From Anxiety to Empowerment: Ilise Talks Social Media, Empathy, and Mental Health Truths

[00:00:00] This is a mini meditation guided by Bombas. Repeat after me. I'm comfy. I'm cozy. I have zero blisters on my toes. And that's because I wear Bombas, the softest socks, underwear, and t-shirts that give back. One purchased equals one donated. Now go to bombas.com slash listen and use code listen for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash listen and use code listen at checkout.

[00:00:28] Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes On In Our Heads, the podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health. That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles and alongside my amazing co-host, you Rex, we are here to share stories and tips from our incredible guests.

[00:00:52] Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health, offering practical advice and heartfelt support. Because no one should feel alone in their journey. Join us as we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion. Tune in and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads. Three, two, one. Welcome back to another episode of Shit That Goes On In Our Heads.

[00:01:20] I'm here with the amazing Dirty Skittles. And today we have an awesome guest, Elyse. Welcome, Elyse. So happy to have you here. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. I've been waiting a long time. I'm sorry about that. You're busy ladies. She is hustling. She's got us booked until next year, I think. I love it. Yeah, we're booked until March of 2026. I love it. Wild. Wild. You're hot. Wild.

[00:01:50] Well, I know that. I was waiting. I sizzle. Oh my God. I love it. Maybe not today, though, because it still feels like winter here. So, you know. I have a blanket on my lap. I'm freezing. I'm freezing. Can I tell you, I'm at the Disney Resort, the Wilderness Lodge, and it was gorgeous by the pool. Oh. That sounds nice. It was whatever. It was nice.

[00:02:15] nice i love that whatever it's in the 40s here it's gonna snow again in a couple of days it's fantastic no i'm not coming back i was gonna say i don't think you'd ever go back soon you should do like uh drinking around the world at epcot though that would be fun that would be fun do i have to just cut the stand

[00:02:39] no that i was born here i'm a native oh what part of florida i was born in north miami beach okay all right yeah so oh wow i'm one of the rare ones yeah you are yeah you're rare you're redhead you're a whole mine yard i'm a little odd i'm a little different

[00:03:05] we love that though that's our kind of people right you're ex it is it's our kind of people i always say i'm different from other people and people are like what do you mean and i'm like i just don't follow the same groove as everybody else i just don't yeah have you always been like that no i mean yeah probably when i was younger but i think i was more timid not to follow the you know you didn't want to be bullied you didn't want kids to single you out or anything

[00:03:32] so i already had the red hair which kids made fun of so i kind of just and as i got older and went through all my life's crap i just said i'm just not gonna do it if all my friends go right and i want to go left i go left yeah do you remember how old you were when you made that conscious decision probably after my first marriage was over so i would say close to 30

[00:04:02] wow yeah so now you've marched to the beat your own drum i sure do and the world's a better place because of it so i love that so what made you decide to get into therapy well i went to uf right did not have direction to be honest i was going to college because i was going to be the first kid to go to college in my family and i wanted to be a journalist i wanted to be on

[00:04:29] tv i wanted to be on the news i wanted to be a secret person and once i got past my gen eds and my one of my professors says you have to live in podunk usa and i'm like oh that's not me i need to be near a city i need to i can't live just any little town usa so then i was like what do i want to do and honestly as sad as it sounds right across the

[00:04:55] street was at uf was the college of health and human performance and i just asked to switch and then i went into rec therapy and then i picked psych once i started volunteering like in hospitals and nursing homes and rehab facilities and just realized that i had that knack very cool yeah bless your heart you've got the knack i'm like i thought i wanted to do psychology but

[00:05:20] i don't think i thought it was too heavy you know what i mean it is very heavy that's why i don't do it anymore and now i kind of combined the journalism with the therapeutic aspect i'm just one of those people and it doesn't this is not to sound like i have a big head people just gravitate towards me for the way i talk for the way i sound it's not anything i really do i just think it's that whatever

[00:05:45] that chemistry that you kind of put out and but after i got pregnant with my second child it's you know not the safest of environments to work in locked psychiatric units so then i stopped and then all my friends just came to me for advice and then this podcast evolved so i it was during

