From Order to Chaos and Back Again With Shadow Work | Penetrate Radio, Episode 11
In Episode 11 of Penetrate Radio, Lucy Baldwin, Leila Matthews, Dani Granaroli, and Holly Kiefer explore identity, diagnosis, adolescence, chaos, order, psychosis, violence, self-concept, shadow integration, and the possibility of moving through the most disturbing parts of ourselves without making them permanent prisons.
This conversation moves through a lot of charged terrain. The group talks about family roles, mental health labels, teenage instability, the risk of over-identifying with diagnosis, the strange medicine of shadow work, and what it can mean to meet extreme states with both discernment and compassion.
The episode is not a substitute for clinical care, and it does not suggest that people should ignore serious mental health needs. Instead, it asks a deeper shadow question: what happens when we stop treating every difficult identity, mood, role, or diagnosis as the final truth of who we are?
Watch or listen to Episode 11 of Penetrate Radio here:
Key Takeaways
In this episode, Lucy, Leila, Dani, and Holly explore:
how family roles can become identity cages
why being “the smart one,” “the pretty one,” or “the weird one” can shape self-worth
the danger of over-identifying with diagnosis or personality labels
identity as a hat, not a prison
adolescence as a necessary period of chaos, disruption, and transformation
Leila’s story of deciding she was “done” identifying with a former pattern
Existential Kink as a way to enter the vortex instead of being consumed by it
the dream image of the drain becoming a fountain
how Holly met aggression and psychosis with presence instead of retaliation
why shadow work does not mean denying danger or abandoning discernment
how compassion can interrupt cycles of violence
the movement from order to chaos and back again
The Awkwardness of Being Seen
The episode begins with a very human moment: everyone feeling a little awkward because the camera is on and the recording is happening. That awkwardness quickly becomes part of the teaching.
Being seen changes us. The moment we know our face, name, words, and thoughts may be witnessed by other people, something in the body can freeze, perform, script, or brace. Holly shares a childhood memory of needing her mother to write out exactly what to say when calling friends to invite them to a birthday party. That tiny story captures something much larger: the desire to get it right before we are witnessed.
Shadow work often begins exactly there. What happens when we do not know what we will say next? What happens when the thought comes out before we have polished it? What happens when the unscripted self appears?
The fear of being seen is not trivial. It is one of the places identity gets built.
Family Roles as Identity Cages
A major thread in the conversation is how easily families assign roles.
Someone becomes the smart one. Someone becomes the pretty one. Someone becomes the athletic one, the weird one, the difficult one, the beautiful one, the responsible one, or the crazy one. These roles may begin as observations, jokes, comparisons, or shorthand, but over time they can become cages.
Lucy talks about being “the pretty one” in her family, while her brother was “the smart one.” That kind of identity can feel flattering at first, but it comes with pressure. If being pretty is the role, then what happens when pregnancy changes the body? If beauty is the basis of worth, then a change in appearance can feel like a collapse of self.
Leila shares a similar reflection around her youngest sister being labeled the beautiful one and, by implication, treated as though she were not intelligent. The absurdity becomes clear in adulthood, but the emotional imprint can still matter. The role may have been relative, arbitrary, and unfair, but it still shaped the nervous system.
Identity as a Hat
Holly offers a helpful reframe: identity can be a hat.
A hat can be useful. You put it on for a while because it helps you make sense of yourself or the world. But a hat is not the same as your skin. You can take it off. You can try on another one. You can stop treating one temporary meaning-making structure as the totality of who you are.
This is especially important in shadow work. Some identities help us survive. Others help us belong. Others help us understand pain. But when identity becomes too rigid, it can prevent transformation.
“I am this kind of person” can become a spell. Sometimes that spell protects us. Sometimes it traps us.
The work is not to have no identity at all. The work is to become less imprisoned by the ones we have inherited, chosen, performed, or mistaken for destiny.
Diagnosis and Over-Identification
The group then moves into more charged territory: diagnosis and mental health labels.
There can be real value in diagnosis. A diagnosis can give language, access to care, validation, treatment, community, and relief. It can help someone stop blaming themselves for something that has a name and a pattern.
But there is also a shadow side to diagnosis. A label can become an identity prison if it is treated as a permanent statement of who someone is rather than a tool for understanding, support, and care.
Leila challenges the way some diagnoses are treated as though they are fixed forever. Dani names the possible harm of over-identifying with a diagnosis. Holly adds clinical nuance around adolescent development and the caution many clinicians bring to diagnosing teenagers too definitively.
The point is not “diagnosis bad.” The point is more subtle: diagnosis should serve life, care, and possibility. It should not become a box that forecloses transformation.
You Can Be Done With an Identity
Leila shares a striking story from her teenage years.
As a teenager, she was deeply depressed and strongly identified with being tormented, sad, intense, and unstable. She describes self-harming, acting out the show of her suffering, and being invested in the identity of someone who was deeply disturbed.
Then, at some point, she simply decided she was done.
She changed how she dressed. She changed how she presented herself. She stopped identifying with that role. People may have needed time to adjust, and the old identity did not vanish from everyone’s perception immediately, but something fundamental shifted internally.
This is not a prescription for everyone. It is not saying that anyone can simply choose away every mental health struggle. But it is a powerful example of identity being more changeable than it can feel from inside the pattern.
Sometimes the wildest thing you can do is stop being loyal to a role that once felt like the only truth.
Adolescence as Divine Disorder
The conversation also touches on teenagers and the chaos of adolescence.
Holly names the biological reality of puberty, brain development, social intensity, emotional extremes, and the enormous instability of that period. Leila calls teenagers “divine disorder,” which is a beautiful phrase for it.
Teenagers often look chaotic because they are in a process of transformation. They are going through goo. The old childhood self is dissolving, and the adult self has not yet fully formed. That kind of developmental disruption can look wild, dramatic, unstable, or even frightening from the outside.
But not all chaos is pathology. Some chaos is transition.
