back from the borderline

the IFS takedown: my unfiltered response to the psych industry’s victory lap

When New York Magazine dropped its viral feature “The Therapy That Can Break You,” [https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html] in The Cut [https://www.thecut.com/] on October 30th, 2025, the internet exploded with hot takes. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts flooded X (Twitter) with posts claiming they’d been “right about IFS all along.” In this episode, we’re going to completely dissect this article, as well as all the backlash and scandal surrounding it. The question hiding underneath it all is this:  Who gets to own and define the human psyche? Together, we’ll break down: * The media’s framing of Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a “cultic fad” * Psychiatry’s very own record of harm (from the serotonin-imbalance myth to ghost-written SSRI trials) * How “Castlewood’s” scandals became a morality play for the mental-health establishment * Why metaphysical and imaginative models of the mind still matter * The line between healing frameworks and corporate therapy empires You won’t hear me outright defend IFS or the biomedical model of mental health in this episode. My goal was to expose the hypocrisy that fuels both. If this episode opened your mind, felt validating, or even challenged your perspective and you’d like to hear more, follow Back from the Borderline on the podcast player you’re on right now. Rate, review and share it to help more people find nuanced conversations about psychology, spirituality, and the culture of healing. Link to the full article by Rachel Corbett can be found here: https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html [https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html] 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 [http://backfromtheborderline.com] for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. ⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline [http://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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

the world isn't real (and why that might actually be a good thing)

For thousands of years, philosophers, mystics, and scientists have whispered the same unsettling possibility: what if reality itself is a mirage? From Plato’s cave to The Matrix, from Hindu sages describing maya to neuroscientists calling perception a “controlled hallucination,” the suspicion has never gone away. In this episode, we follow the clues through philosophy, folklore, and quantum theory to uncover how humanity has wrestled with the idea that the world we see may not be what it seems. The trail runs through ancient India and medieval monasteries, into modern laboratories mapping the brain’s illusions. Along the way, we meet the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, the Celtic fairies casting “glamour”, and the cognitive scientists showing that our senses build a user interface rather than a window to the real. Every culture and era has tried to peek behind the curtain, and the evidence keeps pointing to the same paradox: illusion may be the very fabric of awakening. So, what actually happens when the veil finally lifts? Does meaning disappear, or does it finally begin? This is an investigation tracing how seeing through the world’s spell can transform fear into freedom. ✧ 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 [https://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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

dark enlightenment: the forbidden philosophy behind the tech elite

It’s a strange and somewhat terrifying timeline we’re living through. Peter Thiel has begun giving lectures about the Antichrist, while Sam Altman is actively tweeting about the development of AI erotica. However, behind these headlines sits a far older idea that most people have never heard of: a belief that human feeling slows progress and that the smartest “elite” few should shape the world for everyone else. That belief began with the Marquis de Sade, resurfaced in the 1990s through a British thinker named Nick Land, and now hides insidiously inside parts of Silicon Valley’s culture. This deep dive follows how that idea spread from philosophy blogs directly into tech boardrooms. It shows how a theory called accelerationism (the call to push technology faster and further, whatever the cost) turned into a kind of religion for some of the tech elite. We look at how money, power, and internet mythology combined to create a story about endless growth and control. Most mainstream reporters miss the nuances of this pattern entirely because it crosses too many fields at once: economics, politics, religion, and technology. But the story doesn’t end there. A different movement is forming among artists, engineers, and spiritual thinkers who want technology to serve connection instead of domination and extraction. We’ll explore this through a concept called hyperstition: when a story becomes real because enough people act as if it is. If fear can spread through culture, so can love. This conversation asks what kind of future we want to build, and reminds us that every codebase, company, and act of imagination is part of that choice. 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 [http://backfromtheborderline.com] for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. ⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline [http://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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

when stillness feels dangerous (hypervigilance as a religion)

We live in bodies that don’t know how to rest. Even when the room is quiet, our nerves stay braced for impact. Always ready to defend, explain, and perform to survive. Most of us try to convince ourselves that this is just “our personality,” but it’s not. It’s conditioning. We will explore exactly how trauma, technology, and centuries of inherited fear have made stillness feel deeply unsafe, and how spiritual seekers often mistake this for individual resistance or failure of some kind. Through the lenses of Celtic mysticism, Jungian psychology, and shamanic initiation, we’ll explore what it means to truly cross the threshold guarded by fear. Why does peace feel threatening to so many of us? Why do our bodies panic at the moment the soul begins to open itself to the numinous? We’ll look at ancestral hypervigilance as both a survival code and a forgotten initiation. This is the descent into the hidden architecture of safety, the underworld gate every meditator and mystic eventually meets and must cross. The second half of the episode moves through the return process – how to re-establish safety inside your psyche, what it means to rediscover the “inner homeland,” and how rest itself becomes a revolutionary act. For anyone who’s done years of inner work yet still can’t relax, this conversation offers a map for you that will (hopefully) allow you to begin to turn fear into a guide, and to remember what it feels like to be safe in your own soul, maybe for the first time in your life. ✧ 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 [https://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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

enchantment in the age of disenchantment w/ dr. teddy hamstra

Modern life teaches us to doubt what we can’t measure. Yet, across history, people have witnessed things that refuse to fit the frame - mystical encounters, strange lights, and divine voices. Moments of impossible meaning. In this long-form salon, I sit down with Dr. Teddy Hamstra, a close friend and scholar of mythology and mysticism, to explore what it means to live enchanted in a world that claims to have outgrown mystery. Our conversation moves from a sixteenth-century sky battle over Nuremberg to the Gospel of Thomas, from the language of psychiatry to the vocabulary of the sacred. We discus how culture, language, and personal experience shape our relationship to the numinous, and why rediscovering enchantment might be essential for psychic health and collective imagination. If you’ve ever felt torn between skepticism and faith, intellect and intuition, this episode offers a secret third path. ⟁ Follow Teddy on Substack at https://substack.com/@creativemysticism [https://substack.com/@creativemysticism] ⟁ Follow Teddy on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/teddyhamstragram [https://www.instagram.com/teddyhamstragram] ⟁ To listen to our first long-form chat on Patreon, click here [https://www.patreon.com/posts/133379362/edit]. 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 [http://backfromtheborderline.com] for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline [http://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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.