[00:06:07] covid and like everybody i was home i didn't used to be a home buddy i am now but i just felt like i wanted to have my voice heard and i just kind of researched it and started it and now what am i just did episode 186 the season six yeah so and i just cover like everything for mental health and i talk a lot

[00:06:35] about myself too because i think people have a misnomer about therapists that we're perfect and we do everything correct no i screw up and i don't do everything correct i say the wrong things i do the wrong things but life's learning about how to go through those events and those trials and how to move forward and evolve so it's kind of just what i started and here i am so yeah just so does that kind of mean

[00:07:03] you don't have your shit together like the rest of us i got a lot it goes on in my head girl no i don't have it all together i mean you know we all have they there's a common thing that people say about people in psych you go into psych because you need psych so if you can have that insight

[00:07:26] as a therapist you become a good therapist because your clients can connect with you that way because you are human and you are fallible and you do make mistakes if you sit there like in an ivory tower well how is your client going to even relate to you how are my listeners going to even relate to me they can't you have to be real you have to talk about the screw-ups that you make the lessons you

[00:07:51] learn the things you wish you could change or do different yeah yeah i'm happy you said that though because when you were describing it and you know we're all kind of still figuring out life and nobody really has it all together that's all i kept thinking was like well we're all human right we wouldn't be human otherwise i think that's part of life is making mistakes and going through tough times and

[00:08:14] yeah i mean i think a lot of people though don't realize that i just did my last podcast on when people have a lot of anxiety they think they're doing something wrong and they think why am i feeling this way what am i doing wrong sometimes it's just the chemical imbalance inside your brain and it's not anything you're doing wrong or it's all that external stuff i mean when you think of us living in a bubble and then all these arrows coming towards us of all those stressors and

[00:08:43] i mean think about that if you just can imagine that in your head right now that can cause you anxiety right so it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong it's just how are you coping maybe that's what you need to tweak is your coping mechanisms yeah that is what i needed to we were just talking on an earlier episode about we had a guest and she was called the nope coach and i was telling g-rex i'm like

[00:09:13] yeah i've practiced saying no probably a bit too much now like i'm very comfortable in the no and one of the things i say no to the most is if i have to go somewhere and it requires the highway to me that's a huge stressor because i live in georgia and it's usually all my friends want to hang out in downtown atlanta and that traffic is the worst and so that's what i was thinking of like i'm sitting on the passenger seat and all of the stressors of cars and just there's trucks people are speeding but you

[00:09:42] know you're not alone that's me i will i will ask a friend to drive me i it's just it is it's very stress inducing when you think about these highways with all the different bridges and it can become very overwhelming and i don't think it's uncommon to not feel comfortable driving on them especially in atlanta yeah well but what's funny is so i live in upstate new york and like

[00:10:10] rural upstate new york and so like when we go out like if we need to go to syracuse or like one of the other big it's like i can do okay but like syracuse or rochester i have to not drive in the city i can't it gives me a ton of anxiety i've lived up here for five years you know prior to that i lived in south florida and i dealt with that traffic all the time but now that i don't hardly drive anymore

[00:10:36] like it gives me it gives me deep anxiety i like my hands shake i get white knuckles like i don't i just don't want to do it and you know i think about other things that bring me a lot of anxiety right now one being social media i had to come off of social media like i cannot do it anymore can't it is extremely and it's so hard because i do all my social media for my podcast and my book

[00:11:05] and yeah i'm being while i'm trying to do my own shit i'm being exposed to all this other stuff and it is i feel social media can be a great tool but it also can be an extreme extremely harmful thing especially for young people it's such a harmful thing and there's no reins on it i mean it's just

[00:11:28] you know nilly willy out there and anything goes but then the minute you talk about something that they don't want you talking about all of a sudden you get a warning do not talk about it yeah i've been flagged a couple times yeah i get me too but you know the thing is too is like even with parental controls on social media like that don't that does not stop a kid from going down some a rabbit hole

[00:11:56] that they shouldn't be going down and it's not just kids it's adults like we all get sucked in and like i do all the social media for the podcast also but what i've been doing now so i don't have to engage is i just set up everything to automatically go out right so i don't have to go to the platform and see what's out there and then on sundays i stay off of social media i use that as my day to