This matters because Shadow Alchemy is deeply interested in the relationship between breakdown and transformation. Sometimes order has to dissolve before a truer order can emerge.
From the Vortex to the Fountain
One of the most powerful images in the episode comes from Leila’s story of the vortex.
She describes a younger experience of having what felt like a sucking vortex in her soul. When triggered, she could spiral into extreme emotional states, collapse, rage, self-attack, or desperate pain. Later, after working with Existential Kink, she had a dream where she saw a spinning drain, went into it, and came out the other side into a fountain.
That image is the whole episode in miniature.
The vortex looks like destruction. It looks like being swallowed. It looks like chaos, danger, and collapse. But when she entered it instead of fighting it, the other side was not annihilation. It was a fountain.
This is one of the deepest promises of Shadow Alchemy. The thing we are terrified will consume us may contain the energy we have been trying to recover. The drain may be the doorway to the fountain.
Going Into the Vortex
Existential Kink gives people a framework for going into the vortex rather than being dragged around by it unconsciously.
That does not mean recklessly plunging into overwhelm or refusing support. It means learning how to meet the charged material with enough approval, containment, curiosity, and embodied presence that the energy can transform.
Leila does not present her story as a simple cure narrative or as universal medical advice. She names maturity, time, healing, and the complexity of her experience. But she also names that EK gave her a new mental and somatic framework for entering the frightening place and coming out changed.
Shadow Alchemy is not about bypassing the vortex. It is about discovering whether the vortex has a secret structure, a secret pleasure, a secret teaching, or a secret fountain on the other side.
Meeting Aggression Without Becoming Aggression
The conversation then shifts into Holly’s story of being in a room with someone experiencing active psychosis and aggression.
Holly describes being present with someone who became physically aggressive, including a punch. She names the intensity of sitting there with the reality that violence could happen in either direction. There was the awareness: this person could hurt me, and I could hurt them. Then, instead of escalating, she remained present.
The group recognizes how unusual this is. Most people would have understood if Holly had retaliated, physically or legally. She would have been seen as justified. Instead, something else happened. She met aggression with an extraordinary capacity for presence, and the situation shifted.
This is not a recommendation that people stay in dangerous situations. Safety matters. Boundaries matter. Professional protocols matter. But the story illuminates a profound shadow principle: when someone embodies the shadow in front of us, we still have a choice about whether to meet it with more violence or with something that interrupts the pattern.
Compassion Without Naivety
This part of the episode requires nuance.
Compassion does not mean pretending there is no danger. It does not mean allowing harm. It does not mean abandoning discernment, boundaries, training, or protection. Especially when psychosis, violence, or serious mental health crises are involved, skilled care and safety planning matter.
But compassion also refuses the easy move of demonization.
Leila names that simply imprisoning, condemning, or exiling the people who represent the shadow can perpetuate cycles of violence. If someone is frightening, aggressive, mentally ill, or overwhelmed by altered perception, it may be understandable to defend ourselves. It may even be necessary. But if the only cultural response is punishment and expulsion, the shadow remains unintegrated.
Shadow Alchemy asks whether another response is sometimes possible: one that includes safety, accountability, and mercy.
What Is Psychosis?
Holly speaks carefully about psychosis as a clinical term. She names delusion, hallucination, altered perception, fear, aggression, lack of sleep, high energy, and the experience of being in a different reality.
The care she takes in defining it matters. She does not use the word casually. She is describing a state where someone’s perception of reality is deeply altered and often fear-based.
This distinction is important because shadow work should not blur everything together. Not every strange experience is psychosis. Not every intense emotion is a disorder. Not every spiritual opening is pathology. And not every clinical crisis should be romanticized as spiritual awakening.
A mature approach makes room for mystery and medicine, spirit and psychology, compassion and clinical clarity.
Shadow Work and Mental Health
This episode walks a delicate line between shadow work and mental health.
On one hand, Shadow Alchemy resists reducing human complexity to fixed labels. It wants room for transformation, identity change, hidden pleasure, symbolic meaning, and the possibility that chaos can become order again.
On the other hand, serious mental health states are real. People may need therapy, medication, crisis support, community care, diagnosis, treatment, rest, or protection. Shadow work should not be used to shame people for needing help, nor should it be used to deny the reality of illness.
The more useful question is: how can mental health care and shadow work become less dehumanizing?
Can diagnosis become a tool rather than a cage? Can altered states be met with both safety and dignity? Can we hold people accountable without making them monsters? Can we treat the shadow without pretending it is not dangerous?
Order, Chaos, and the Alchemical Cycle
The title of the episode points to the larger movement: from order to chaos and back again.
Human beings need order. We need names, roles, structures, routines, diagnoses, identities, relationships, and ways of understanding ourselves. But sometimes those structures become too tight. They stop serving life. Then chaos enters.
Adolescence is one example. A mental health crisis can be another. A spiritual opening, a family role collapse, a change in appearance, a diagnosis, a breakup, or a confrontation with violence can all rupture the old order.
Shadow work does not worship chaos for its own sake. It does not want permanent dissolution. It wants alchemy. The old order breaks down, the chaos is entered, and eventually something new can take shape.
The fountain emerges on the other side of the drain.
The Danger of Making Chaos Permanent
One of the risks the group identifies is making chaos into identity.
“I am crazy.”
“I am broken.”
“I am the unstable one.”
“I am the sick one.”
“I am the pretty one.”
“I am the smart one.”
“I am the person with this diagnosis.”
“I am the person who will always be this way.”
Any of these identities can become sticky. Even painful identities can offer belonging, explanation, drama, protection, or familiarity. They can also make it harder to leave the old structure behind.
Shadow work asks whether the identity still serves. Is it a useful hat, or has it fused with your face? Is it helping you receive care, or is it preventing you from imagining change? Is it naming a real pattern, or is it becoming a cage?
The question is not meant to be cruel. It is meant to create possibility.
Loving the Shadow Without Romanticizing It
The episode also shows why shadow work needs discernment.
