop testing danger, stop calling chaos fate, and start moving from a different place inside yourself.Subscribe 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. acast+ https://plus.acast.com/s/back-from-the-borderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

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. acast+ https://plus.acast.com/s/back-from-the-borderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.