Ep 9: Psychic Gifts or Psychosis? Janine and Isadora Explore the Thin Line Between Imagination and Hallucination | Nutty & Slutty with Isadora O'Boto and Janine Noel | Stories on Sex Work and Mental Illness

Can heightened sensitivity be a gift — or can it tip into something dangerous? 

In this episode, Janine and Isadora dive into the strange, fascinating and sometimes frightening space where heightened spiritual sensitivity, creativity and mental health collide.  What begins with a humorous confession about Janine avoiding antique shops quickly opens into a conversation about how both Isadora and Janine share a strong intuitive sense of the energetic world.

For Janine, a deep sense of energy and profound spiritual experiences once pulled her into a dangerous spiral.  Now she uses self-talk to keep herself grounded from psychotic flashbacks at the grocery store.

Isadora reflects on her experiences sensing unexplained energies since childhood, as well as on how creativity and storytelling can shape our interpretation of life’s most intense moments.

Together they explore the thin line between imagination, intuition, and psychosis — and how self-awareness, humor and reality checks help keep them balanced.

It’s a conversation that moves from Trader Joe’s to thrift stores, to energy healing, spiritual encounters and the creative mind, all with the raw honesty and wit listeners have come to expect from Nutty and Slutty.

Welcome to NUTTY & SLUTTY
Where Mental Health, Sexuality and Unfiltered Truth Take Center Stage

NUTTY & SLUTTY is a bold, sex-positive podcast exploring the messy, complicated and often hilarious intersections of mental health, sexuality and real life — without shame, filters or pretense.

Hosted by Janine Noel (living with bipolar disorder) and Isadora O’Boto (ex-escort), this show brings together two radically honest perspectives for conversations that are as raw as they are insightful.  From navigating mood swings and medication to unpacking the realities of sex work and desire, nothing is off-limits.

Through candid storytelling, lived experience and unfiltered real talk, NUTTY & SLUTTY dives into what it actually means to survive — and sometimes thrive — while balancing mental health, identity and sexuality in a world that doesn’t always make space for either.

Whether you’re managing depression, curious about the realities of sex work, exploring your own desires or just here for sharp, irreverent honesty, this podcast meets you where you are.

Topics include:

• Mental health care and lived experience
• The realities of sex work and life as an escort
• Bipolar disorder, depression, and emotional regulation
• Sexual taboos and breaking stigma
• Medications, side effects, and navigating treatment
• Sex tips, intimacy, and pleasure
• Identit...

Transcript

Janine 0:00

I cannot stand antique shops. Like, I don't want anyone's antique in my house. I don't want anything with any past attached to it. So box me up some IKEA furniture.

Song 0:12

Send me. You bring out the best in me by your side. I'll forever be with a great big smile as big as the big blue ocean tide. La la la la la la.

Janine 0:29

Hi, I'm Janine.

Isadora 0:30

And I'm Isadora. And this is the Nutty and Slutty Podcast. We're so glad to have you with us today. Today we delve into the complexities of sensitivity to energy, the experience of psychosis, and the intersection of creativity and spirituality.

Speaker 0:49

We explore personal anecdotes about energy awareness, the challenges of navigating mental health, and the potential gifts that come with heightened sensitivity.

Speaker 2 1:01

I know it sounds like Isadora and I have been talking about my personal psychic abilities, but we sort of just dropped into this conversation. For me, this will become dangerous territory.

Speaker 1:23

Hi, Dora. How are you? I'm good. I was thinking about something we were talking about before. Okay. Whether it was on the podcast or not on the podcast. But what I'm thinking about, you were talking about at some point the world feeling like hell. And there's this there was a sense of you being greatly affected by like you were talking at one point about Trader Joe's, I think it was. And um how there might be spirits under a certain Trader Joe's, but not under another one. And I was saying we're never going to get a sponsor, and then we went forward a little bit. But I was thinking that your sensitivity to things that might actually exist, you know, that do actually exist, like the sound of carts or people talking, or you know, the the feel of the keypad beneath you, or the sense that there might be spirits underneath the Trader Joe's where the land was built. These are great sensitivities to things, which is, you know, kind of, I don't want to say autistic, but it's a great, you know, magnified sense of feeling. And I'm wondering from that, you went into these psychotic fantasies, right? Am I always and I'm wondering, I guess, first of all, which came first, do you think? Was it the fantasy began and then, or was it caused partially by your sensual sensitivity to every stimulus around you? Like were they chicken and egging each other, or how did that work?

Speaker 2 2:55

So I remember I cannot go into secondhand stores or thrift stores because it feels like too much energy and it feels just overwhelming. And I don't want anything from anybody in the past, and I have to run out of the store. Like antique shops, I cannot stand antique shops. Like I don't want anyone's antique in my house, I don't want anything with any past attached to it. So box me up some IKEA furniture or send me really, I am much more happy with that. So I had kind of strange sensitivity like that. But then before I knew it, it was in this other state that I was feeling this. So is it connected? I'm not sure. But what I did have to do is I taught myself not to listen to it, basically. So I can go to a grocery store. It still happens today. Like I can walk into Whole Foods, and if there are people with their carts and a certain formation in the fruit produce section, buying fruits and vegetables, then I can go, oh my God, people are here for me. Like I need to be on right now.