To love the shadow does not mean glamorizing suffering, violence, diagnosis, chaos, or dysfunction. It does not mean making every dark thing cool, edgy, or spiritually superior. It does not mean rejecting medical care or pretending danger is imaginary.
Loving the shadow means refusing to split reality into the parts we approve of and the parts we exile.
It means we can look at aggression, instability, teenage chaos, family wounds, body shame, identity traps, and altered states without immediately making them enemies of the sacred.
That is a hard balance. Too much control freezes life. Too much chaos destroys the container. Shadow Alchemy moves between them, again and again, until a new order can be born.
The Real Gift of This Episode
The real gift of this conversation is permission to become less rigid about who you think you are.
You may have been assigned a role in your family. You may have identified with a diagnosis, a style, a mood, a wound, a crisis, a personality pattern, or an old self. You may have spent years believing a particular form of chaos was the truth of you.
Maybe some of that was real. Maybe it helped. Maybe it got you through.
And maybe it is also allowed to change.
Shadow work does not demand that you erase your history. It invites you to stop mistaking every old role for destiny.
You can go into the drain.
You can come out as a fountain.
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Lucy Baldwin (00:02.415)
We all get a little bit awkward when the camera's on, when the recording is on.
Holly (00:07.647)
We just have to get used to it. you know, podcasts used to be a thing where it was just like audio and I was like, I have to get fucking camera ready for a podcast. This is camera ready, but whatever.
Lucy Baldwin (00:19.683)
You look great.
Laila Matthews (00:21.336)
feel like I just feel more like I'm like, my god, what am I about to say that other people are gonna hear me say with my name and my face attached to what I'm seeing? That's more what happens to me because the thoughts just come unbidden and I don't even know what they're gonna be until they come out of my mouth.
Dani (00:31.147)
You
Laila Matthews (00:46.114)
You know, that's what happens for me.
Lucy Baldwin (00:47.845)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (00:48.989)
You're good at like going with that though. Like, I don't know if it's experience, like just having done it enough, but like me, I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to say next. And I'm really scared of that. So.
Laila Matthews (00:51.726)
you
Dani (01:01.474)
Yeah, Holly, I'd say that I'm a little bit more towards the moment of the freeze. Because I also am like, there's no preemptive thinking that happens. It's just like, my mouth is opening now. OK.
Holly (01:17.489)
If I'm preemptive, like I have to have a script. Like, and well, so here's a like sweet little baby autistic Holly story. When I would call to have like parties and like call to invite my friends, I would make my mom write it all out for me so I can make sure that I said everything correctly. So I would call and I'd have my little sticky note and telling people, hi, it's Holly. I'm having a birthday party on June 20th. Yeah.
Dani (01:20.078)
Mm-hmm.
Laila Matthews (01:44.994)
What are
Dani (01:47.534)
I love that so much.
Lucy Baldwin (01:47.909)
That is so cute.
Holly (01:49.672)
Yeah. my gosh. Like I look back at that and I'm like, yeah, yeah, she was autistic. Needing to have those sweet little containers and the nervousness and social interaction and all those sweet things. But yeah, she was adorable.
Dani (02:09.55)
That's very sweet.
Holly (02:10.815)
Yeah, I still like scripts, so.
Lucy Baldwin (02:14.647)
Yeah, I just will just start talking like if Yeah, if there's like nobody's going i'm just like, all right, I guess I better just i'll just start talking. I don't know what i'm gonna say But I also am intimately aware that I can just delete shit So if I say something stupid, I will just make sure it gets deleted
Dani (02:33.89)
Yeah, Lucy is God of the podcast. She gets to choose what stays and what goes.
Lucy Baldwin (02:39.045)
Well, you could always open to requests if you're like, hey, can you delete that thing I said? Yeah. Although now that I have somebody else doing the editing, it's kind of in her hands now. But yeah, think that OK, so what I would like to do now is if we want to just try.
Laila Matthews (02:49.614)
It's little harder.
Dani (02:53.058)
Waa-aaah. We're done, done,
Lucy Baldwin (03:07.717)
What I'm hoping for is some clips that we can, that I can pull. Layla and I have done this before, so Layla is familiar with this process, where we just kind of talk about like Dominion and just say like whatever and then maybe we get some clips that we can turn into little like promotional reels. And if we don't, that's fine, but just like we'll have some clips of us say, like I want to say, one thing I want to say is that
The price for Dominion is going up. So right now it's $29 a month, but if you join after April, so through April 30th, you can get it for $29 a month. But if you join any day after that, it'll be $39 a month forevermore.
Laila Matthews (03:53.198)
Wow, so people who join before April 30 get to keep the 29 months.
Lucy Baldwin (03:58.424)
Exactly.
Lucy Baldwin (04:02.648)
The price is going up. Join Dominion.
Dani (04:11.893)
Okay, well, one thing I really want to talk about is one of the things that we do in Dominion, which is what we call the Community EK. I guess, how do I just really succinctly share this? Community EK is a space to come together and to share nervous system for the things that we are struggling having approval for. Just saying it in words,
Holly (04:11.93)
is the jingle.
Lucy Baldwin (04:12.631)
Okay.
Dani (04:40.577)
does not, doesn't speak to the profound.
how profound it is sharing with nervous system within a community. That was really bad, but I want something like that.
Holly (05:00.051)
No, but it was something you spoke to in my somatics of EK call, right? Being able to share with other nervous systems, even when you're not in the same room, there's something about it lightens the load. Like, Community EK, being with other systems and letting them reflect back to you the approval that you're not able to get to yourself can help. It strengthens the signal when you are attuning to other nervous systems.
can get there for you.
Dani (05:31.277)
Mm-hmm.
Lucy Baldwin (05:32.888)
I mean, when we did the community EK that first call, every single person who received it was just like, holy shit, that's so much more intense and awesome than I expected. Because we didn't know what we were doing. We were just like, let's try throwing this at the wall. And it it clapped.
