The Unlabelled and Limitless Podcast

Episode 21 - Eating With Your Hands and Other Sensory Dealbreakers

In this episode of Unlabelled and Limitless, Lois and Kay start with a simple but revealing question: why does eating with your hands feel like an absolute dealbreaker for some people?
What unfolds is a funny, thoughtful conversation about sensory sensitivities, hygiene, neurodivergence, and the unspoken rules we navigate in shared spaces. Kay reflects on growing up in a culture where hand-eating is common and why it has never felt comfortable for her. Lois draws on years of healthcare experience to explain how sanitation protocols, lived experience, and awareness of germs can permanently shape boundaries around food and touch.
From Kamayan meals and movie theater snacks to New York street etiquette and knowing when to mind your business, the episode explores how personal boundaries are often misunderstood or dismissed as being “difficult.” Along the way, they highlight how comfort, safety, and dignity can look radically different depending on a person’s nervous system and experiences.
This episode isn’t about criticizing cultural practices or policing behavior. It’s about normalizing difference, respecting sensory limits, and allowing people to eat, move, and exist in ways that work for them.
Key themes include:
✨ Sensory sensitivities and food-related aversions✨ Neurodivergence, hygiene anxiety, and lived experience✨ Cultural norms versus personal boundaries✨ Healthcare, sanitation, and boundary formation✨ Public behavior, mental health, and social awareness✨ Letting people have preferences without judgment

Episode 20 - Self-Medication, Stigma, and the Search for Balance

Content Notice:This episode includes open discussion of drugs, alcohol, addiction, and substance use. These topics are explored from a personal, psychological, and educational perspective. This podcast does not provide medical advice and does not encourage illegal activity or substance misuse. Listener discretion is advised.
In this episode of Unlabelled and Limitless, Lois and Krisana have a candid, nuanced conversation about neurodivergence, substance use, and the ways many people unconsciously self-medicate long before they understand how their brains actually work. What begins as a personal reflection on sobriety and past experiences opens into a deeper exploration of ADHD, brain chemistry, stigma, and the limits of a deficit-focused approach to mental health.
Lois shares insights from psychology, neuroscience, and positive psychology to unpack why substances like alcohol, cannabis, stimulants, and even nicotine can feel regulating for neurodivergent nervous systems. Rather than framing this solely as addiction or moral failure, the conversation looks at what these coping strategies are trying to solve, and how better diagnosis, support, and education might reduce harm over time.
Krisana reflects on identity, creativity, career uncertainty, and what it means to reset in midlife without collapsing into shame. Together, they explore the difference between fixed traits and learnable skills, the pressure to monetize passions, and how scarcity thinking can push people into unsustainable choices. The episode also introduces key concepts from positive psychology, including resilience, agency, hopefulness, and sustainable goal-setting.
This conversation is not about promoting substance use or offering easy answers. It’s about curiosity, compassion, and reframing discovery as something grounded, supported, and human.
Key themes include:
✨ Neurodivergence, brain chemistry, and self-medication✨ Addiction, stigma, and harm reduction perspectives✨ Positive psychology versus deficit-based mental health models✨ Identity, creativity, and career sustainability✨ Agency, hopefulness, and rebuilding resilience✨ Setting realistic goals without shame or burnout

Episode 19 - The Year We Learn to Slow Down

In Episode 19 of Unlabelled and Limitless, Lois opens the New Year with a reflective solo conversation on why the world desperately needs to slow down. From crowded trains and constant notifications to artificial deadlines and decision paralysis, she explores how modern life pushes our nervous systems beyond capacity, especially for neurodivergent minds.
Using lived experience with ADHD, burnout, and recovery, Lois unpacks how speed has become a false measure of worth and productivity. She reflects on decision paralysis, overstimulation, and the cost of an urgency culture, while offering a different lens: slowing down does not kill momentum; it restores clarity, creativity, and executive function.
This episode is an invitation to begin the year differently with more intention, fewer emergencies, and a more profound respect for rest, boundaries, and human limits.
Key themes include:
✨ Decision paralysis and overstimulation in a fast-paced world✨ ADHD, burnout, and the cost of constant urgency✨ Artificial deadlines and the myth of immediacy✨ Slowing down as a path to clarity and momentum✨ Rest without guilt and redefining productivity✨ Choosing humanity, sustainability, and wisdom over speed

Episode 18 - Resetting the Rules: Careers, Strengths, and Beginning Again

In Episode 18 of Unlabelled and Limitless, Lois and Krisana open the New Year with a reflective conversation about careers, education, and the pressure to fit into systems that were never designed for real human diversity. Framed around beginner’s mindset and personal reset, the episode invites listeners to question what success has been taught to look like and whether those definitions still serve them.
Together, they explore strength based thinking, neurodivergence, failure, and why detours, pauses, and stepping back are often necessary for growth. Rather than pushing for instant transformation, this conversation offers permission to start the year with curiosity, compassion, and a more human pace.
Key themes include:
✨ Beginner’s mindset and New Year resets✨ Strength based careers versus rigid systems✨ Neurodivergence, labels, and expectations✨ Failure, detours, and changing direction✨ Redefining success beyond timelines and titles✨ Designing work and life around real human needs

