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back from the borderline

back from the borderline

mollie adler 343 Episodes Jun 29, 2026

This podcast explores mental health and personal transformation, focusing on the idea that painful symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors are adaptive strategies that once kept us safe. The host, Mollie Adler, encourages listeners to shift from asking 'What's wrong with me?' to 'What happened to me?' The show delves into emotional alchemy, the process of falling apart and rebuilding a stronger, wiser self. It is aimed at highly sensitive individuals who identify with mental health labels.

Episodes

The Occult Teacher We Need Right Now: Dion Fortune, Psychic Hygiene, and the Magick of the Mind Jun 29, 2026 1:36:14 Dion Fortune was one of the great occult teachers of the twentieth century, and one of my personal favorites.In this episode, I’m joined by Ike Baker for a conversation about Fortune and her legacy. We begin with Ike’s own relationship to her, including the story of visiting her grave in Glastonbury, then move into her work on magic, psychology, psychic hygiene, ritual, Qabalah, polarity, Christ,
The Skill AI Can Never Replace (And Why I’m Teaching Tarot) Jun 25, 2026 31:06 This episode is the opening lesson from my new Patreon series, House of Cards.House of Cards is an ongoing study of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot through depth psychology, mythology, symbolism, dreams, and contemplative practice. Every week we move through the deck one card at a time, treating tarot as a language of psyche, symbol, and myth. I’m releasing this first lesson publicly because it explai
The Arrogance of Too Much Empathy Jun 23, 2026 1:05:08 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 gue
Gay Men Have Always Loved a “Difficult” Woman Jun 16, 2026 50:47 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 u
The Female Shadow Jun 9, 2026 1:12:24 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
The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 1) Jun 2, 2026 43:17 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
Why Everyone Sounds Religious About AI [Consciousness Stream for May 2026] May 28, 2026 26:46 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
The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic) May 26, 2026 1:00:51 The inspiration for this episode came to me after looking at a small scar under my daughter’s eye and realizing that our bodies really do keep the f*cking score. That thought sent me down a bit of an existential rabbit hole. Back to my millennial-era belly button piercing, my breast implants, and all the various little decisions I made when my body still felt endlessly recoverable to me and w
Why Tarot Feels So Accurate, And How to Actually Read a Card May 21, 2026 25:29 Someone tagged me this week in a Christian conversion testimony video and accused me of leading people into demonic tarot witchcraft, which honestly made me laugh. So naturally, I made an episode.I felt like it was important to explore why tarot feels so disturbingly accurate sometimes even when you don’t fully “believe” in it.I’ll introduce you to Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind the Rider-
The Intelligence of Madness, Part Two: How We Come Back May 19, 2026 1:19:11 This is part two of a two-part series on madness and the performance of sanity.Most people are mainly just acting “normal” all day. We put on our work voices while we’re screaming with existential misery inside. We all know what it feels like to say “I’m fine” when we’re decidedly not.In part one, we looked at who gets to define madness. In part two, we begin after the rupture, when someone has se
Why “Disclosure” is a Distraction and How to Stay Sane as Reality Crumbles May 14, 2026 27:25 On May 8, 2026, the government released 162 files under what’ it’s calling the PURSUE initiative (the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). While the mainstream media is obsessing over infrared videos and propulsion specs, I believe they’re missing the most important part of the story.In this episode, we’ll take a look at why “disclosure” is being used as a massive distr
The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane? May 12, 2026 59:51 Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation.Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correctly.” Show up to work and produce. If you hear a voice, see something other people don’t, or start asking questions that unsettle the people around you, there’s a shift, even if it’s subtle. Concern arrives, then usually a diagnosis. Then the extre

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