Dani (05:48.255)
Yeah, absolutely.
Laila Matthews (05:59.894)
back on my bullshit I hope this is gonna be heavily edited
Dani (06:01.153)
What cup are you on now, Leila?
Lucy Baldwin (06:01.645)
Yes.
I'm going to post a reel of that. that.
Lucy Baldwin (06:10.916)
my
Holly (06:11.88)
Can we have a real of all of us just in our mics? Like this.
Laila Matthews (06:15.085)
Like this.
Lucy Baldwin (06:18.564)
I'm
Lucy Baldwin (06:22.692)
Join the sisterhood of total fucking weirdos
Lucy Baldwin (06:31.778)
Sibling hood, sibling hood is that?
Dani (06:35.883)
Yeah, there you go. Sibling head.
Laila Matthews (06:36.813)
Okay, so I was talking with my sisters earlier. I'm gonna share this whole story. I do not want this whole story shared, but I hope that some good clips will come out of it. That's why I'm sharing it with you guys. So I was talking with my sister this morning. We're three sisters, you know, and it's very easy to just fall into the habit of being like, oh, Layla's the smart one, Hannah's the creative one, and Paula's the pretty one. You know, like, it's just so easy to just be like.
Lucy Baldwin (07:03.53)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I do not believe for a second that you are not the hottest sister.
Laila Matthews (07:10.443)
My youngest sister is so beautiful. She is so beautiful. Me and my middle sister used to live together on an island and people would be like, wow, those Johnson girls, they are so pretty. And we would both be like, we're the ugly ones. You haven't even seen the pretty sister. You don't even know who she is. You don't know what you're talking about. So anyway, so I was talking with my sister this morning about how my middle sister Hannah, I was like, you know what?
Lucy Baldwin (07:17.547)
skeptical.
Dani (07:33.869)
you
Laila Matthews (07:40.973)
think Hannah's secretly the smart one. She's so smart that she convinced me that I'm the smart one so that she could be smart without anybody noticing. That's how fucking smart she is. You know what mean? I was just like, I'm seeing clearly now.
Dani (07:55.758)
It's nice to take all the responsibility off. You get to enjoy your brains without anyone having expectation.
Laila Matthews (08:01.834)
Well, it's funny because that was one of my own personal shadow embraces is that I grew up in a household full of very intelligent nerd people, that archetype. And we did not like jocks. Jocks were the bad team that scared us. They were our predators. You know what I mean? But it turns out that caused me to completely shun the part of myself that really likes physical activity.
And in my adult life, I have come to discover that there is a part of me that is a total jock. And one of my shadow embraces is like, yeah, you know what? I don't have to be a know-it-all. I can just be a dumb jock. I'm not a smart, I'm not a smarty pants. I'm a dumb jock. And it healed me, it healed me. And I was also just, and so when I was talking to my sister this morning, I was like, I don't think I want to be the smart one anymore. I think I want to be the weird one. And then I was like thinking about that in the context of this conversation we're having. And I'm like,
I don't even wanna be the weird one. I'll be the normal one. You know what mean? Like, I just feel so like, is the value of being a weirdo? Why is that better than being normal? You know I mean? What's normal? What's weird? Who cares? Like, why do we just, let's just be, let's just exist. You know what I mean? I just heard me and my sisters getting really into, or myself. Like, I was even texting my sister being like, this is stupid. I don't wanna do this anymore. We are not the smart one, the artistic one, and the pretty one. Actually, she's the smart one. Actually,
I'm the weird one. Actually, no. I just found myself. And I guess I have sympathy for all of us because we all do the game of what am I? And I think one of the most fun things that I've discovered in my life and even turbocharged it through shadow work is I just get to be whatever in any moment. And there's no permanence to any of those things. Right now, kids are at school.
I'm alone. I'm a horrible mom. I'm like the worst, most neglectful mom. don't do anything for my kids. And I'm totally okay with saying that right now because you know what? Nobody needs me. I don't have to do anything. You know what I'm saying? Like we can just be whatever we want for a moment. A moment. And the more we can be comfortable just moving through those moments and just like growing from them and taking them not seriously and having the play, just like the better, you know?
Lucy Baldwin (10:28.591)
Well, it, yeah, because it's actually really harmful. So my family, my brother was the smart one and I was the pretty one. So as the pretty one though, then you have to be pretty all the time. And I remember my first pregnancy like destroyed me because suddenly I wasn't, I didn't think I was pretty. But that's my, that's what I, that's my role. So now what? Yeah, it was like.
Laila Matthews (10:37.036)
Right?
Laila Matthews (10:51.82)
That's who you are. You're nothing. You're a liar.
Lucy Baldwin (10:54.947)
Yeah, I don't want to be a room anymore because I'm not the pretty I'm not if I'm not pretty, then what am I?
Laila Matthews (10:59.862)
Right?
Lucy Baldwin (11:02.073)
Yeah. putting ourselves in these boxes, yeah, it's like tying our worth sometimes to some arbitrary thing. That's all comparative too. That whole thing is so comparative. If you were in a different family, you would be the hot one or you would be the athletic one.
Laila Matthews (11:03.308)
myself.
Laila Matthews (11:21.758)
I know I think about I think about how me and my middle sister used to just Relentlessly torment my youngest the beautiful one because of course she was beautiful So she had to be stupid and also she was younger than us so apparently to our young minds She was stupid so we just told her all the time how stupid she was and gave her a really big complex my sister the stupid one is like a Genius, you know, mean, so it's all so relative
Lucy Baldwin (11:39.525)
You
Holly (11:51.206)
It's like using, because identity, right? Like getting so locked into identity that you can't do anything else. And instead like approaching identity as a hat, right? Like it's just something I can put on to help me make sense of things for a little while. And then I can take that hat off and put on a different hat. Like what am I using to make meaning and sense of this weird fucking existence?
Laila Matthews (12:13.708)
You guys want to the craziest thing I ever did?
Holly (12:17.531)
Ever?