Episode 17 - From Stuff to Soul: Choosing Experiences and Charity This Christmas

In Episode 17, From Stuff to Soul: Choosing Experiences and Charity This Christmas, Lois and Kay reflect on the quiet shift that happens when material things stop feeling meaningful. What begins as a freeform conversation becomes an honest look at consumerism, minimalism, and the pressure to give during the holidays.
Kay shares how travel and personal growth have changed her relationship with possessions and gift giving. Lois reflects on her own journey toward intentional living, sustainable choices, and finding meaning in experiences, community, and direct charity. Together, they explore how slowing down and giving with intention can bring more peace during the Christmas season.
Key themes include:
✨ Letting go of material attachment and redefining “enough”✨ Choosing experiences and memories over physical gifts✨ Minimalism, sustainability, and intentional living✨ Cultural perspectives on gift giving and generosity✨ Charity, direct giving, and community care

Episode 16 - Rest Perspectives: Neuroinclusion Around the World - Part 3

In Part 3 of the rest series, Lois and Ian take the conversation global, reflecting on travel, accessibility, and how environment shapes rest for neurodivergent people. What begins with Ian’s long overdue trip to Argentina expands into an exploration of sensory stress while traveling, the small details that make rest possible, and the surprising calm found in mountains, nature, and moments of perspective.
They discuss autism friendly spaces in Argentina, thoughtful everyday design, and how different cultures approach inclusion and community support. The conversation also touches on adrenaline based activities, nature, gratitude, and how feeling both small and in control can regulate an overloaded nervous system.
Key themes include:
✨ Long haul travel, sensory stress, and the small details that support neurodivergent rest✨ Autism friendly design in everyday places, from cafes to toilets to menus✨ Global differences in neuroinclusion and the limits of deficit based, cure focused thinking✨ Community oriented cultures, systems responsibility, and what “failure” really means✨ Adrenaline based hobbies like parachuting, scuba diving, skiing, and city cycling as surprising forms of rest✨ Nature, awe, and gratitude as powerful regulators for busy, overloaded brains
Part 3 closes the series with a reminder that rest is not only about sleep or time off, but about perspective, place, and environments that allow us to feel grounded and supported.

Episode 15 - Rest Perspectives: Seven Types of Rest and the Stories Our Brains Carry - Part 2

In Part 2 of this series on rest, Lois and Faye step back from individual burnout and look at the bigger picture. How do trauma, social conditions, and deficit focused psychology shape the way we see ourselves, our brains, and our need for rest, especially when we are neurodivergent.
Faye shares how her training in psychology left her frustrated with how much of the field is focused on “what is wrong,” from pathologizing labels like “disorder” to symptom lists that rarely ask where those symptoms came from in the first place. She talks about work that frames ADHD as an adaptation to early environments and unmet needs, and how that lens of survival, rather than brokenness, has changed the way she understands herself and others.
Lois and Faye explore how trauma, inequality, and lack of support show up in addiction, self medication, and even in the school to prison pipeline. They talk about the energy, creativity, and drive that often get channeled into risky or criminalized behavior when people are desperate for dopamine, belonging, or a sense of purpose, and how much potential is lost when systems focus only on deficits rather than strengths.
From there, the conversation returns to the heart of the series: rest. Faye introduces the idea of the seven types of rest, including physical, mental, emotional, sensory, social, spiritual, and creative. She shares how weight lifting helps her regulate her emotions, how sitting in a dark cinema alone gives her sensory and emotional rest, and how films allow her to process feelings that are hard to access directly. Lois talks about finding rest in walking, cleaning as a mindful practice, decorating her home, dancing all night sober to old school club music, and laughing at stand up comedy.
They also name the ways we drift into unhealthy coping when we are not getting enough genuine rest, from overdrinking to chasing risky dopamine, and how easy it is to tell ourselves that we do not have time to pause until the body finally forces the issue with illness or burnout.
Key themes include:
✨ How psychology and language have focused on “what is wrong” instead of what is adaptive or strong✨ Trauma, unmet needs, and the idea of ADHD as an early life adaptation✨ Addiction, dopamine, and the thin line between survival coping and self sabotage✨ The seven types of rest and how they show up in everyday life✨ Exercise, cinema, comedy, and solitude as real forms of rest for a neurodivergent brain✨ Learning to notice when you are self medicating instead of truly resting
Part 2 widens the lens on rest, inviting listeners to see their brains not as broken, but as responsive and creative, and to explore many different kinds of rest that can support a nervous system that has been working in survival mode for far too long.

