Screwed Up

And plot synopsis? We don’t know s**t.

That’s the conclusion we’ve come to, after two seasons of Screwed Up Podcast and nearly a decade in New Age. We don’t know why weird or inexplicable things happen, we don’t know what happens after we die, and we are fine with that.

So for our last episode, we decided to just have fun and go for a final round of things we wanted to bitch about!

Here’s the episode rundown:

Will our podcast be archived? Actually, this one, we DO know!

Using spirit guides as an excuse to be an A-hole: A New Age memoir.

Why don’t people ever talk about their mundane past life where nothing interesting ever happened?  

Memory and DNA: maybe it’s just science.*

That documentary that will never see the light of day because everyone keeps getting murdered!

Bob Saget!

Gatekeeping and control.

We say our thanks and goodbyes!

Some more topics that we would have loved to pick apart and discuss:

Is everyone actually born “psychic” or with intuition? After years of teaching intuition development and realizing that making assumptions about everyone being “born with the same abilities” is both wrong and stigmatizing, Mimi thinks that no, not everyone can be empathic, intuitive or psychic.

Are empaths just neurodiverse: part three. There is a facet of synesthesia that is called Mirror Touch, which is the ability to feel physical sensations in the same area of your body where someone else is experiencing it. 

Perhaps another time!

For more links, credits, and references, please visit the episode’s webpage at https://www.screweduppodcast.com/episodes/final-episode-we-dont-know

In the nearly two years of us doing this podcast, we‘ve discussed, in various ways, how New Age and spiritual communities foster an oppressive and hostile environment for anyone who isn‘t positive, healthy, happy or priviledged in some way. It‘s no surprise then that we decided to tackle head on spirituality, toxic positivity and ableism.

Specifically, we discuss how ableism shows up in New Age spirituality, for example with dismissive attitudes and comments that are meant to deny or negate a disabled person‘s experience, or through inspiration porn and other ”Good vibes only” nonsense.

We sat down to chat with business expert Ash Riley on spirituality and toxic marketing, ethics, trauma-informed messaging and so much more.

Who hasn‘t seen a wellness influencer market themselves as being a ”six-figure coach” or a new ager selling a pricey service they claim you could afford if you just asked ”the universe to manifest the money” for it. These tactics are often employed by spiritual practitioners who use the Law of Attraction (LoA) as a way to manipulate vulnerable people into buying their services, and/or by spiritual practitioners who are new to spirituality. The latter often have no business training, but will be encouraged by ”pop” spiritual coaches to start selling their services out of a sense of having to fulfill a God-given purpose. Some spiritual practitioners also often engage in aggressive marketing out of a need to survive. The entire spiritual business model is rotten, according to our guest, and based on deceptive, capitalistic models.

We invited Ash Riley to discuss with us the ways in which spiritual entrepreneurs can create conscious and trauma-informed, compassionate businesses that are no longer based on deceptive marketing tactics. Ash Riley walks us through what led her to create an online community to support professional spiritual entrepreneurs who want to align their spiritual business with their core values.

New Age’s unhealthy obsession with spiritual, mental, and physical purity is nothing new.  We’ve all seen endless articles, blogs, posts and marketing campaigns that promise to help “cleanse” and “detox” you from all types of unwanted parasites that lower your vibration. This need to cleanse and keep your vibration high at all costs also ties into another staple of New Age beliefs: The Shift.

This week, Dr. Lana and Mimi return to their regular format and discuss Spiritual Narcissism and Savior Complexes in New Age.

New Age spirituality can be an incredibly attractive place for anyone with a savior complex or need to fix others. While it’s incredibly easy for some to get caught up in the flattery of people believing you have magical powers, it can unfortunately lead to charlatanism, false teachings, or abuse. We discuss possible reasons why some people believe they can heal diseases and what are the red flags to look out for when joining spiritual communities or teachers. Finally, Dr. Lana puts to rest the popular new age myth that all abusive relationships involve a narcissist or someone with Narcissism Personality Disorder.

We were delighted and immensely humbled to sit down with Mx. Randi Lee (she/they), a Two-Spirit intuitive from the Ojibwe culture, to discuss New Age’s appropriation of Native culture and spirituality. Randi very generously shared their knowledge with us and answered all our questions with patience, wisdom, and grace. Hear us talk about smudging, animal spirits/totems, Native spirit guides, ancestor work, and more.

Guest Rev. Lindsey Turner, a Christian non-binary pastor and astrologer, helps Dr. Lana and Mimi dissect and dismantle a huge new age concept: the Divine Feminine and Masculine.

Season 2 trailer for Screwed Up podcast. While season 1 expressed our “discontent” about the new age industry, season 2 will be more focused on having open discussions on topics that might be uncomfortable but that we feel are important.

In this episode, Mimi and Dr. Lana take their experiences within the psychic and medium communities to talk about the responsibilities that comes with making claims to be psychic or having mediumistic abilities on social media, especially in 2021.

For our last episode of season 1, we decided to take on a staple of New Age thinking and victim blaming: Abraham Hicks and The Law of Attraction