Dani (12:18.061)
Absolutely. I can't imagine that there's only one thing, but that you can quantify it. Okay.
Laila Matthews (12:18.416)
truly insane twisted thing I ever did. I feel like actually I feel like this was actually it. I feel like this was it. When I was a teenager I was very depressed. In some ways I feel like I was born depressed. I feel like I was just a very sad child. Just came in with a lot of sad. Anyway by the time I was in high school I was doing all kinds of
Lucy Baldwin (12:22.702)
I know.
Holly (12:26.443)
Yeah.
Laila Matthews (12:46.252)
you know, cry for help type self harming. And I was really acting crazy. You know, I was really putting on the show of my torment and my sad. And I was like really invested in that. And it was like getting to the point where I was like, you know, showing up to school with my new self harm wounds and not concealing them on purpose so that my teachers would send me to the, you know I mean? Like just weird stuff.
You know, understandable. Teenage girl, harm. I actually have a lot to say about that topic, and that would be a different tangent for another day.
Laila Matthews (13:25.612)
So I was doing that for a while. I was really stuck in that. was really committed to that identity of like, I'm in pain. I'm a tormented teenager. And I swear to you that one morning I woke up and I was like, I'm not crazy anymore. I've been acting crazy this whole time. I'm not crazy anymore. And I just like put on a really normal outfit and I just like never again.
never again behaved like a crazy teenager in that particular mode. Do you know what I mean? Like obviously I still did crazy teenager stuff. And I think that that was a crazy teenager thing, but I think that the crazy thing that happened was just deciding to tell myself, I'm not crazy.
Dani (14:11.789)
Yeah, you're like been there, done that. And yeah, now I'm bored. What's next?
Laila Matthews (14:12.181)
That's the craziest thing I ever did. Yes. Now I'm bored. I fully integrated. I fully integrated the crazy teenage girl and I just, literally woke up and was like, Ooh, full. And I guess I just want to share that story because I think that's one of the first like true EKs that I did because I just got so done. I just, and and, and
Holly (14:14.141)
You
Laila Matthews (14:39.935)
And the reason I think it's like, it would be called crazy to do that was because I just felt very free to decide I am not crazy anymore.
Dani (14:51.041)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Laila Matthews (14:54.507)
Like I don't need to get a diagnosis. I don't need anybody to stamp my card and tell me that I'm good anymore. Like I just know I'm done behaving that way. I'm done identifying as that. And yeah.
Dani (15:09.185)
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. It makes me like think a lot of things that, you know, cause I, I am not trained in mental health or anything like that. And I absolutely feel that like there is this really potentially,
damaging thing about getting a diagnosis and over identifying with that, you know.
Laila Matthews (15:36.054)
Yes, that's what I was trying to get to, Danny. Thank you for saying that because I feel like many, many people, like I hear my friends now who are grown adults like me who have teenage children and I hear about the children who are going through this or, you know, I see other people. I just see people. I just want to give everyone permission. You can just wake up one morning and just be done. You can just do that. And yes, yes, it's true that when you show up in your
totally normal kid outfit instead of your weird homemade clothes that like look weird. People are gonna look at you strange for a little bit. Like that's gonna be so weird, which you'll like, right? You'll get off on that for a little bit, but you can just do it. Like I just see people be like, well, but they, like I've liked dogs for so long. I really can't admit that I'm over liking dogs.
Like something so basic, I feel like people have a hard time just letting it go. Do you guys notice, am I wrong?
Lucy Baldwin (16:41.304)
Yeah.
Dani (16:43.627)
I don't think you're wrong at all and I'd say at least for myself, shadow work help really soften that because, mean, I don't really know how to talk about shadow work without talking about it as parts work. Maybe I'm wrong, but like I really think they are the same thing. And so when you realize that there are just infinite parts of yourself,
any sort of concept of one specific identified identity or one thing that can never change just doesn't hold up anymore.
Lucy Baldwin (17:23.054)
Yeah.
Lucy Baldwin (17:26.775)
Yeah, I feel kind of how Leila feels sometimes where I'm like, because I have had that experiences where I'm like, no, I'm just done with that now. And some people I'm just like, why won't you just just if you don't want to do it anymore, just stop, just stop. You're already you're already there. Now you just have to act the part.
Laila Matthews (17:40.427)
Just admit. Just admit that you're done.
Laila Matthews (17:49.28)
Right.
Dani (17:49.704)
Some of us really enjoy feeling disempowered. Some of us really like this story. Like I'm hearing both of you and being like, God, but like that's because of them and the very specific individuals they are and like they're special and they have this magic and no, no, no, I could never do that. That's just not me.
Lucy Baldwin (18:17.605)
Yeah.
Laila Matthews (18:17.909)
Okay. Okay.
Dani (18:20.845)
you
Lucy Baldwin (18:22.201)
But I hear you on the diagnosis thing. I think it but I do think it is really because I've gone down this rabbit hole a lot. And I think it is really nuanced because some people it's so I do think especially teens, angsty teens, I'm like, we should just like not label them like if they haven't had this issue persisting for more than like five years, just let teens be fucking freaks, you know, just let them be freaks, let them be mentally ill unless it's like really serious, like, you know, they're going to like harm themselves or whatever. But like
Because then you're giving them an identity. That's always my fear and on the other side of it though. I have seen how Understanding like shit. I have ADHD or shit. I have autism can just for somebody who their whole life They didn't realize they had that I've seen both my parents went through this both my parents were diagnosed ADD or ADHD like When I was a kid at some point and we're just like my god my whole life now makes sense and like
it just helped them so much because then there's all these like tools that come along with that. And there's so much information and they can say like, I'm not just a crazy, like whatever. It's like, they can start to understand the patterns and relate to it and feel connected to something that makes sense to them. I don't know, it just like gives them like a tether. So I feel like in some sense it can be extremely helpful to diagnose. And in another sense, can be extremely, it can like, it can stick somebody into a box.
