Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to the Women's Mental Health Podcast.
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I'm Randi.
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And I'm Jess.
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And we're two licensed psychotherapists.
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This is a safe space where we talk about mental health, well being, and strategies for coping with life's challenges.
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And how
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all of this is normal.
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And you are
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not alone.
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Today we're going to talk about the significance of NeuroSpicy as a symbol of resilience, creativity, and pride within the neurodivergent community.
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And we will talk about that, but you can find us and more resources on our website, womensmentalhealthpodcast.
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com.
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Have you ever had these
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thoughts?
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What does NeuroSpicy mean, especially in the context of neurodiversity?
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NeuroSpicy.
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NeuroSpicy.
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How does NeuroSpicy empower individuals within the neurodivergent
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community?
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What are some examples of being NeuroSpicy?
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How can we embrace the concept of NeuroSpicy, and how can it benefit, or how does it benefit the community?
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Do neurodivergent individuals use NeuroSpicy as a source of strength, especially when they're facing, hard life challenges?
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Yeah, I
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was thinking, are we making fun of ourselves?
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is it one of those fun things that, we do?
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I was thinking about that too.
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how can allies and supporters of the neurodivergent community honor and respect the concept of NeuroSpicy?
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And is neuro spicy a widely recognized term, especially in the mental health and neurodivergent community?
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I've used
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it for a while, but yeah, and I think it's gotten popular because of social media and TikTok but it's actually like the number one searched mental health term, in the past year.
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it's very popular coined slang term.
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That's interesting.
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Okay.
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So how can we also help people understand, neuro divergence and being neuro
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spicy.
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And in what ways can we really embrace, like we were talking about being neuro spicy and I think that's kind of like what it is.
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It's about embracing your neuro divergency and letting go of the stigma around it.
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Like you said, kind of playful in a way, but yes, I am this way and I own it.
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So then, here we go.
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How can we integrate the concept of neurospicy into our everyday efforts, in order to support and uplift ourselves and others who are just like us, to normalize
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it?
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Let's dive into that.
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Neurospicy is a term that really celebrates individuals with, unique neurological traits or experiences that diverge from the societal norm.
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So, when we say neurological traits or neurodivergent, what do we mean?
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Different.
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Neurological traits, um, Fuck, I don't know.
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I even forgot what you just said.
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Sorry.
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I was like, wait, I'm answering.
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What was your question again?
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No, no, no, really.
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Okay.
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So, when we say neurodiversity and neurological traits, what do we mean?
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Okay.
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Sorry.
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Cause I like ADHD out of there for a second.
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people who are divergent, their brains are what we would call normal, but we don't want to say normal and not normal because that's kind of like saying
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baseline for what scientists believe is
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normal.
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Is divergent.
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When you're neuro divergent your brain operates different than say other people's.
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Right.
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meaning that there's a lot of different things that fall under neurodivergency,
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So medical disorders, learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, so many things come under this umbrella of being neurodivergent.
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So that's why this term neuro spicy kind of this playful term can be used by so many different people in the mental health and physical health.
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all over the world, the community as a whole.
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And
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I'd like to say my house is very neuro spicy because we have one brain who's dyslexic.
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We have two brains, maybe three that are ADHD, one of those brains is highly anxious.
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Right.
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And so all of that is just neuro divergent.
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And so, in my house, it's very common to walk in and find a cabinet open.
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Yeah.
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With nobody there.
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And you're like, um, what just happened?
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Yeah.
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Who's, what are you guys doing?
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And so we're always going, okay, pick that up.
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Do this.
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It's just little things, but it's being neurodivergent or neurospicy.
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And so why do they call it neurospicy though?
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that's the
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fun thing.
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Because I think it's just like the concept or the idea that really we have this unique strength.
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within ourselves.
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And especially within the neurodiverse community.
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If you know what it's like to be ADHD, or you know what it's like to be on the spectrum you kind of have this playful way to introduce people I think that it shows that it's a strength, like, I'm kind of like all over the place, but it's okay, because I'm neuros.
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The
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way the term actually started because neuro is what we're talking about with the brain, right?
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And then the spicy is, something like a vibrant or flavorful, like your little dance that you all didn't see is very full of life.
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Shimmy, shimmy, shake.
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and I love that, that Spicy is just this pow, this amazing, this yes, and, and just celebrating that your brain works differently, and that's okay.
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Spicy.
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Yeah, cause it's, you would think that spicy, it's hot, it's fun, it's, you know.
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Right.
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I don't know.
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Peppers.
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but that's what I see when I see Neuro Spicy.
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You see these little, shirts that have the Neuro Spicy with the little red pepper on it.
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And you're like, spicy.
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Right.
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And I just think it makes me smile when I hear the word.
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it just makes me laugh and giggle because I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm dancing again.
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I'm like, yeah, I'm spicy.
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spicy pepper.
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Yeah.
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I think that it's just fun to celebrate and not put yourself in a box.
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I think it's great,
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because if you say you're neuro spicy, you also don't have to necessarily call out what you are.
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It's nice to have that nice little term.
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A
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label without a label.
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Exactly, because you don't have to be like, oh, I'm ADHD, OCD, anxiety.
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Right.
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depressed or any
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of that.
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Or I'm dyslexic or I'm, or I have autism or I'm somewhere on the spectrum.
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I'm just neuro spicy.
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Okay.
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So just,
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I think we're all somewhere on the spectrum.
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all of our brains are a little different.
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We're just finding more and more out about it.
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And
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I think that it's great to think that all of us are somewhere on the spectrum, because we really shouldn't be put into a box, that we should think a certain way, we should act a certain way, we should have certain behaviors.
