The Vibe With Ky Podcast

The Vibe With Ky
  • 4.6 (37)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Biweekly

Join Kyrus Keenan Westcott for honest, funny, and deeply relatable conversations about ADHD, mental health, and the chaos of being human, on The Vibe With Ky Podcast, sponsored by Sucreabeille. We ditch the toxic positivity to bring you real talk with therapists, content creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs from all over the world. Whether you are navigating burnout, anxiety, or a late diagnosis, this is your safe space to unmask and breathe. Subscribe now for new episodes that educate, entertain, and empower. Much love. Good vibes.

  1. 51m ago

    S7 E47: Do You Need an ADHD Diagnosis as an Adult? (ft. Paul Bowers)

    Do you need an ADHD diagnosis to understand your own brain? Paul Bowers is 67, has never been formally assessed, and has spent decades learning how his brain works anyway. Paul is a commercial photographer and video director with more than forty years behind the camera. He's not a clinician, and neither am I. He's also a motorcyclist, a mechanic, a landscape designer, a husband and a father, and for most of his life he heard one phrase as a put-down: jack of all trades, master of none. We talk about what it's like to be good at a lot of things in a world that keeps asking you to pick one, and how one subject in school convinced Paul for decades that he was secretly stupid. He explains why so few people are actually qualified to notice what's going on, and what believing "nobody noticed, so it wasn't that bad" can cost in relationships. Then we get into the question underneath this whole conversation: does it count without the paperwork? Paul is honest about why he never pursued an assessment. For him, the label matters less than knowing his own patterns. He describes the rejection sensitivity that still shows up before every interview he does, after photographing thousands of people. Rejection sensitive dysphoria isn't a formal diagnosis, but a lot of you will recognize it. I also share a number from a 2020 meta-analysis of adults 50 and over: about 2 in 100 showed ADHD-level symptoms on validated scales, but only about 2 in 1,000 had a diagnosis in their medical records. And Paul shares the one small thing he does on his own that changed how he sees himself, plus what he wrote on a label and stuck on his motorcycle throttle. Paul's work lives on his website, and he's on Instagram. Paul Bowers: https://www.paulmbowers.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulmbowers/ If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    S7 E47: Do You Need an ADHD Diagnosis as an Adult? (ft. Paul Bowers)

  2. Sep 23

    S7 E46: Autism Support for Grandparents (ft. Jennifer Kaufman)

    They're not giving you a hard time, they're having one. That single sentence is the heart of autism support for grandparents, parents, teachers, and first responders. Jennifer Kaufman is a school principal with over a decade serving students with autism in northern New Jersey, and the grandmother of a child with autism. She's an educator, not a clinician, and she's honest about the moment her expertise stopped being what her family needed. When her grandson was diagnosed, her daughter wasn't looking for a principal on the other end of the phone. She was looking for her mom. We talk about why grandparents, who have raised kids of their own, can find this shift the hardest, and why following the parents' lead matters so much, because your adult child is the expert in their own child. Jennifer walks through the training she gives police officers, first responders, and campus security teams through First Response Autism, where the most useful strategies are often the simplest: more time to answer, lower lights, less noise, and removing the audience. She explains the curb cut effect, the idea that a change made for one group ends up helping everyone, and why meeting a student with curiosity over judgment changes what happens next. When I asked her for one small thing anybody could start this week, her answer costs nothing. And near the end, she tells the story of a sentence her father said to her, and when he said it, which has carried her through the toughest times in her life. Her book is Grandparenting on the Spectrum: A Journey from Both Sides of the Desk, and everything she does lives on her website. Jennifer Kaufman: https://jenkaufman.comGrandparenting on the Spectrum: https://www.grandparentingonthespectrum.com If this conversation brought something up for you, my free Mental Health Resources Hub is here: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    S7 E46: Autism Support for Grandparents (ft. Jennifer Kaufman)

  3. Sep 15

    S7 E45: ADHD Task Paralysis and the Wall of Awful (ft. Brendan Mahan)

    ADHD task paralysis is not a wanting problem. Brendan Mahan named the Wall of Awful, and he explains what is actually happening when a small task feels impossible. There is something on your list right now. Not the big thing. The small one. The phone call, the form, the email you have opened four times and closed four times. At some point it stopped being a task and turned into evidence about you. Brendan Mahan, M.Ed., M.S., is an ADHD and executive function coach and consultant, a former teacher and mental health counselor, and the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast. He is not a clinician and does not practice as one. He is also the man who built the Wall of Awful, the model millions of people now use for that gap between wanting to do something and being able to start it. He takes Ky back to the kitchen where he first said those words out loud, talking to a mother whose son would not start his homework. He explains why he refuses the word lazy, calling it an answer without a solution. And he draws a line that is hard to shake: if you forget to make a phone call, that is ADHD, that is working memory. If you know you should make it, pick the phone up, and put it back down, that is not ADHD. That is something else sitting on top of it. They get into what forcing your way through by sheer will costs you, what changes when your bricks got built in doctors' offices instead of classrooms, and the smallest thing you can do tonight that costs nothing and needs nobody's permission. Brendan's podcast, ADHD Essentials:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adhd-essentials/id1332788588 His first book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful: Why It's Hard to Get Things Done with ADHD, Autism, and Anxiety (and How to Do Them Anyway), out now from Balance:https://brendanmahan.com/the-wall-of-awful-book/ Free mental health resources, no email required:https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    S7 E45: ADHD Task Paralysis and the Wall of Awful (ft. Brendan Mahan)