[00:12:25] and you know engage in other activities i don't know maybe like cleaning my office or cleaning my bedroom or whatever spending time with my wife you unplugged i'm sure she hates that yeah she's like this is beautiful what blew up in here a bomb yeah yeah unplugging is key like i won't i used to be super guilty the alarm would go off i'd grab my phone and i'd start scrolling and it wasn't like

[00:12:50] i don't do facebook really hardly at all i don't like it there instagram i'll scroll but i follow so many celebrities that it's like not even great right because they're all commercials but tiktok was my rabbit hole and i would just sit there and scroll and scroll them before you know what like 45 minutes would go by and i'm like why do i feel like shit and oh the election all of that bullshit was happening and i'm like oh my god yeah i used to tell my clients when i would do the therapy groups

[00:13:20] i'd have like about 25 clients and i would say to them you need to it's important to know what's going on in the world i don't think you should totally like isolate you need to know but set a time limit right minutes watch it don't go back to it because if you are someone who suffers from depression it's depressing it's bad my mom watches the local news i don't even touch that because that's

[00:13:45] even worse if you ever watch that i mean so it takes down this negative rabbit hole and it just brings you down yeah we gotta limit it and it's hard because like you said i just really started in the past year getting into tiktok it's a rabbit hole and then you're like you look up one thing and then all of a sudden that's all you're everywhere you're like you know so it really there are good things

[00:14:11] on there too and i've talked about that in my podcast where there are people who do talk about body image and the struggles they have with body image or like even the new glp ones you see a lot of people out there talking about their body dysmorphia and stuff so that does help there are good components to it it's just so overshadowed by all the other stuff it's such a shame because there

[00:14:37] really are people on there that you can relate to and and talk about things anxiety there's like a lot of the younger people are talking about what they experience in anxiety and this is an abnormal if you are diagnosed with anxiety because your doctors don't tell you everything right when they diagnose you or if they give you meds so there are those good aspects of it but it can be very detrimental at

[00:15:00] the same time yeah yeah so while you guys are like looking at body image and depression i look at penguins and raccoons squirrels there you go you know things that make me happy that's it yeah and

[00:15:26] that's you know what that's important and i think that's what you have to do you know you find the things and you just kind of plug them in there and then scroll through those things and right i love to shop so i like i don't i've never bought anything on tiktok but i like looking at the tiktok shop so like to me that's mindless yeah but it's just gives me a chance to relax or whatever or the people who are photographers and they yeah places they've been those are great tiktoks too

[00:15:54] to help you relax and unwind so you can really tap into it right way if you want but your nose just can't be stuck there the whole time right yeah i think it's important being able to choose what you want to consume and when so yeah when the election and all that stuff was going out i literally was off social media completely because i couldn't it wasn't my choice anymore right if i'm just scrolling mindlessly all this shit was popping up well yeah and it's still and it still does i mean it's just

[00:16:22] you know and i think the sad part about that is the misinformation right we all can be sucked into it it doesn't matter which side of the fence you're on right we all can be sucked into that and so now anything that i read that i go huh i go and look it up because i don't want to be one of those people who post something that's false information you know what i mean right i don't want to be one of those people get sucked into that so i look it up or sometimes my kids will be like mom

[00:16:51] that's fake news i'm like okay well you know it happens but you know the other thing i've been doing to kind of stay off of social media is in the morning i start my day with intention right and so i go and look up if i haven't had a chance to talk to dirty skittles because she's been a little busy lately i go and find a funny video right and so 20 minutes of a funny video just start laughing get

[00:17:20] that cortisol going and then i start every day with just something i'm grateful for that's and you know it it helps me set the intention for the day and yeah there's a lot of crazy going on around me but i need to be able to shield that because being as an empath you know you can get sucked in really

[00:17:43] quick trust me i know being empathic is a tough road it is you feel everybody's everything and it's very hard and i have to sometimes envision that bubble around me to separate me from that and that's what people are attracted to when you're empathic they feel that but then you're sucking it all in and it's hard it's overwhelming i was just about to say i don't know how y'all do it because

[00:18:11] like i'm barely struggling to deal with my own shit i couldn't imagine taking on everybody else's on top of it yeah i it's been a lot of work for me to put some walls up and to identify the toxic and let the toxic go yeah that's not in my nature to do that but i've had to you know we toxic is to me is just poison i you have to weigh the balance of the person in your life