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why should we?
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I think a lot of times we have an especially our history and the past is that we have just labeled So it helps us understand them.
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But then it does a disservice to all the beautiful hues that we can be
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exactly.
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It's the Waldorf school versus, regular brick and mortar school.
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Yeah.
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Or Montessori versus public school, even public school versus private school there's not a one size fit all.
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Yeah.
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For everybody.
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But if you go to
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a public school, a regular brick and mortar public school, they expect it to be that way.
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They want 36 kids to all sit in their chairs and all be, behave for eight hours, hours a day and behave and act the same way.
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Mm-Hmm.
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Which is why we have all these five oh fours.
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And if you need to know what that is, we have a podcast on it.
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Yep.
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But we have all these five oh fours for our kids because they're not that way.
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Right.
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And maybe if we were allowing them more.
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freedom and less structure in that sense, like contain structure, maybe these kids would do better and we wouldn't have to do all of this medication
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and we probably wouldn't be so far behind in learning compared to other countries.
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Exactly.
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I'm just saying.
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All right.
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Well, that was a weird toolbox that we just got off on.
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But it's also important to understand too that a lot of women who are neurodivergent present differently from those of our male counterparts.
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and at different stages in our life too.
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Like Jess and I were both diagnosed late in life.
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Like
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late, I want to say early forties for me.
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Yeah,
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I was 40.
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and because We didn't present as being hyperactive, I always thought of ADHD as being a hyperactive boy, like bouncing off the walls and didn't understand that there was so many other, faucets to it of, girls usually internalize it.
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Yeah, I always
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got mood disorder or anxiety.
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Mm hmm.
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Yeah, and I was told I was anxious my whole life, and I was like, oh, wow, now I don't need to take anxiety medication because I'm on the right medication.
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I'm not anxious all the time.
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This can really impact us as women because if we're underdiagnosed or undiagnosed or, we've been labeled, like we said, and I think also to the label ADHD in a way does a disservice because people think it's, you know, attention when there's so many other levels to it.
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And it's really a neurological disorder.
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when we are impacted by these things, we can isolate ourselves and we, it creates more anxiety or more depression and.
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more misconceptions about this.
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And that makes it really challenging for us to navigate our needs and what can accommodate us as someone who is neurodivergent in a divergent world.
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It's interesting because, being neurodivergent, sometimes it's really hard to navigate social situations, walking into the mom's groups.
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I never felt like I fit in ever.
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Right.
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And it's so interesting because here now I have a more neurodivergent women in my life than I ever have at any point in my life.
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And I think it's because we're all older and we're all being diagnosed right now because a we're looking for it and B our hormones are fluctuating because of perimenopause.
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And so It's easier for us to go, what the hell is
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happening?
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Yeah, I think when you're just older too and you slow down and give yourself a chance to really like analyze who am I and what's happening with my body like, it's easier to find those things that are going on with us.
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That or maybe it's also because when we're young and we do stupid shit, it's because they think we're young.
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Right.
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And if we're doing stupid shit
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when we're Oh, you're just young and dumb.
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Yeah.
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Like, no, Jess and I have talked about our college years and we're like, Holy, how did we survive that?
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we were off the rails.
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if we had been formally diagnosed and on the right medication, Man, we would have been on a, a less strenuous path than what we were.
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we did a lot of risky behavior because we were just like, like our brains.
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my favorite line was always, it sounded like a good idea at the time.
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Right.
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Why did you do that?
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I don't know.
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Sounded like a good idea at the
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time.
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You just, and I used to even have that conversation with myself.
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I don't even know why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling.
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cause I was all over the place.
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All the time.
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Because my brain just functioned differently.
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But in that time, in the 90s or whatever, it wasn't a thing to talk about this or to have feelings about how you were feeling and things.
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So it was just like, you just like sucked it up and dealt with it.
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and they didn't know, it's interesting because my daughter just brought home her report card and she has a 3.
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8 or a 3.
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9.
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I am so amazed.
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I am so amazed because A, she's brilliant, but she's ADHD, oh sorry, she's brilliant and she's ADHD, but because we have her on medication, she is just able to focus and do her work.
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And I was like, wow, I wonder what my grades would have been like, because I had okay grades.
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But I couldn't focus.
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Yeah, see, I was the opposite.
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I was hyper focused on school.
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So I had a 4.
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2 GPA because I was obsessed with that.
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that was my hyper focus.
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But like, everything else, woo! I'm making
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faces at her because I'm like, what?
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She's
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like, what?
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What's that?
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Yeah.
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But then later, the older I got, too, and as my hormones shift, in college I was like, whatever.
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I've always been like, Hey,
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let's go have fun.
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Yeah.
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So what does neurospicy mean in the context of neurodiversity?
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when we're looking at NeuroSpicy, by the way, we have this, really amazing, do you follow the Treasure Valley Weather Guy?
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Uh, yeah.
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So, he uses it all the time, and he's always like, my NeuroSpicy besties! And he's always calling people NeuroSpicy, and calling them, yeah, it is, it's really fun.
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See, again, it's fun! Right.
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And so, what it does, is it, it shows this, creativity that he's using, that he's and the strength to get other people out there.
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Because every time he's doing that, I'm always raising my hand like, I'm here.
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Yeah.
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I'm here.
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Yeah.
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And so it acknowledges this like diverse style and community and it just normalizes it because he is, he's totally ADHD.
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I can.
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Oh yeah, I'm sure.
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Totally.
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That's hilarious.
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And it is.
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It's really fun to watch all of this.
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When we're talking about neurodiversity, Randy, how does using the word neuro spicy, empower us?