Speaker 4:12

Yeah. Did I talk about that? You did, but I think that was that's when you were in psychosis. No, that's me today. Oh, that's you today.

unknown 4:22

Okay.

Speaker 2 4:22

Well, I don't know because I'm not a therapist, but that's that's me. I will get glimmer. Well, I call them glimmers. Okay. I get glimmers of psychosis throughout my week, throughout my, you know, I go, oh, I remember that feeling. Oh man, wow, these are a bunch of beautiful people in line. I'm this beautiful person in line too, and we're part of something bigger. I'm not sure what it is, but we're here at Whole Foods shopping for a big reason. And so I still get that in my day-to-day life where I have to talk myself down and go, okay, no, that's not real.

Speaker 5:05

But reality, what if it is, though, in the sense that I mean, because there are some people like myself to join you in this who are ultra, ultra sensitive. I have a lot of friends like this too, you know, they feel energy, they just feel it. And I think it's a gift. And of course, you know, there's actual professions where they hire psychics who feel energy and they hire them to find out where the body is, or you know, detectives and things like that. And so I think there are people with great sensitivity to things like, you know, there's the whole art of Reiki, which is a type of, you know, energy work that we don't even touch somebody, you just move their energy. And I don't know, some people believe in it, some people don't. But maybe that what you have is a gift that tips over into a psychosis, you know. So I guess what I'm talking about when I'm asking you is how much of it can you say, well, I can feel like you were in an antique store, I can feel the dead people's energy, you know, I can feel in these clothing who wore this, or the energy of that person who wore this, which is, you know, and then it goes into crazy town because I'm like affected by it. Like I can feel energy too strongly. And sometimes I get freaked out too. I'm like, I can't wear this piece of clothing because this person is not a good person, you know, or whatever the craziness is in my head. But I don't go into that place of everybody's watching me, and you know, I don't tip over into that. I can make it up. When I was younger, I used to make it up to make life better for me. I used to think, well, if something bad happened, for instance, I could say to myself, here is the actress who will become a great actor one day, and she's stepping onto the city bus. And, you know, and I could make up a scenario in which I wasn't just me to whom the bad thing had happened. I could create a story around myself, or I could write in my journals and make it into a novel of this. And the worst things that happened made the novel even better, you know, made the play even better. And I was like living through this, and someday, of course, you know, when I was well known as a great actor, people would ask me about my travaise, and I would say, well, you know, that was the day I stepped onto the 10 bus, you know. But I knew I was aware that I was creating a scenario to live into because real life at that moment kind of sucked, and for for whatever reason, because it was mundane. I hate mundane. I hated mundane, I wanted my life to be exciting. God, don't take me down to Bed Bath and Beyond and make me work there. I'd rather die. You know, so stupid, but that's how I felt. You know, so I I could understand really deeply something in you wanting to make the situation more than it was, like in Whole Foods, you know, creating meaning. Well, that's what acting in theater is. We create art and meaning out of loose pieces. We put it together and create meaning, you know. So you're our gifted actor and you have the sense a great sensitivity to so many things. No, the question is, how do you handle it? You know, how do you make it useful for you rather than so that it becomes a tool for you rather than you being its tool?

Speaker 2 8:37

I don't think I'm a gifted actor, but I do have grandiosity some days where I'm like, you know, maybe I'm running for president, maybe the next president is gonna have had full-on bipolar illness in her history and Crohn's disease, and maybe I'm just running for president soon. So I mean, sure, I'll have little things like that. But I think what what happened to me is if I take it too far, it gets dangerous. And that's what happened when I went to Brazil to see John of God, the healer. And he said that I was a medium and that spirits move through me.

Speaker 9:17

I can see that though, like he probably felt that about you.

Speaker 2 9:21

So I had I was absorbed into the room of women that are mediums and have to work with energy while we're there, giving John of God the power to do his healing. And so I got into it. I was sort of laughing, like, ha ha, I'm not really a medium. This is ridiculous. But then as I was leaving, the women said, like, how are you gonna continue to work with energy? What is your plan? And I ended up going to the Berkeley Psychic Institute for a while and doing energy work. Yeah, we would do healings on people. They'd come in from the street basically, and we would work their energy. And the problem was it kind of led to an unraveling of myself, thinking too much, like I have this ability, maybe I'm psychic. It led me down into psychosis, actually. And so I can't, there's something about me that I just I can't just keep it light. You know what I mean? I can't just like keep it at a level where maybe it's beneficial to me. It takes me down and it takes me into a scary place of as if it's bad. So I get dragged down that way. The whole thing, actually, before the rape, I was really consumed with energy moving through my body. I was feeling that. I was freaked out. I didn't know what was moving through me. It felt evil. Like I stopped by a friend's apartment and said, There's something bad inside of me, and I don't know how to get it out. But instead of that friend like trying to get me help, she told me later, you know, I felt that bad energy too after you were there. And I asked it, I asked it to leave. And I was like, Well, why didn't you try to get me help with my bad energy? Right? Like, like, thanks, thanks a lot for just sending me home. But but partly before that, I was feeling horrible stuff move through my body, and that terrified me. And it led into it. So that was also like a component of that rape that I was already feeling this this hell like moving through my body.