[00:18:39] or the toxicity that they bring and the unhealthy will always push me forward to let that person go how long did it take you to learn that skill because i feel like that's difficult that i would say i've probably only kind of really gotten good in the past 15 years with that yeah i would say the past 15 years i've really gotten good i you know and i'll explain to

[00:19:05] somebody i don't just ghost them right i explain to them why i just can't and sometimes it's just it's all you know it gets frustrating when somebody else is in your life and they don't want to change or they don't try to change and then they're your friend or your family member and you feel like you're on a hamster wheel with them and nothing ever changes yet you're sitting and you're giving your time

[00:19:34] to them and it's the same thing over and over you know there comes a point you got to say i just i can't anymore yeah and that was like what i started that's what's the first thing that my therapist taught me too you know you know as soon as i as soon as i started therapy like the thing that they said to me is that you need to learn how to put your shields up because what happened to me

[00:19:59] is you know on christmas day is that i took care of everybody else i did not take care of me and you know we need to remind the listeners that you absolutely have to take care of yourself don't ignore it right if your spidey sense is telling you that shit i just don't feel right yeah walk the fuck away absolutely and you know what you can be me centric without being a selfish person

[00:20:27] and i think that's what people don't realize is you can be me centric it can be about you but not be selfish you can still give to others but the focus should always be and i'm realizing that even more now that i'm an empty nester because now i have so much time on my hands that i like being me centric it's really kind of fun being in the world you know so yeah we were just talking

[00:20:54] we were just talking about that today you're actually and i'm like i feel like i'm learning that it's okay to be me centric because i think i always associated with selfish and needing to do other things for other people first and yeah and it's just not it's just the way society programs us really to think that we're being selfish but you're not right and to be a healthy person you need that balance you need people but you need to be able to be with yourself too right and people

[00:21:22] don't realize some people are so uncomfortable to be by themselves yeah thankfully yeah i'm like it makes complete sense like in like talking about it and then it's just reminding yourself every day that it's okay because you want to show up for you first there's nothing selfish about that right even when you have little kids there's people just talking about this we were talking about the

[00:21:47] oxygen mask right like on on a plane right and i don't have any kids but we were talking about you know putting that oxygen mask on and dirty skills just i know i i need to put mine on but can i grab them both and put one on me and at the same time yeah and and it's hard i mean it's hard for parents but it's also hard for single people too and yeah you know just you have to

[00:22:16] reprogram your mind on what you need what's going to be good for you yeah yeah and it's very hard and society does not lend to that in any way shape or form it just doesn't and it's so frustrating i think that's why mel robin's book the let them theory has just blown up because it gets you to feel like

[00:22:41] okay let them and let me and i think that's why it's just gone through the roof because once you get that okay just let them and i'm gonna let me you really empower yourself yeah and i've begun to use it like even in my every day just because just because i have expertise in psych doesn't mean that i don't fall off sometimes and i've got to say let them don't get frustrated they've got their

[00:23:09] own minds their own feelings let them yeah it's because it's challenge it's challenging what you've been told your whole life right or like what you thought was the right way so it challenges it refreshing to hear yeah and it's interesting my mom lives with us and i've worked so hard through the years but i can now see where some of those things came from because she lives with me now

[00:23:35] and how far i've come and sometimes i have to verbalize to her i know this causes you anxiety but i don't think like that anymore i've worked through that so it's kind of interesting also to look to your roots on where that comes from yeah i'm a hundred percent my mother's daughter and it's to the point where now i joke with it like i i call my parents every single day i'm not

[00:24:02] exaggerating at all okay i completely call her and i go yeah you'll know exactly what this feels like because i know for it for sure is a learned behavior and some of my you know anxiety comes from my mom and i'm sure my kids will say their anxiety came from me yes it is what it is yes and it's like trying to be so mindful about it with my son i'm like okay

[00:24:28] i don't want him to learn my bad habits so it's very it's such a tightrope to walk for sure i think also you have to realize they're gonna pick up some of your bad habits don't matter how hard you try because again we're only human and sometimes we don't even realize things we're doing even though we're trying to break them yeah you know so like even for me like my body dysmorphia's things i tried

