{"podcast":{"title":"Back from the Borderline","slug":"back-from-the-borderline-4079851","podcast_index_feed_id":4079851,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69","website_url":"http://backfromtheborderline.com","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/1735679446378-b2e8272f-396f-4979-a13e-2172ecffa88e.jpeg","author":"mollie adler","episode_count":358,"summary":"Back From The Borderline is a podcast about depth psychology, symbolism, spirituality, consciousness, and the search for a more meaningful life. I started this show years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Somewhere along the way, the questions became much bigger than me. They led into Carl Jung, mythology, Christian mysticism, dreams, tarot, philosophy, esotericism, religious history, artificial intelligence, and the symbolic patterns that quietly shape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. The word borderline has taken on its own meaning over the years. It speaks to the edge almost all of us eventually reach. That place where our old explanations stop working and we’re asked to learn an entirely different way of seeing. That’s the space my work inhabits. Some episodes are conversations with researchers, psychologists, philosophers, historians, and spiritual teachers. Others are long-form essays where I follow a question wherever it leads. Lately I’ve been especially interested in symbolic literacy, the way images, myths, dreams, and archetypes quietly organize human life, often long before we’re consciously aware of them. I’m not very interested in being “ce…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-08T16:23:45.590679+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851"},"episode":{"title":"The Intelligence of Madness, Part Two: How We Come Back","slug":"the-intelligence-of-madness-part-two-how-we-come-back","published_at":"2026-05-19T09:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-two-how-we-come-back","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851","url":"https://shows.acast.com/back-from-the-borderline/episodes/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-two-how-we-come-back","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/e/6a0a41c93fd6979bfc223972/media.mp3","summary":"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 seen too much and still has to return to ordinary life. This episode moves through the aftermath of extreme states and what they do to the person who survives them. We discuss how fear of the mind can soften into familiarity, and why “recovery” so often means learning how to speak about what happened without identifying with it forever or allowing it to swallow the whole Self. Modern culture just loves a clean recovery story. Breakdown, treatment, lesson, comeback. That’s how it’s supposed to go. Real return is usually much stranger and messier than that. This is the second half of our exploration: how we come back from the borderline, and the parts of us that refuse to come back unchanged. CONTINUE THE WORK: If you recognize yourself in something from this episode, don’t leave it unresolved. If you want more depth and the full archive: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline You’ll get: ☆ Weekly bonus episodes ☆ Consciousness Stream ☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts ☆ Full ad-free archive access If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/   MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you.  If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted acces…","meta_description":"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 vo…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4751,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/episodes/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-two-how-we-come-back/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/the-intelligence-of-madness-part-two-how-we-come-back.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}