Episode 14 - Rest Perspectives: Hustle Culture and the Neurodivergent Brain – Part 1

In Part 1 of this three part series on rest, Lois and Claire sit down for a candid conversation about productivity, hustle culture, and what happens when a neurodivergent brain is expected to function like a machine. From ADHD and insomnia to office politics and masking, they explore how the push to constantly do more quietly erodes health, self trust, and any real experience of rest.
Claire shares what it has been like to grow up immersed in hustle culture, carrying the message that if you just work hard enough, everything you want is possible, even while her body and brain were clearly burning out. She talks about the shame spiral of feeling “lazy” or “not tough enough,” the depressive dips that followed, and how intentionally redefining productivity helped her move from “I only did four things” to “I did four things, and that is a win.”
Lois reflects on her own cycles of running multiple jobs, doing late shifts, and believing that hard work would always be fairly rewarded, only to repeatedly hit ceilings, politics, and burnout. She shares openly about living with ADHD, insomnia, and rejection sensitivity, and how lack of rest magnified every emotional hit, every setback, and every self doubt.
Together, they explore what it has meant for Claire to move from the noise of city life to the quiet of the woods, trading constant stimulation and social obligation for fresh air, dogs, trees, and a slower nervous system. They talk about how saying no to after work drinks, holding firm boundaries, and choosing activities that actually refill your energy, like cooking, walking, or a “nothing weekend,” can be powerful acts of rest for a neurodivergent brain.
Key themes include:
✨ Hustle culture, burnout, and the myth that effort alone guarantees success✨ How ADHD, insomnia, and masking at work shape the experience of exhaustion✨ Guilt around rest and shifting from self blame to self compassion✨ Moving from city noise to nature and how environment affects the nervous system✨ Boundaries around social time, happy hours, and the pressure to be “on”✨ Redefining productivity as sustainable, person centered, and aligned with real energy
Part 1 sets the foundation for the whole series, reframing rest as something active, intentional, and deeply personal, especially for neurodivergent people. If you have ever felt like you are doing “everything right” and still burning out, this conversation is for you.

Episode 13 - Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support – Part 3

Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support – Part 3
In Part 3 of Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support, Lois, Ian, and Kay bring their most personal, nuanced insights yet as they explore how ARFID and neurodivergent eating patterns show up during the holidays — and throughout daily life. What begins as a conversation about sensory overwhelm quickly expands into a candid, often humorous look at food aversions, safe foods, trauma-based associations, and the emotional labor that comes with navigating meals when your brain processes food differently.
Kay shares the challenges of parenting a child with ASD who clings to one safe food for months at a time, especially during the long, festive Filipino holiday season. Ian explains how autistic shutdown, exhaustion, and overstimulation can override hunger entirely, creating survival-based eating patterns. And Lois speaks openly about medication side effects, food poisoning experiences, cultural expectations, and lifelong sensory rules that dictate what she can — and cannot — physically eat.
From childhood memories of being forced to eat foods their bodies rejected, to adult rituals of pre-reading menus, planning safe meals, or relying on “no-cook food,” the trio illustrates the deep sensory, emotional, and psychological layers behind ARFID-like behaviors. They also discuss the impact of pressure, shame, and well-meaning but harmful encouragement to “try one more bite,” highlighting how these moments can shape a person’s relationship with food for life.
Key themes include:
✨ Food as a form of control during overstimulation and routine disruption✨ How stress, shutdown, and exhaustion override hunger cues✨ Sensory sensitivities, texture aversions, and strong internal food “rules”✨ Cultural expectations around holiday eating and family pressure✨ Childhood food memories that turn into lifelong avoidances✨ Supporting kids with limited foods without shame, force, or fear
Part 3 closes the series with a powerful reminder: ARFID is not defiance, stubbornness, or pickiness — it’s a deeply sensory, emotional experience shaped by safety, predictability, and overwhelm. For parents, adults, and families navigating these challenges, this episode offers empathy, validation, and practical insight into what it really means to eat in a neurodivergent body.

Episode 12 - Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support – Part 2

Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support – Part 2
In Part 2 of Navigating Life With ARFID: Stories, Struggles, and Support, Lois, Ian, and Kay continue their honest, layered conversation about the complicated relationship between neurodivergence, sensory experiences, and food. Picking up from the stresses of holiday eating and safe-food routines, this episode goes deeper into how shutdown, overwhelm, texture aversions, and decision fatigue shape everyday meals — for both kids and adults.
Through vulnerable storytelling, humor, and shared memories, the three explore the emotional realities behind ARFID-like behaviors: why some people stop eating entirely when overwhelmed, why others cling to the same familiar food, and why “just pick something from the menu” is often an impossible ask. From discussions about cultural food expectations to childhood experiences with foods that caused lasting aversions, the conversation highlights how deeply sensory sensitivity and trust shape our relationship with eating.
This episode also touches on the ways family dynamics, cultural norms, and shame influence how people learn to cope — and how adults can better support themselves and their children with compassion rather than pressure.
Key themes include:
✨ Food as a form of control during overstimulation✨ How stress, shutdown, and decision fatigue affect appetite✨ Sensory sensitivities, texture aversions, and food “rules”✨ Cultural influences on how we learn (or unlearn) eating habits✨ Childhood food memories that shape adult eating behaviors✨ Navigating family expectations and food pressure without shame
Part 2 deepens the understanding of why eating is rarely “simple” for neurodivergent individuals. It offers reassurance, insight, and a sense of solidarity — especially for those who grew up feeling “difficult” or “picky” when the reality was sensory, emotional, and completely valid.