  4. Sep 12

    Rebellious Curiosity: You Are Your Own Rescue (ft. Dr. Yemi Penn)

    Rebellious curiosity means asking the question no one wants to ask, and answering it without blame. Dr. Yemi Penn says the one you've been waiting to save you is already you. That is the heart of this conversation. Dr. Yemi Penn is an engineer by first profession who became a researcher, keynote speaker, and filmmaker, and she hosts the Decolonising Trauma podcast. She holds a PhD, and to be clear, she is not a clinician. What she offers is lived experience and years of research, not medical advice. We get into what rebellious curiosity actually looks like day to day, how she went from an engineer who lived on fixed answers to a self-described Cultural Alchemist who "lives in the tolerance," and what it means to decolonise trauma, to step back from the one story we were all handed and ask what else might be true. Yemi walks through how to tell the difference between your real self and the inherited story running the show, and why the reality that feels most permanent might be one that is quietly keeping you company. I also share something personal: the years my existential OCD kept me locked in a version of reality that felt one step from collapse, and how her framing genuinely reframed it for me. By the end, she leaves us with something Tarana Burke and Brene Brown said best, that you are your best thing, shadow parts and all. This one is warm and honest, and it lands somewhere hopeful without pretending the hard parts are not hard. More from Dr. Yemi Penn:Her podcast, Decolonising Trauma (a verified Apple or Spotify show URL unblocks this link)Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.yemipenn/Website: https://www.yemipenn.com If you need support:Mental Health Resources Hub: https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    Rebellious Curiosity: You Are Your Own Rescue (ft. Dr. Yemi Penn)

  5. Sep 8

    When Cancer Returns: Rebuilding After a Setback (ft. Tim McDonald)

    Nobody prepares you for the second time. The first climb out of something hard gets support and attention. The second one is quieter, because you already used up the big reaction and you already told everybody you were okay. Tim McDonald is living inside that right now. A few weeks before this conversation, he learned his cancer is back after almost six years. He is a patient advocate, a speaker, and the author of From Patient to Advocate, and he is a stage four colorectal cancer survivor and a liver transplant recipient speaking entirely from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. He explains, in his own words, what a blood test told him and why there is nothing to treat yet. He talks honestly about the first week, the one he calls mentally hellacious, when he was not eating much and doing the bare minimum and playing the what-if game he says he hates. Then he walks through the question that got him moving again: what has actually changed? His answer was that one piece of information changed, and everything else about his life was exactly the same. From there the conversation turns to self-advocacy, and this is where it stops being about cancer. Tim did not wait for a referral. He researched, made his own calls, and drove eight hours round trip for a one hour appointment to reach the right expert. His first oncologist told him to get a second, third, tenth opinion and keep going until he believed what he was hearing. That applies just as directly in a psychiatrist's office, at an assessment, or with a GP who is not listening. If something you thought you had put down has come back on you, whatever your version of that is, this one is for you. Tim's book, From Patient to Advocate:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GL3BQMH6 Tim's website:https://www.timmcdonaldadvocate.com/ Mental Health Resources Hub:https://thevibewithky.com/mental-health-resources-hub/ Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and his content is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    When Cancer Returns: Rebuilding After a Setback (ft. Tim McDonald)

  6. Aug 23

    You Don't Have to Earn Rest (ft. Brea Segger)

    You don't have to earn rest. The calm you keep chasing is not something you arrive at after enough effort. It is already in you, and something else is in the way. Most of us were taught the opposite. Push harder, optimize more, stay disciplined enough, and eventually you get to relax. Brea Segger has spent over twenty years working with leaders, entrepreneurs, and high achievers, and she says that framing is the trap itself. Brea is an embodiment guide, not a therapist or a licensed clinician. Her background is unusual: she started in international business development and mergers and acquisitions before spending more than a decade running a holistic medicine institute in Canada. She knows the high achiever world from the inside, which is part of why this conversation goes where it does. In this episode she takes apart the language her own field runs on, including the phrase she has nearly removed from her own website because it turned into another rule book. She makes the case that suppressing your emotions was protective rather than a failure, and that the little kid who learned to push things down was doing exactly what kept them safe. She puts the high achiever and the person in active addiction on the same continuum, and explains why that framing removes shame rather than adding it. And she describes self-trust as something you already have and forgot, not something you build from nothing. I told her about a long stretch where I could not tell the difference between rest and guilt, where sitting still felt like I was failing at something. Her answer reframed the whole thing for me. Then I asked where a person should actually start. Her answer took about four seconds: lie down for five minutes and do nothing. Not meditate. Not fix anything. Just be there. So I asked the follow-up I knew some of you were thinking, which is how you get back up once you are down there. CONNECT WITH BREA SEGGER Her website and newsletter:https://www.breasegger.com/ Her podcast, Beneath The Story:https://www.breasegger.com/beneath-the-story-podcast She also has a retreat coming up called The Embodied Woman Mastery Retreat, six days in Costa Rica this November, for women, capped at eight people. Full details are on her website. Kyrus Keenan Westcott is a content creator and mental health advocate, not a licensed mental health professional. This podcast is for education and entertainment and is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience and expertise; their views are their own. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    You Don't Have to Earn Rest (ft. Brea Segger)

  7. Aug 18

    The Parts of Yourself You Threw Out Too Fast (ft. Michael Kopper)

    There is a version of you that you already decided was worthless. Michael Kopper spent years proving his was, and then went back for the pieces worth keeping. Michael is the Executive Adviser and Coach at Basis Technologies, where he works with executive teams on the conversations they have been avoiding. He is not a therapist or a clinician, and nothing in this conversation is clinical advice. What he is, is someone who rebuilt a life after it came apart in public, and who now spends his days helping leaders be honest with the people who work for them. Michael was a finance leader at Enron. The decisions he made there sent him to federal prison. He does not soften that, and neither did we. But the part that stayed with Ky is what came after. Michael did not just rebuild. He spent years working very hard at pretending the old version of himself had no value at all, and it took four or five years before he went back and looked again. When he did, he found two things worth keeping. In this conversation, Michael and Ky get into why companies keep promoting their best people into management and then never show them how to do the human part of the job. Why owning a bad decision is what makes the consequences survivable instead of fatal. Why there is no work version of you and a home version of you, and what it costs a team when leaders pretend otherwise. And what you can actually say at work when telling a senior person you are scared is not safe. If you have ever decided an old version of yourself was worthless and then spent years proving it, this one is for you. The framework Michael works from is The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp. Want more? The ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub is where Ky goes deeper. The Real Ones tier, five dollars a month, includes the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, where podcast guests flip the script and interview Ky. Reverse the Mic is for subscribers only and is not part of this public episode. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithky Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/ Everything else: https://thevibewithky.com Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    The Parts of Yourself You Threw Out Too Fast (ft. Michael Kopper)

  8. Aug 14

    Burnout and the Power of Play, with Gary Ware

    There is a version of rest that never arrives. You will relax once the list is done, except the list is never done. Gary Ware has a name for that, and it is not laziness. He calls it living on a proving ground. It is what happens when play drains out of a life. The people around you stop being people you enjoy and start being competition, and work turns into something you have to earn by proving you are worthy of it. Plenty of us have lived that way so long we stopped noticing it was a way of living at all. Gary Ware is the founder of Breakthrough Play. He is a facilitator, a keynote speaker, a coach, and the author of Playful Rebellion: Maximize Workplace Success Through The Power of Play. He is not a clinician. What he works with is applied improv, practical tools, and his own experience. He was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia at twenty six, after six straight hours of testing, and he has said that day was the worst day of his life. That is not how anybody tells you a diagnosis is supposed to feel. We get into the night he nearly fell asleep at the wheel driving home from an agency job, and what made him pull over. We get into the company that quietly took the word fun out of its stated values and replaced it with excellence, and how nobody ever said out loud what was being given up. People just stopped going to lunch. And we get into what actually helps. Taking a play history. The one question that opens it up. A five minute move you can make this week that costs nothing and asks nobody's permission. Gary also flipped the microphone around and asked me his own questions. That part is not in the public episode. It lives in the Subscriber Hub. CONNECT WITH GARYWebsite: https://www.breakthroughplay.com WANT MORE?Join the ADHD Vibers Subscriber Hub on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevibewithkyOr on Facebook Subscriptions: https://www.facebook.com/thevibewithky/subscribe/The Real Ones tier is five dollars a month. It includes the ADHD Deep Dive Library and Reverse the Mic, where guests interview me. Both are subscriber-exclusive and neither is on the public feed. Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this content is not medical advice. Much love. Good vibes. - Ky

    Burnout and the Power of Play, with Gary Ware
See All (332)

4.6
out of 5
37 Ratings

About

Join Kyrus Keenan Westcott for honest, funny, and deeply relatable conversations about ADHD, mental health, and the chaos of being human, on The Vibe With Ky Podcast, sponsored by Sucreabeille. We ditch the toxic positivity to bring you real talk with therapists, content creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs from all over the world. Whether you are navigating burnout, anxiety, or a late diagnosis, this is your safe space to unmask and breathe. Subscribe now for new episodes that educate, entertain, and empower. Much love. Good vibes.

Information

  • Creator
    The Vibe With Ky
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    332
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Vibe With Ky
  • Show Website
    The Vibe With Ky Podcast

You Might Also Like