Explore every episode of the podcast Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel)

For years, being Monica the Medium felt like all I was good for.

In this episode, I’m getting honest about the high of external validation…the television show, the sold-out events, the recognition, and how I started measuring my worth by what I could do for everyone else.

I'm also sharing a vulnerable truth about my relationship with alcohol during those years, and reflecting on how the need for external validation can sometimes follow us into entirely new chapters of our lives.

Plus, why I recently made the decision to step away from my @monicathemedium Instagram account (nearly 83,000 followers) for the next six months to go all in on growing my newer @monica.imani account, and what I’m learning about success, identity, exhaustion, and having the courage to reinvent myself.

In this episode:

* A Christmas family update following Episode 5 and a reminder about manifestation

* The complicated relationship between purpose, identity, and external validation

* How the pressure to live up to others' expectations can lead to unhealthy habits and burnout

* The courage to release an identity you’ve spent years building

* Learning to recognize your worth beyond your accomplishments

A question to sit with: Am I still doing this because it genuinely fulfills me…or because I'm afraid of who I'll be without it, or of disappointing others?

FREE WEBINAR: The Courage to Reinvent Yourself

This Thursday, November 12, live on Zoom. Everyone who attends live receives my 22-minute guided meditation + sound healing, Releasing the Woman You Used to Be, as a free gift.

Save your free spot: monicaimani.com/reinvent

MONICA’S PURA VIDA RETREAT | A COSTA RICA WOMEN’S WELLNESS RETREAT

May 12–17, 2027

Join the waitlist: monicaimani.com/retreats

Coaching + The Alignment Accelerator: monicaimani.com/alignmentaccelerator

Substack: monicaimani.substack.com

Instagram: @monica.imani

Remember, you’re allowed to evolve.

The hardest part of psychosis isn’t what people think.

For me, it wasn’t surviving psychosis. It was learning how to live with everything that came after.

The relationships I damaged. The years of memories my family and I will never get back. The shame that kept me from reconnecting with the people I loved most.

In this deeply personal episode of Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), I’m reading one of my Substack essays, written three months ago before this podcast even launched, about the part of my recovery that has been the hardest to heal.

But something happened this week that brought that essay full circle.

After nearly three years of carrying grief, regret, and shame, I finally found the courage to take a step I’d been afraid to take for years.

I’m also opening up about one of the most emotionally challenging weeks I’ve experienced in a long time, the unexpected temptation to break my sobriety, and what it means to keep choosing healing even when it’s hard.

This episode is about forgiveness, family, faith, and the realization that while we can’t get back the time or memories we’ve missed out on, we still have the power to create new ones.

And sometimes, the very door we’ve been waiting for God to open is the one we need to find the courage to knock on ourselves.

I don’t know what happens next. But I’m choosing hope.

It’s a beautiful day for living™

Music Credit: “Hope Never Dies (Never Give Up)” by Fearless Soul. Used with permission under a licensing agreement.

Let’s stay connected!

Instagram: @monica.imani / @monicathemedium

Website: www.monicaimani.com

At 21 years old, I had my own television show. Throughout my early and mid-twenties, I was selling out live events, meeting celebrities, writing a book, creating an oracle deck, teaching online courses, and building an entire business around something I’d once been terrified to tell people about.

From the outside, I was living the dream. And in so many ways, I really was.

But behind the scenes, I was already exhausted, and the pressure I was putting on myself was beginning to take a toll.

In this episode, I’m taking you back to where it all began. From my earliest experiences with mediumship and giving $40 readings while attending Penn State to landing my own television show on ABC Family and building a career beyond anything I could have imagined.

I’m sharing some of the surreal moments, the opportunities I’ll always be grateful for, and what I can recognize now about my relationship with recognition and success.

And at the very end, I share an unexpectedly emotional, full-circle moment involving a childhood memory, my very first tattoo, and a phrase that has taken on an entirely new meaning in this chapter of my life.

Because to understand the fall, you have to understand the rise.

Let’s stay connected!

Instagram: @monica.imani / @monicathemedium

Website: www.monicaimani.com

Three years ago, on September 13, 2023, I was lying on a fuzzy white rug on the floor of my son’s nursery, believing I was about to die. What happened over the next 43 minutes changed the course of my life forever.

In Part II of my near-death experience story, I’m finally sharing the full experience of what happened to me that day. I share what it felt like to believe my deceased loved ones were gathering to bring me home, the indescribable gravitational pull I felt throughout my body, holding my son and believing I was saying goodbye to him for the last time, and my experience of coming face to face with God and Jesus.

I also share what I experienced in their presence, including an overwhelming love unlike anything I had ever felt before, why I came away with an entirely different understanding of what it means to “fear God,” the life review I experienced, being shown a flash-forward of future events, meeting my future daughter, and the moment I believed I was given a choice to stay or leave.

And because this is Psychic or Psychosis?, I’m also looking back at the parts of the experience that are much harder to untangle three years later. I can question pieces of what I saw in my life review and what I interpreted about my future without questioning the supernatural encounter that changed me forever.

Please make sure you’re all caught up on Episodes 1 & 2 before starting this episode. Part I of the NDE story begins in Episode 2, and you’ll need that context for what happens here.

Normally, episodes will be around 24 minutes, but Episode 3 is a one-time exception. This story felt way too important to squeeze into a shorter episode, so this one is a little over an hour. There was A LOT to cover.

And fair warning, there are a lot of f-bombs. Don’t play this one in front of your kids. 😂

I know it might be tempting to skip ahead to the parts you’re most curious about (like coming face to face with Jesus), but please listen from start to finish. So much of what happens later only makes sense with the context of what came before it.

Listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. 🎧

And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please share it with a friend you think might resonate with my story. It helps more than you know.

You can also follow along with me on Instagram @monica.imani and @monicathemedium, and learn more about my work at monicaimani.com.

P.S. If you listen with the transcript feature turned on, please keep in mind that transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors or typos.

Surprise. You’re getting an episode early. 🎙️

I’ve been promising that I would finally share my full near-death experience this Sunday, September 27th, and you still have my word. That episode is coming Sunday.

But when I sat down to record the story, it became clear there was no way I could tell it properly in one episode without either rushing through some really important pieces or giving you an insanely long episode. 😂 So for this one time, I’m breaking my every-other-Sunday schedule and releasing Part I early.

Because the story of what happened to me on September 13th, 2023 actually begins two days earlier.

In this episode, I’m taking you back to September 11, 2023 and one of the strangest experiences of my life: a moment involving a deceased friend of mine, a knock at my front door approximately ten seconds later, and a business card containing the exact words I believed I had just received from Spirit:

Freedom to choose. Power to save.

If you’re a paid Substack subscriber and read my September 11th essay, most of this episode will be familiar to you. If you haven’t read it, you can hear the entire story for free in today’s episode.

And then this Sunday, September 27th, Part II drops.

That’s where I’ll take you into the nursery with me and tell you what happened during those 43 minutes: the physical sensation I still struggle to describe, my encounter with God and Jesus, the choice I was given, and why, three years later, I still call what happened to me a near-death experience.

My experience did not involve my heart medically stopping or being resuscitated, so I understand that it may not fit everyone’s definition of an NDE. You don’t have to use the same words I do to hear my story. But I know with every part of my soul that what I experienced was a true NDE, so that’s what I will continue to call it.

Episode 3: The Day I Came Face to Face With God and Jesus (The NDE Story, Part II) arrives this Sunday.

Three years ago my life completely unraveled.

I’m finally ready to start telling the full story.

In this first episode of Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), I’m sharing why I’ve waited three years to talk openly about what happened to me, what it was like to lose trust in the very intuition I had built my entire career around, and what it has taken to rebuild my life.

This isn’t a podcast where I’m going to try to convince you that everything I experienced was spiritual. And it isn’t a podcast where I’m going to dismiss everything I experienced as psychosis either.

This is about the gray area.

And this is where the story begins.

In this episode:

00:00 — The Unraveling of a Medium

Three years ago, my life and career completely unraveled. After more than a decade of working as a professional medium, including having my own television series on Freeform, I found myself unable to trust my own mind and struggling to distinguish between spiritual downloads and symptoms of mental illness during a psychotic break in 2023.

02:57 — Why I’m Finally Telling This Story

Why I created this 24-episode limited series and my hope that sharing my personal testimony helps someone else feel less alone in their own suffering. I also address the sensitive topic of suicidal thoughts, what my work as a medium has taught me about suicide, and the misconception that experiencing psychosis makes someone an unfit parent.

06:15 — Motherhood, Forgiveness & Rebuilding

Looking back on the last three years of rebuilding my reputation, career, and personal life, the gratitude I feel that my son is healthy and thriving despite what I went through when he was young, and learning to forgive myself. How even the most painful chapters of our lives can sometimes lead to more beautiful and purposeful beginnings.

14:45 — Navigating Career & Stigma

The damage psychosis caused to my professional reputation as a medium, why I chose to be transparent about my mental health rather than simply continuing my career as if nothing had happened, and the complicated tension between being perceived as spiritually gifted and being labeled with a mental illness.

15:31 — Personal Transformation & Growth

Sobriety from marijuana, nearly four years alcohol-free, getting married, rebranding my business, and rebuilding my life. Why the delays in releasing this podcast may have been part of God's timing.

17:13 — Exploring the Spiritual Gray Area

Why this podcast isn’t about providing definitive answers, but exploring the gray area where spirituality and mental illness can become difficult to distinguish. Throughout the series, I’ll explore losing trust in myself, what I believed while I was experiencing psychosis, and what I understand now with the benefit of hindsight.

23:02 — Faith, God & the Name “Imani”

How a message I received during my psychosis ultimately led me to legally change my last name to Imani, meaning “faith,” and how my relationship with God and Jesus became a central part of my healing and surrender. I also set the stage for where this story really begins: September 13, 2023, the day I had an experience involving God and Jesus that would forever change the course of my life.

New episodes every other Sunday.

About the Podcast

For more than a decade, Monica Imani worked as a professional medium. She starred in two seasons of her own television show, Monica the Medium, wrote the bestselling book Messages from Above, toured the country as a medium, and taught thousands of people how to trust their intuition.

Then, in 2023, everything unraveled.

In Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel), Monica tells the story she’s been afraid to tell for nearly three years: a journey through spirituality, psychosis, motherhood, addiction, shame, faith, and ultimately, rebuilding her life.

What happens when someone whose career was built around intuition can no longer distinguish intuition from fear, signs from coincidence, or spiritual experiences from symptoms?

This limited 24-episode series isn’t about proving what was psychic and what was psychosis. It’s about exploring the gray area in between, questioning what Monica once believed, making peace with what she may never fully understand, and discovering what happens when certainty falls apart and faith is all that’s left.

Jesus, take the wheel.

Connect with Monica: Website: monicaimani.com

Instagram: @monica.imani & @monicathemedium

A little sneak peek. ♥️

Episode 1 of Psychic or Psychosis? (Jesus Take the Wheel) premieres this Sunday evening, September 13th.

24 episodes. One story I’ve been terrified to tell for almost three years.

See you Sunday. Jesus, take the wheel.