But my biggest thing on this, cause you brought it up, Danny, so now I'm gonna go on my rant about it. I think that the problem is the way that we diagnose. I want it to be, have ADHD, not like now, even right now. Like it should be considered temporary. Personality disorders are considered at least when I had studied them. It was like, if you have a personality disorder, they would say like, these can never be cured.
What the fuck is that? But even with bipolar and things like that, we kind of claim, I know Holly, this is your real house, so. I'm treating you so much. Like we treat it as if like that's just who I am. And I think with some things, it is a lifelong journey. You know, we know that true, but also I still think identifying as that, to make that what you are is just, don't love that.
Holly (20:23.292)
I'm like vibrating right now.
Holly (20:45.232)
Yeah, I want to touch back on the thing for teenagers. That's why, at least the clinicians that I know, we won't diagnose bipolar until in your 20s, because being a teenager is bipolar. There's so much up and down and all around that the biology of puberty and the social things that are happening and what's happening in your brain, there's just so much going on that, yeah, let teenagers be teenagers and fuck up and do all the things. Yeah, because.
Laila Matthews (21:11.001)
mentally ill.
Lucy Baldwin (21:12.517)
you
Dani (21:12.621)
No.
Holly (21:14.46)
Because there is a biology in that, right? There's a biology of it. And the same thing for certain mental health conditions. Yeah.
Laila Matthews (21:20.766)
They're in the divine disorder. They look crazy to us. They look crazy to us because they're going through like goo. They are crazy, but it's good. It's for the best.
Holly (21:29.382)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's correct. that's teenagers are supposed to be that way. Otherwise they wouldn't all be that way. Like it's, it's, it's almost a global experience of like disruption in your teenage years.
Laila Matthews (21:45.0)
Yeah, and it's almost like if you're not like that as a teenager, that's even a bigger warning sign. That's even a bigger...
Holly (21:52.881)
Yeah. Yeah. There should be some rebellion in acting out. And when it comes to diagnosing, my thing, when I give someone a diagnosis, it's like, I'm always there like, this is a tool. This is not who you are. You are not too high. It is my hope that you are not going to identify yourself with this and use this as a way to be shitty to yourself. Because if that's the case, I don't want to give you a diagnosis. I don't want you to have that.
And when someone comes in with a diagnosis, it's like, okay, let's talk about that. So what are the tools that we can use that work with this? Are the tools not working? Then let's play with this diagnosis and see what's actually working for you. And like as someone who, my only diagnosis that I have is dysthymia. Like I've been diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder. And honestly, that's just a way to give me tools, a way for me to continue to do therapy, like those kinds of things. I'm self.
Like I've self-affirmed with autism and ADHD and I don't need, like sometimes I get curious, like I want to go through the process, but I don't need a diagnosis because I know all of the tools that work for these things work for me. yeah, I don't like the using, like you spoke to like personality disorders and like I love working with people who have.
a diagnosed personality disorder because I get the opportunity to roll back a lot of the conditioning. Like, cool, cool. Someone's been calling you borderline as code for being an asshole. Awesome, let's work with this because yeah, now we have, one, they have like clinical tools that they use for people with personality that are diagnosed with personality disorders. And also like it's, I mean, from where I sit, it's all trauma.
Like it's all a nervous system responding to something shitty that happened or has continued to happen. and I love to bring in EK for people like that because EK is very dialectical behavioral therapy adjacent. Like they're very, they, they dovetail really well together. So getting to bring in these tools for people who like either have diagnosed themselves on TikTok or have
Holly (24:13.263)
have tried to work with people before and not had to go anywhere is, ugh. It gives me life because it's like getting to help someone understand that it's not, this isn't your everything. This is one name that someone gave you one time. It's not.
Dani (24:35.735)
feel like we're just part of another podcast.
Laila Matthews (24:35.849)
I've never been diagnosed with a personality disorder, okay? That's never happened to me, but I self-diagnosed probably because of Girl Interrupted as having borderline personality disorder when I was young. But not just because it was cool in a movie, but because I was like, that's what's happening for me. And I remember, I just remember living with like this feeling.
in my spirit. Like there was a sucking vortex in my soul. Like I just remember feeling this like horrible sucking vortex and I would get so triggered when I was younger and it was so easy to put me into just a complete borderline meltdown where I would wind up, I mean, I guess
Lucy Baldwin (25:08.038)
Thank
Laila Matthews (25:30.772)
whether this goes to printer, whether this goes to publication, I'll just say like, I would wind up like just screaming, I'm a monster, I get it, you hate me. Just like completely, completely decompensating into the like vortex of self-hate that I think is the borderline personality disorder fuel, okay? And it was existential kink. I didn't do it directly.
this because I never had a diagnosis and I, you know, kind of had matured and so it wasn't really like so present in my life. So there is some just maturation and healing that had happened for me. It was not in my twenties, in my mid thirties, it was not the same for me as when I was in my teens and twenties. Okay. But I remember having a dream one night during the first couple of years that I was working with EK.
where I saw the drain, I saw the spinning drain, and I went into the spinning drain, and I came out the other side, and the other side of the drain was a fountain.
And I have never, ever, ever felt that sucking vortex feeling ever again, ever again. And I really believe that it was EK that gave me the like new mental framework to go into the vortex in myself and come out the other side. it just really, that level of disturb just has never, ever, ever come upon me ever again.
Laila Matthews (27:13.703)
That's my healing story about EK curing personality disorders.
Holly (27:17.595)
Yes!
Lucy Baldwin (27:21.83)
Oh my God. I'm like, can we just use this as a podcast?
Laila Matthews (27:23.145)
What?
Dani (27:28.489)
just said I feel like this is an episode right here.
Lucy Baldwin (27:32.048)
I don't know if you'd be okay with that, Leila.
was vulnerable share, but goddamn it, so fucking insightful and helpful and like.
Laila Matthews (27:40.891)
I think you should, you know what? Who cares? Just.