Speaker 11:42

And I think too, I don't know. I'm I'm positing, but when you're just feeling these kind of extraordinary energies that are not part of normal life energies, it can be super scary because you don't have somebody like I don't know how you got to Brazil and met up with John of God or why you did that, but I would love to know. But also, I remember the first time I felt a ghost. I had a boyfriend who was older than me, but he ended up in an accident and he was in an intensive care unit. And I it was like four o'clock in the morning, and it was really hot in Chicago where I grew up, and we didn't have air conditioning. And all of a sudden I woke up. I had metallic wallpaper for God knows what reason, but I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was I felt like something really cold come to me. And I sat up in my bed, and I kind of knew in that moment that he had probably died, and this was him. And I had no pre-notion that this was going to happen, or even thought about anything like this. And I sat up and in the wallpaper was really bright suddenly, and it was the middle of the night, and this energy that was bone cold, that's all I can describe it as, moved through my whole body. And I got so scared. I tucked my knees into my chest and I started to put my, I put my forehead on my knees and I started to cry. And I said, Mick, I know it's you, I know it's you. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, but please I'm too scared. I'm just too scared. And then I saw the light kind of pop up a little bit and then leave, and the coldness left the room, and it was back to being sweaty, hot Chicagon-ess. And I remember it so well because it was the first time I've ever experienced something so vivid. That was not something I made up, it was just something I felt physically and experienced visually. And I thought, that was terrifying, it was extraordinary, and it was really cool. And I thought he died. I think he died, and about two hours later, I got a phone call saying he had passed away. And I thought, wow, what was that? And once I experienced that, I thought, well, if if that if I could experience an energy, then what are we? Are we just energy? And if we're energy, then maybe God is not this guy in the sky. You know, maybe we're all just energy, and God is this main source of energy. And maybe after he dies, his energy goes back to join whatever force of God is, or maybe he becomes a different energy, maybe he transmutes into a tree, you know, or or something else for a little while to hang out until he decides what he wants to be when he grows up. You know what I mean? But I do think it's a very real, real, real feeling of, and you probably are and were very gifted as an energy worker, you know. It's just that nobody kind of gave you the tools or was able to tell you, no, what's inside of you isn't bad. It's scary because it's not the norm. But there was nobody, I I think the girlfriend you told, I mean, if you came to my house and we were young girls and you said, you know, young woman, and and you said, I've got something bad in me, I'd be like, oh shit, I don't know what to do about this, because I don't know, you know. So, you know, it's just a naivete. I don't think she meant to hurt you, but I think it's a scary thing. What do you do? And then I've had like other little moments of out of body where my body just was there, but my spirit was somewhere else, and I could look down and see my body. And that was kind of an interesting experience too. So I've had like little moments of these, but I don't have the same thing where you have where I could walk into a Trader Joe's and know it was built on an Indian burial ground or something. And I also don't cross over into, and I think it's interesting that that's we have some we have this in common, and probably a lot of people have some of this in common that the danger for you is, of course, because you have bipolar, you can slip into psychosis with it. It's kind of a trip you into it. I wonder though, if you know, if you can imagine to yourself that what you have is a gift and that it's not bad, and that other people and that other people have it. Like I have it, you know, and it's not bad. I wonder if the next time you start to feel what you say is a glimmer, if you're able to re-talk to yourself and say it's not a bad thing, it's actually a really good thing, it's a healing thing. I have, you know, the ability to to direct this like a magic wand, you know, and direct it in a in a place in which it can do good. Because it's not it's not a grandiosity thing. It's it exists in some people, and you happen to be gifted with it.

Speaker 2 16:54

Don't let my family listen to this episode.

Speaker 16:57

I don't know what what would they say.

Speaker 2 16:59

Oh God, they're so far from any of these beliefs. And I mean, there does come a point where you have to just say, Oh, yeah, shit, that was psychosis. Like, yeah, that was right.

Speaker 17:11

I have to say that too. So, oh shit, I'm in psychosis, but but that's I haven't I have not done positive self-talk.

Speaker 2 17:20

It's usually like, uh, move on, don't think that. Go get your soup. Like, yeah.

Speaker 17:26

That's what I say. Like, go get your soup. Shut up and go get your soup.

unknown 17:31

Okay.

Speaker 17:37

Thank you so much for listening. Please share this episode with someone who might need to hear it. Until then, go out on top when you can. And if you can't, it'll make a great story.