[00:24:55] so hard but inadvertently those little ears and eyes pick up on it you know the way things you say about yourself the way you look at yourself the way you say oh the way this fits or whatever they pick up on it no matter how hard i tried just is what it is yeah yeah we last night my son and i were playing he i'm normally like busy and working and then after work it's like cleaning i'm always

[00:25:21] doing something to try to like you know make life a little easier and last night i remember he was like hey can we play army men and i'm like you know what all right let me just play because he's been asking me to play and him and i just completely went in on this game and we had the most fun we're belly laughing because i do all these different voices for the different army men or whatever and this morning he told me he goes you know mom i really had fun with you last night

[00:25:47] because you weren't working you were playing and i'm like oh shit i'm like i need to play with him more often if all you're seeing is your parent working and being too busy for you like fit you know we need to incorporate more play into our adult life for sure why did we forget right we forget to be a kid yeah like when do you think that stopped you know so i got my degree in recreational therapy

[00:26:14] so my job was whether it was in psych or dual diagnosis or in a nursing home was to put the play back into life but to use it as a coping mechanism i think again the minute we're declared an adult but you even see now with the teenagers yeah they lose i just remember my girls like they were still young and they're like i still want to play with my american girl dolls but i feel like i'm so too old that's

[00:26:44] society and it's so sad because even in academics we make kids before their brains are even developed enough having to learn algebra in like second grade we're just constantly pushing them like they just be a kid and because i think we're doing it as adults we're not even thinking about that we should be

[00:27:08] able to play i love playing i love playing and i've gotten more into it in the last couple of months than i have in the last 20 years oh good that makes me a lot you know now that i own my own business i have time to to use like my kid brain to do things and yeah you know we talked about being on tiktok and

[00:27:34] getting sucked down the rabbit hole well i get sucked down the rabbit hole on other things i want to do and i am just it's just so much fun and i'm looking forward to spring because i'm completely over winter now but i want to get outside and play outside and and do the things that like move my body and and you know dirty skills you were asking like when did that all go away i think it's when

[00:28:03] we get named an adult yeah right all of a sudden that in that thought of you know being a kid and playing oh well i'm too old for that yeah yeah i literally i don't know how old i was but i can definitely remember my mom or my dad saying you're too old for that now or something like that and you're just like oh okay we all heard that and they heard that and it's just you know i talk a lot

[00:28:32] about comparing the u.s to other countries and i'm sure your podcast as well as mine we have people who listen to us all over the world right they do in europe they have a whole different mindset they have their freaking siestas in the middle of the day you know the work hours are much shorter you see them there's more parks everywhere when you go and you visit they have that philosophy right the united

[00:29:01] states has completely lost in my opinion right and it's play and it's get outside and it's be with nature and it's work shouldn't be your existence right it should not be your existence but in this

[00:29:16] country it is and so i'm so excited that you brought that up because i promised my wife that as soon as it warmed up that i'm going to take two days off during the week so we can go play awesome right like we can

[00:29:41] go fishing we can go for a drive but doing it during the week because i work because i want to not because i have to i work because i want my bougie toys okay well of course i'm with you on that i i work for that but i also want to want my inner kid to come out and play and laugh and like when

[00:30:05] dirty skills and i did our first live the disastrous life but we had we we got our our blow-ups on right so i was an inflatable t-rex right and she was a giant unicorn and we just played in the front yard playing but all my neighbors saw i love it though that's so good though just think a big bit some might be saying okay they're a little crazy but some might be saying deep down inside i wish i could do

[00:30:34] that yeah yeah like i think that's so important that you know times are really tough for people right now across the world it's just a shit show it's a shit show and making sure that you incorporate bring your inner kid out again try not to take life so seriously even if it's for 20 30 minutes right

[00:30:57] be a kid color in a coloring book doodle play with your kids sit on the floor go play a video game yeah learn to play an instrument i mean there's so many like i like to say sometimes i like i do this and i like to tell my clients to sit with your younger self because your younger self had all these dreams right or all these like little fantasies that a kid would have some of those things you could

[00:31:23] bring to life and you tapped into that sitting with your younger self and remembering god i always wanted to play the guitar just never got to it it's never too late right so i think if you kind of remember back to when you were younger and some of those things you either love doing or just never got to now tap into them yeah you'll open up a whole new world for yourself yeah do the things you want to do

[00:31:51] life is short man life is so short and i think that's what people forget i think not forget we all know about life and death obviously but they forget that time is short and they get so caught up in it in the bullshit and the rat race and before they know it they're old and they go what the fuck just happened and i never got to do those things right i don't want to be that person and i went through

[00:32:17] that epiphany as one kid was in college one was getting close to college i'm very fortunate i didn't have to work and i'm sitting on the couch i've been watching one of my reality tv shows because i'm a reality tv show junkie literally and i'm like is this my life right this is it what am i gonna do is this really it right and i reinvented myself but not everybody does that and if you don't realize that

[00:32:47] time is limited it will run out and you won't ever get to fulfill those things and i wish i could tell everybody i wish i could just scream that to the world stop yeah do what you want to have fun have fun because there's a lot of stuff you can do that doesn't cost money i was you just took the words right out of my mouth that was my next thought does it cost money to go outside no does it cost

[00:33:12] money to laugh no does it cost money to sit and color with yes spending time markers right no spending time with your friends and family right yeah the library is free there's things you can take out of the library that are like there's so many things if you really look into it going to the beach putting a towel down the sand right free there's so many things it's just people just don't

[00:33:40] they don't they're caught in that hamster wheel yeah yeah and these are all important things for your mental health right yeah like it just helps you clear your mind yeah and you know i'm i'm fortunate you know i went through some shitty shit shit but i worked my ass off to to get here and i'm happy

[00:34:03] yay i mean i still have bad days okay like i'm not 100 of course and that's something that people don't realize as well you can be on a road to being healthier and doing everything but we're all gonna have bad days we're all gonna have a day where you just feel like blah nothing happened nothing

[00:34:26] occurred you just feel down yeah and that's okay that's normal we have a body chemistry we have different you know chemicals flowing in our brain that sometimes make us feel that way and nothing happened it just is it's reminding yourself too that's not forever exactly how you're feeling right now

[00:34:48] is not going to be forever exactly and it's like you with when you called the 988 you were at that point right and it's they made you realize it's not forever this it's not right like that i'm telling you the woman i spoke to that day was the most compassionate person i've ever spoken to and they helped me find my voice and they helped me find my footing and now look where i'm at right

[00:35:17] look at you yeah i mean it's crazy that's just to me like in the field that i worked in is we wish that you were every outcome unfortunately it's not you know and you're what we want to see and now you're spreading that word to people yeah huge it's huge and you know i'm i'm thankful for everybody that

[00:35:43] you know prop me up when i couldn't prop myself up right but i put a lot of work into myself yeah and i'm still working on it i still go to therapy i still act like a four-year-old some days okay four is a good age i'm just telling you four is a good age i like it but you know i'm also like building a business and doing the things that bring me joy even though i have a lot of exterior external factors

[00:36:12] coming at me and be like yeah the world's shit okay i know it is but you know what don't fuck with my happiness and i think it's up to us to put that boundary up and say hey don't fuck with my happiness yeah the world's going to shit but i can still be happy maybe my cat did something funny or maybe little nugget made you laugh right or maybe your mom or you know your husband did something

[00:36:39] that made you smile right we can still do that stuff yeah yeah even though the world's on fire there are people who and it's a big concern to me without getting into what side of the fence you're on in politics it's a very hard world with the political nature that we're in for people

[00:37:01] today and i have friends who are constantly posting about it and constantly and they're like because i am very political and prior elections and stuff you i would have been that person i would have been all over screaming and my friends are like why and i'm like i'm just gonna sit back i'm gonna watch it all burn i can't you know i can do my voice i can march i could

[00:37:32] yeah but it's out of my control really i voted it didn't go my way yeah these are the consequences and i can't let it make me sick right and that that's what i did that's why my profile picture on social media is penguins yep okay yeah because i'm a dick okay so i'd like to go i'd like to go live

[00:37:59] on that island with those penguins that would be a lot of fun wouldn't that be like finding your inner child and i think this is such a pertinent conversation for now yeah right thousand percent i'm in disney world yeah right you know i mean like here it's like everything goes away yeah pixie dust over everything you know

[00:38:27] she's gonna go home in her bubble me like i'm in my disney bubble leave me alone hello to everybody that's so funny why not why not this was such a great conversation it was fun but i think 30 skittles needs to ask her famous question am i in trouble no no these are fun okay these are fun okay sorta

[00:38:51] sort of fuck you up a little bit all right first question yeah if you could go back in time to visit a younger version of yourself to give that younger version a bit of advice what would you say to yourself and how old are you i'm probably about 13

[00:39:14] and i would say to myself it doesn't matter what people think of you it doesn't matter what people say about you you don't have to be like everybody else be comfortable in your own skin say what you want to say without fear of people disagreeing with you or losing people in your life

[00:39:42] when you're a kid and people make fun of you you kind of go in that shell and i wish that i didn't i wish that i would have you know flung my red hair around and didn't look at it like it was like this awful thing on top of my head you know so that's what i would do i'd be about 13 years old because that was when i was starting to get into the boys you know and your appearance and everything and

[00:40:07] fighting with my parents they wanted my hair short i wanted my hair long you know and just not caring just not caring just be who you are be authentically you i love that i love that next question is so far in life what would you say has been the hardest lesson you've learned oh

[00:40:33] that's a hard one well i guess the thing that comes to mind because i literally just talked about this with my daughter in my first marriage i was a very independent person went to college like i said i was first one in my family very independent and then i married someone who was very controlling over me and i don't really to this day i still question myself how did i allow that to happen

[00:41:02] so against who i was but yet in love whatever i just don't understand still to this day why i let someone take control over me that way so i would probably say that's it well thank you for sharing that so so now you have my crazy question if your anxiety had a theme song

[00:41:29] what is it and why oh girls just want to have fun i mean that's just all that comes to me and why i think again because not being who you truly are can cause anxiety and just have fun and just not give a shit not give a shit you know like

[00:41:55] but we all have i have you know this group of girls that are my friends and they're all very different and i don't give a shit if they don't like what i say or they don't agree i just want to have fun my kind of fun and if you're not in for it okay i would say that i love this okay okay so next question is today with all everything that's going on what do you do for self-love and self-care

[00:42:26] okay that's an easy one i go outside every single day i sit outside sometimes i do meditation sometimes i just sit and look at the lake and watch the birds and just feel the nature sometimes i go and sit on the grass because i feel like we're biological and the grass is nature and biological it needs

[00:42:52] nurturing and nutrients and water just like we do and for me being out in nature and i never did this before covid covid was what got me out i had to get outside every day i mean like i couldn't be and now it is literally a part of my existence every single day and if it's raining i'll go sit on the patio but i have to be outside every day so that's what i do for my self-care and my self-love

[00:43:21] i love this so much so how can our listeners find you and tell us a little bit about what's working what you're working on okay so i have my podcast that i mentioned it's wide open spaces with elise elise is spelled different it's i-l-i-s-e so that's the podcast and it will it started out as a mental health podcast it still is but now it's a little bit more no bullshit with the conversation i'm just

[00:43:49] kind of like tired of i don't know being politically correct and so i've kind of gone that route i am working on getting more guests that's always been my weakness but i'm working on that so it's mental health it's working through the bullshit of life and just getting through that and i also have my first book that i published which is a wanderlust within a journey to self-discovery

[00:44:14] by me elise litwin and what i did with that is i took my very first season of my podcast and i picked my favorite episodes and i made them into chapters because not everybody is a podcast listener so they can get my knowledge my wisdom my life experiences in that route and there's a cute little redhead on the cover so oh and wide open spaces with elise.com is my website and all the

[00:44:41] social media follow me instagram blue sky all you know all of them i'm there and you can listen to my podcast anywhere they like listening to their favorites i love that this was such a great conversation thank you so much yes well you know i love you thank you and we love you too wait here's a funny

[00:45:03] thing i've never been retching in person oh that's still not a reason to come to florida okay but y'all can come to new york i'm just saying but my husband knows her that's how i that's how i got connected with there nice so have you met her husband no i've never met okay yeah i know everybody that's true

[00:45:27] that is true i am the i am the mayor she has a very good reputation hi all thank you so much for listening to this episode i'm g-rex and i'm dirty skittles don't forget to subscribe rate and review this podcast we'd love to listen to your feedback we can't do this without you guys it's okay to be not okay just make sure you're talking to someone