Laila Matthews (27:48.458)
Great. I truly, I mean, listen, I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna say this, I'll say this to protect myself and make myself feel good. The people who think I still have a personality disorder already thought that before I shared this story. Do you know I mean? So it doesn't matter.
Lucy Baldwin (27:49.478)
Hehehehe
Lucy Baldwin (28:04.315)
OZU
Laila Matthews (28:10.387)
You know what I'm saying?
Dani (28:11.949)
Absolutely.
Laila Matthews (28:17.319)
I can change anything. It's just telling the truth.
Holly (28:21.551)
Yeah, I mean, I just hate like the whole thing around personality disorders. it's like, people like therapists speak, like they use that as a code for this person's hard to work with. And it's like, so work harder. Like, what are we doing? Like.
Laila Matthews (28:33.737)
Bye.
Yeah, or just admit that you don't know what to do with this person.
Holly (28:40.559)
Yeah, and I mean, and... Yeah.
Dani (28:41.109)
Yeah, maybe we're just not the right practitioner. have, as a body worker, that comes up for me. I've been a body worker for over a decade and there are times that people just don't come back or say like, this isn't working for me. And I have to just be like, okay, either this is not the modality for you or I'm not the practitioner for you. know? Yeah, exactly.
Laila Matthews (28:43.709)
Yeah!
Laila Matthews (29:00.435)
that can bring it to you,
Holly (29:03.119)
Yeah, that's a better way to put it, definitely, because, yeah, because there are some people who are just not fits, yeah, like the, I think it back, it's like the notion of work harder is a little, like, blamy, and also it's, it comes from a place of frustration with,
Laila Matthews (29:17.533)
Well, you can hear that there's like a dismissal of like, well, that's not my fault. There's nothing that could be done anyway. And like, just kind of a brushing it aside. That's dismissive. Of a human soul that is inside that complex, suffering very deeply.
Holly (29:35.567)
Yeah. And also, I mean, I've known therapists that have been in dangerous situations because of the disease progression, right? Not just the disorder, but it can be dangerous. And also, I had someone come at me, and I sat and stayed in my body and regarded them with so much love that they backed down. It was just like, you could probably hurt me right now.
Laila Matthews (29:44.787)
Yes, yeah, right, yeah.
Holly (30:04.077)
and I could probably hurt you back and or yeah or we could just sit here and you could sit down now like that could happen.
Laila Matthews (30:07.026)
We could go there.
Lucy Baldwin (30:12.199)
you
Laila Matthews (30:13.968)
Holly, thank you. my God, Holly, I don't want that. I don't want that story to just be the tiny little 30 second blurb that it was because that story is a profound story.
Lucy Baldwin (30:16.377)
Yeah.
Holly (30:27.866)
Hmm.
Laila Matthews (30:32.968)
It reminds me of the story from the civil rights movement of the sit-in protester who was confronted by the angry mob who had knives and said, we're gonna fucking kill you. And he lifted up his shirt and exposed his belly and said, okay, well, I'm gonna love you while you do it.
Laila Matthews (30:56.946)
And he did not die. So that is the power of that very stamp.
Holly (31:14.618)
funny because I never looked at it that way. Like it's a different way to perceive it for sure.
Holly (31:23.78)
For me, was just proving myself like, you can't just sit with someone. You don't have to like, this is where the violence could come. Like, and being able to sit and like, I could totally kill this person right now and they could totally kill me. And let's see if that's not going to happen.
Lucy Baldwin (31:48.091)
my gosh, let's see if that's not gonna happen.
Holly (31:52.122)
It was so, it was so strange. It was so strange and fast and beautiful. yeah. Like, oh.
Lucy Baldwin (31:59.816)
I mean, I just can't imagine being on the other side of that, who, if you are like somebody who gets violent with people and then coming up against a Holly who just calmly is just like...
Lucy Baldwin (32:14.033)
Here we are.
Holly (32:19.02)
It shocked the shit out of me too. Like I was sitting there afterwards like,
Holly (32:27.354)
Huh. OK, that is in you.
Dani (32:32.735)
some really fucking amazing capacity and I mean it makes me think about earlier maybe this was on another podcast when we were talking about hold on I think I lost it
Dani (32:53.397)
It's gone, nevermind.
Laila Matthews (32:54.866)
We were talking about how we can't condemn even the people who are representing the shadow. Like we can't just imprison them. That will just perpetuate the cycle of violence, right? Like what Holly did was she was met with aggression and violence and she would have been absolutely justified in the rational mind of any other person to either physically retaliate
Dani (33:12.055)
Yes.
Laila Matthews (33:24.36)
or like legally retaliate. Either of those things, everyone would have been like, oh my God, Holly, are you okay? That was so brave of you. You you would have gotten so much love for being the victim of a scary moment and doing the right thing, you know? But instead you saw that and you were like, grace and mercy be upon us. Here we are in the moment when this person commits violence against me.
Love it, here we are. And it just like, couldn't even happen in that field. The field of total love and approval for the shadow annihilated it. Do you know what I mean, Holly?
Dani (34:05.771)
Yeah, totally. Okay, this was, yeah, similarly. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That was such a beautiful external representation of like how, people, do that. Like, Holly, what an amazing example. And I was going to say, it sounds like an actual like people relationship version of what we can do with our shadow, right? That fear comes up. People were talking about the fear of, well, if I really go into the shadow, then I will become that destructive force.
Laila Matthews (34:29.318)
Mm. Mm.
Dani (34:35.265)
But look at that, look at that destructive force was actually met with that, okay, I can be really truly honest in the moment of what the risks are here and I'm going to choose love and presence and acceptance of what's actually happening. And I'm just really curious instead of projecting.
on a story about what happened in the aftermath, what was it like with you and that individual after that?
Holly (35:07.704)
Well, I can't get too deeply into it because this was a client. But it was really lovely because the energy, like the kiss energy was really up. Like I was way up here and then brought it back down and like sitting down and just being like, and because I was able to meet them and just be there, like.
Dani (35:10.913)
Fair.
Holly (35:35.396)
Just getting to, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to wrap words around it.
Holly (35:42.746)
There was a really big settling in spaciousness that happened in the room.
Laila Matthews (35:46.95)
And did that person come back? are they, did they continue with you?
Dani (35:51.669)
Yeah, that's kind of my question is like what.
Holly (35:51.674)
Briefly, we're also talking about a person that was in psychosis. And I feel confident using that word to describe this person. And it was my first time working with someone in really active psychosis, but not dangerous, except for like to me in that moment, but like not threatening violence to themselves or to anyone else. And...
They continued for a few sessions and then stopped. So, it was...
Holly (36:31.288)
Like I still wonder sometimes, like, I wish they would have come back more. Like they continued on for a few weeks after that. I wish they would have come back more. And I hope that in that moment that they got proof that there's someone in this field that could sit with them and believe them. Like not necessarily believe the reality they were experiencing, but believe that they were in something.
and not have to think that immediately you need to go to a hospital because your perception of reality is different than mine, right? Because in the state that I live in, like it is, if they're a danger to themselves or someone else, like that's, you don't need to, like, I think there's this like, because of the stigma around mental health in general, like there's an idea that I can't be real. Like I can't let this person see me.
because if I let them see what I'm actually thinking, what I'm actually feeling, they're gonna send me to the fucking loony bin. And instead with this person, I was able just to be with them and...
I'm, yeah, that's my hope that they got to, they've grained the, what's word I'm looking for? That they've, they're holding onto the experience of someone in the health realm that isn't demonizing them for how they are.
Lucy Baldwin (38:01.609)
Holly, I'm really curious if you can, like, I just, I'm really curious what your definition of psychosis is. Like, what does that word mean to you?
Holly (38:11.564)
Okay, so let's see if I can, there's, so there's some nervousness around this because I'm describing a clinical term and one, I want to get it right. And there's also wanting to be seen as getting it right. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So psychosis is, there's a level of like delusion.
Lucy Baldwin (38:29.042)
Thank you for naming those,
Holly (38:40.473)
like really intense hallucinations, like auditory, visual, kinesthetic, any really altered perception. it's also, it's fear-based, right? Like it's fear and aggression-based. Like they're afraid of what's happening. There's a belief in, it can be like that they're being followed.
or that they're being tormented or, I feel really self-conscious because I'm not good at finding the clinical terms for it.
Holly (39:28.653)
But yeah, it's delusional behavior. Usually there's a lack of sleep involved, like a severe lack of sleep and a high energy.
Yeah, it's a break with reality. And I should say consensus reality, right? Because we all know that there are other worlds in these. But yeah, so, and that's also, I think how I'm able to be with that is that I am in the mental health field, a clinician, but I also am not convinced that what people perceive in altered states or in hallucinations aren't actually there.
Like, I'm not convinced that hallucinations are untrue.
Dani (40:16.791)
Sounds like you have space for a possibility that there are other realities.
Holly (40:24.025)
Not just have space for, I believe in it. like the, so a good way to describe it like in layman's terms, if you believe in other realities, psychosis is like potentially perceiving them, but the signal scrambled. Like it's befuddling to you an individual system. And so they're not processing it right. They're not able to perceive it in a grounded way.
Dani (40:50.317)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Lucy Baldwin (40:52.54)
Yeah, thank you for defining that for us. Because I feel like, I mean, I don't know what it means, you know, like you're clinician and I, yeah, we throw around the term like psychotic or that person's a psycho and it's like, is that? What is, what is psychosis? Yeah. Well, I do have to wrap up. This was a really fun impromptu second podcast episode that we just.
Laila Matthews (41:19.407)
where we had more fun because we didn't think we were being recorded.
Holly (41:24.121)
That's what I'm saying. We might just need to just turn the camera on and get used to it or turn the recording on.
Lucy Baldwin (41:31.332)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, listener. Thank you, dear listener, for listening to our conversation. Not perfectly curated, but perhaps juicier for it conversation. And thank you, Danny and Holly and Leila. I love you guys.
Dani (41:52.279)
Thank you, I love you.
Laila Matthews (41:52.742)
Thank you for bringing us all together.
Holly (41:53.177)
Thanks Lucy, love you.
New to Lucy’s work?
Start with Lucy Baldwin’s complete overview of Shadow Alchemy here:
Lucy Baldwin’s Shadow Alchemy Hub
Penetrate Radio explores shadow work, desire, magic, embodiment, self-honesty, radical approval, Existential Kink, and the hidden patterns that shape our lives from underneath.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can shadow work change identity?
Shadow work can help reveal the roles, labels, family assignments, diagnoses, and self-concepts that have become too rigid. Once those identities are seen as patterns rather than permanent truths, new ways of being become possible.
Is diagnosis bad in shadow work?
No. Diagnosis can be helpful, validating, and necessary. The concern is over-identification, where a diagnosis becomes a fixed identity that blocks growth, self-trust, or transformation.
What does “identity as a hat” mean?
Identity as a hat means that a label can be useful for a while without needing to become the whole of who you are. You can put it on, learn from it, and take it off when it no longer serves.
How does Existential Kink help with chaos?
Existential Kink can help people meet intense inner material with radical approval, embodiment, and curiosity. Instead of only resisting the vortex, the practitioner can learn to enter the sensation and discover what is on the other side.
Is shadow work a replacement for mental health treatment?
No. Shadow work is not a substitute for therapy, medication, diagnosis, crisis care, or professional support when those are needed. It can be complementary, but serious mental health concerns deserve appropriate care.
Next Steps
If this episode resonated with you, the next step is DOMINION: A Field of Radical Approval.
DOMINION is Lucy Baldwin’s space for practicing radical approval, shadow integration, desire work, identity alchemy, and the deeper transformation at the heart of Shadow Alchemy.
You can also continue exploring Lucy’s current offerings, free practices, podcast links, and other work here: