The following podcast is a dear media production.
Hello, welcome to or welcome back to transicare.
If you're new here, hello, my name is Ashley, my arm just cracked.
Did you hear that? Literally, I think I just dislocated my arm.
If you're new here, my name is Ashley.
And if you're not familiar with the podcast, I like to say that it's mine and your therapy.
I love being able to help you and give you advice, but genuinely talking to you every week and sharing my thoughts and how I'm feeling is so therapeutic for me.
So I like to say that this is a quick little therapy session to start the week off with.
And today's episode was actually inspired by a few audios I saw on TikTok.
They influenced me to do this episode.
One audio that I saw was Bruxico Fields audio.
That's like, do him a service.
He needs there or he needs money for therapy.
And then another one I've been seeing is can't talk right now or like I'm busy doing girl therapy.
And the thing about that audio in particular, all the videos underneath that sound are pairing girl therapy with material materialistic things like spending money on really expensive makeup products and self care products and pilates, which obviously love all of that.
But I don't think that taking care of yourself requires spending money.
So I just want to talk about free self care and my personal favorite girl therapy that doesn't cost any money.
And if it does, it's not breaking the bank.
Today's episode is very similar to my episode about romanticizing your summer on a budget.
So if you love that episode, I think you'll really like this one.
But yeah, let's get into today's episode.
I am such an advocate for therapy.
And I think it's so funny because my ex best friend was shit posting about me on TikTok, so many videos about me.
And one of them was saying that people who have self help podcasts are the ones who need therapy.
And when I saw that I was like giggling and kicking my feet because it's like, yeah, I do.
And like, so do you.
But like, don't we all like, I think we all need therapy.
I'm like Victoria justice.
I think we all need therapy.
But like, thanks for advocating for that.
I've gone to therapy, I don't think there's any shame in going to therapy.
I think everyone could benefit from going to therapy, even if your life is going really well, and you're really happy.
I think it's good to go and speak to someone who's unbiased and who can hear you out and just be like a soundboard for you.
I think admitting that you are going to see a professional to speak about how you feel what's going on in your life is like hot girl behavior.
I don't think it's anything to be embarrassed about.
And I think just like anyone can benefit from therapy, but I don't want you to listen to this episode and be like, actually, I don't need therapy.
Like, am I mentally unwell?
Am I on the verge of a meltdown?
Yeah, but let's cancel my appointment because Ashley is going to show me how to do girl therapy.
I don't need real therapy.
I need girl therapy.
No, if you think you actually need therapy, please go.
I've even been considering going back and finding a new one.
When I'm referring to girl therapy, I just mean any form of self care like for the girls that makes us feel good.
The reason I specifically want to talk about girl therapy and just self care that doesn't cost money is because when I see people referring to girl therapy, especially on TikTok, it's very materialistic.
It's very centered around buying new makeup and buying new skincare and going to an expensive pilates class and buying yourself an overpriced coffee.
And yeah, that is girl therapy and that is self care.
And it does feel good.
And it's so fun. But not everyone can afford that.
And I don't think self care should come with a price tag on it.
As nice as it is to have a self care day, where you go to a workout class and buy yourself an overpriced coffee and buy yourself lunch and take yourself shopping.
And then you come home with all of these trendy products like lotions and bath bombs and skincare products.
And then you do a face mask and play on your iPad.
That is not all that self care is.
Is that an incredible day?
Yeah. Is that like my ideal day?
Yeah. Like if I was doing that today, I would be thriving.
But that's not all that self care is.
Self care isn't a luxury.
Everyone can afford it.
Everyone should be doing it because in order to take care of other people, you need to properly take care of yourself.
Self care is more than buying yourself nice things and putting a bandaid on your problems to momentarily fix it.
Self care is about really taking care of yourself, really looking after you, whether that's mentally, emotionally, physically.
And I think that can look like loving yourself, slowing down for yourself, listening to yourself, being patient with yourself and just like really prioritizing yourself.
And like I said, going to a therapist is so important.
But I think anytime that you're doing something that makes you feel good or energizes you or makes you forget about your problems for a few minutes, that is therapy.
It's therapeutic. You slowing down and focusing on one thing and you're not trying to juggle a bunch of things and you're just like zoned in on that one thing is therapy because you're going out of your way to prioritize yourself and you're doing something good for you.
You know that if you focus on this one thing, you're going to leave that situation, leave doing whatever you're doing, feeling better than when you found it.
I think there's so many different ways to take care of yourself and it makes it a lot less overwhelming when you realize that there's so many things that you can do in your everyday life to take care of you that doesn't involve spending money because I know for me and my own experience, when I had been
struggling with my finances, I was really negative about the process of healing and getting better because in my head, I'm like, well, I can't afford to go to therapy and I can't afford medication and I can't afford to spend money on experiences or products that would make me happy and obviously it's
so stressful and so unfortunate when you can't afford these things and I think it's just awful that people can't and that I couldn't at one point, I think everyone should have access to therapy and medication and healthcare but I think that if I had just blown down at the time and tried to think of things
that were free that would make me feel better or things that I could afford, I wouldn't have been as stressed or I wouldn't have been as depressed as I was.
I wouldn't have felt as hopeless as I did and I would have spent more time doing these things to take care of myself rather than spiraling and dwelling on all the things that I couldn't have or I couldn't do.
With all that being said, I want to talk about free self -care, free self -care activities and then I'm going to give you my personal favorite, girl therapy.
Number one, for free self -care, let yourself sleep in when you're tired or allow yourself to take a nap when it's needed.
Obviously, we all have responsibilities, we all have jobs, we all have places to be, people to see, we have reasons we have to get up but on days where you don't have to go into work, you don't have to go to school, you don't have shit to do, let yourself sleep in or even on days where you do have to
get up, let yourself sleep in a little bit.
Like if you have the time, give yourself time to sleep.
For example, let's say that you normally get up at 6 am to go to the gym before work.
One day you wake up and you're like, wait a minute, I actually don't want to go to the gym because I'm so exhausted.
Sleep in, don't force yourself to go to the gym if you don't have the energy to do it.
I'm always looking for ways to take better care of myself.
That especially means getting rid of bad habits and replacing them with good ones.
I tend to bite my fingers, like not the not the actual nails but the skin around my fingers.
And I think it just developed as a coping mechanism for when I'm anxious or bored.
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Thank you Fume for sponsoring today's episode or if you get home from work one day and you're so tired, take a nap.
I think a lot of us have been conditioned to believe that sleeping in or taking a nap is lazy and we feel really bad about not being productive, but rest is productive.
If you're struggling to wake up, if you're not feeling good, chances are your body needs the extra sleep.
It's, it's like charging your phone.
If you want to be on your phone but your phone's at 5%, it doesn't matter how bad you want to be on it, it's gonna die.
It doesn't matter how badly you want to get that project done or go to that workout class or clean your entire house.
If you don't have enough energy or if you're so tired, it's not going to happen.
And even if it does happen, like you force yourself to do it, it's not going to be done correctly or as good as it could be if you just gave yourself a little time to rest.
Which leads me to number two, which is just giving yourself days off and taking breaks when it's needed.
You don't always have to be productive.
And when I say productive, I mean in the sense of working 24 seven or exercising or cleaning or exerting yourself, you will feel your best and you will be your best when you give yourself time to relax and reset like I am my most creative when I give myself time off because when I come back, I have all
these fresh new ideas and I actually have energy to apply those ideas.
And when I take a break from working out, I come back excited to actually do the workouts and I have the energy to do the workouts because when I force myself to work out every day, not only is it exhausting, but I also get bored of it and I don't want to do it.
And when I give myself time off from cleaning, when I get back into it, I'm more inclined to do a better job at cleaning and be motivated to do it.
Because if I'm forcing myself to clean every single day, eventually I'm going to feel burnt out and be like, you know what?
I don't want to do this.
And then I stop cleaning for three weeks and everything piles up more.
And it's worse than it would be if I just allowed myself a couple of days off and then got back into it.
Like truly allowing yourself to rest and take breaks is one of the best things that you can do for not only you but the projects in your life, the people in your life.
You're not a superhuman, you can't do everything all the time to the best of your abilities.
It's just not possible without slowing down and giving yourself time for you and just time to reset.
Number three, setting boundaries and standing up for yourself.
For me, one of the things I've struggled a lot with and would get super upset about was how people would treat me and how people would speak to me.
Like obviously, I feel like everyone does.
No one wants to be spoken to rudely.
No one wants to be treated badly.
But I would be devastated when my friends would leave me out or I heard them speaking poorly of me.
And it felt like the world was ending when my exes or boyfriends at the time would betray me or just treat me really badly.
And I didn't know how to recover from these things or how to handle them.
And I just let them consume me and hurt me so much.
But over the years and with a lot of experience and learning, I've come to realize that I can't avoid these things to the best of my ability.
Like obviously, I can't avoid people hurting me, but I can have boundaries and I can stand up for myself.
I can vocalize when someone does something that I don't like where it feels very disrespectful and I can be clear in what I expect from my partner or what I expect from from my friends or just people in my life.
And I don't need to just wait around for people to treat me a certain way.
I can vocalize my expectations and my needs and not only vocalize it, but I can make the choice to end that connection and move on when my needs aren't being met.
Obviously, you can't control people hurting you, but setting boundaries and standing up for yourself is a form of self -care because you're prioritizing you and your well -being over others and how they might perceive you or you trying to people please.
I've always had the tendency of people pleasing and people would hurt me and I'd be like, oh, it's okay.
It's fine when it actually was very not okay.
But when you set up these boundaries and you say, hey, don't do that.
Like that's not cool.
That actually hurt me a lot.
That's you looking out for yourself and doing your best to protect you and your heart and meet your needs rather than trying to protect that friendship with that person or protect their feelings.
Number four is staying hydrated and eating what your body wants.
Whenever I say the word hydrated, I think of that video of Addison Rae where someone's like, say hydrated and she's hydrated.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Or am I just chronically online?
Whenever I have a chance to talk about Addison Rae, I will.
I love her. But anyways, staying hydrated and eating what your body wants and not only staying hydrated, but making sure you drink your water before you have caffeine.
Like if I drink coffee on an empty stomach, I feel like ass.
It rips me apart. And yeah, but I can't even tell you how much of a difference I am as a person when it comes to if I've had enough food, if I've had enough water, if I'm taking care of myself, like I am that Snickers commercial where it's like, you're not you when you're hungry.
That's me when I am hungry.
And when I am when I'm not taking care of myself, if you're not familiar with my story, or if this is your first time listening to the podcast, I trigger warning.
First of all, I've struggled with my eating with body dysmorphia with an eating disorder.
Although I would say that I'm pretty much recovered, I still have those negative thoughts resurfaced.
And I talked about this a little bit recently on tiktok.
And I have certain foods that are really triggering to me.
And I know that on days where I'm not doing my best, or I don't love how my body looks, or I have to eat a food that I might consider a fear food.
I still have that urge to skip that meal or eat something that I don't necessarily want, but I think is the healthier option or the better option for me, like on a day where the people around me are eating a sandwich, and there's a lot of carbs, there's still part of me that's like, maybe I should skip
that and just get a salad because that's a lot of carbs.
And if I eat that, I'm gonna look bloated and I have to be in a bikini.
And I those thoughts resurface.
But when this happens, I have to remind myself that me eating carbs, me eating that bread is not the end of the world, I'm not going to gain 20 pounds from doing it.
And I'm also not going to lose 20 pounds from eating that bread, I'm not going to have the body that I once did, because I skipped this meal.
I am definitely a creature of habit.
Like once I find something that I like, or that works for me, I stick to it.
But unfortunately, I'm realizing that some of the products I swear by aren't the best for me and change is good, especially when it comes to taking care of yourself.
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One of the bigger reasons that I struggled my body still kind of is I compare what I look like now to what I used to look like and what I used to look like was super teeny tiny but that's because I wasn't taking care of myself.
And although I had the body that I wanted or I thought I wanted, mentally, I wasn't good.
I was struggling really hard.
And I don't want to be that way or look that way if it means sacrificing my mental health.
I want to be happy and I want to be kind to others and I want to get things done and I want to have energy and I need to eat like when I don't eat I'm a cunt.
When I don't eat I get super agitated and angry over every single thing.
I don't want to be like that.
I don't want to be depressed.
Food is fuel. Eating is a part of taking care of yourself and also eating what you want to eat.
Yeah, it's important to eat healthy and have your vegetables and have fruits and eat protein but it's about balance.
Like if you're craving sugar, if you're craving a really good iced coffee or fast food or you want to go out for drinks with your girlfriends, do it.
Like don't deny yourself that because you think skipping those meals or skipping that sugar is going to make you smaller or prettier.
I always say this but like if my boyfriend or one of my friends or a family member was eating something, I wouldn't shame them for indulging in that.
I wouldn't say like that has a lot of calories.
Like you're going to gain so much weight from that.
Like you're going to regret that and I'm also not going to shame them or beat them up for eating that for the next week or month.
If I wouldn't treat someone that I love like that, if I wouldn't speak to them like that, why am I speaking like that to myself?
Giving your body what it wants and listening to your body and also speaking kindly to yourself is a huge part of self -care and that's going to lead me to my next one which is self -affirmations and gratitude.
Kind of like I was talking about before how when I was struggling financially I had a really negative mindset on healing because I was so focused on all the things that I couldn't do or couldn't have because I couldn't afford it that I wasn't realizing all the things I could do that didn't cost money.
It's the same thing with speaking kindly to yourself.
When I was going through really hard times in my life I could only focus on the negative things and I could only focus on all the things that I hated about myself and because of this I just felt worse and worse and worse.
But then eventually I learned about self -affirmations and I started practicing gratitude and although there were things that I was struggling with and there were things in my life that were really hard I wasn't so fixated on those things and I wasn't thinking you know this is what my life is.
Everything sucks. It's never going to get better.
When I would say positive self -affirmations to myself and I would say things that I'm grateful for it would redirect those thoughts and be like okay you know things aren't going the way that I want them to right now and I'm a little insecure about this but here are all the great things in my life and all
the things that I'm looking forward to and all these great things that I love about myself.
When I have a bad day or when something bad happens to me I tend to fixate on it and it just like consumes my mind all day all week all like all the time but with gratitude when I take the time to think okay this sucks but what good things are happening in my life what what amazing things happen today
it takes my mind off the shitty inconvenient things and reminds me oh my god there's so much beauty in my life and that's why now at the end of every day when I'm laying in bed I think of three things that I'm either grateful for or three things that happened that day that I really liked or that were really
fun or that I just really appreciated.
So even on the bad days the worst days of my life I still go to bed thinking more positively than I would be negatively.
Moving on number six moving your body.
Physical activity actually has been proven to help your mental health because it reduces your stress levels and it like releases feel -good hormones.
Like on days where I'm just like not feeling my hottest even just going for a walk makes me feel so good obviously because if you're releasing some feel -good hormones but also it gives me time to just like process how I'm feeling clear my head because typically when I go on a hacker walk I'm walking
in silence I'm listening to the chirping I'm one with nature I literally go and touch grass or if I have my headphones I'll listen to a self -help podcast I'll listen to manifestation music just like feel -good music and I just also think that moving your body is a good way to redirect your thinking and not fix
it so much on your problems because when I am moving my body I'm not texting I'm not on social media I'm quite literally focused on moving my body and getting through the workout especially when I'm doing like a dance workout I'm fighting for my life sweating heavy breathing I'm not worried about what this bitch
said about me or I'm not worried about something that I saw on social media I'm just like fighting for my life trying to get through the workout.
I think this is number seven I think I have my numbers mixed up but clean your space clean your damn room I genuinely feel better and feel less stressed when my space is clean because there's a lot of things going on in my mind at all times my mind is a mess and if I feel out of control if I feel like
I'm in shambles and then my space is also in shambles and there's things everywhere I am going to spiral 10 times harder it's hard to try to organize everything in your mind and get yourself on track when visually everything around you is a mess too.
I also love reorganizing and redecorating my space because when I switch things up it like I feel like it motivates me to reorganize things in my life too and just reinvent myself what is it called when you move things around like good feng shui I don't know but it just like brings a new fresh start
with fresh new ideas like I just went and got myself new bedding for the month of August because I just wanted to wake up on August 1st feeling good feeling cute but just having small little changes excites me and it makes me feel better but obviously you don't have to go out and buy yourself new bedding
even just switching the format around your room or reorganizing your makeup drawer is a good way to feel better about not only your space but inside your mind too.
And then lastly spending time alone and doing your favorite things as a people pleaser like someone who's trying to retire people pleasing I can say that there's been so many times where I'm like I want to stay in and I want to watch my favorite show or I want to work on an art project but then one
of my friends is like hey will you come to the gym with me you want to come out and hang out with me and I love my friends and I want to hang out with them so I end up making plans with them and bailing on myself and neglecting what I actually want to do and neglecting this thing that would have made
me so happy. It's taken me a long time to realize that saying no is a form of self -care and saying no isn't selfish.
Sometimes you have to say no to others to say yes to yourself.
You have to have a little FOMO from your friends to enjoy your time by yourself.
I always feel so refreshed and just like happier when I spend even like one day a week doing my self -care routine or making clay magnets or playing piano or binge watching a show like Love Island just ended but I would watch every single night.
This was the first season where I was watching it in real time every single night I was locked in at 8 30 watching Love Island.
I was not making plans for like a good two months every single night besides what day?
Wednesdays I was busy and that was my thing that I looked forward to every single night.
I was so excited to take a shower put my pajamas on get a snack and lay in bed and that to me is self -care.
That's something that made me feel good that I was excited for and that was me prioritizing alone time but that leads me into sharing some of my favorite self -care activities.
I'm going to try to speed through these and then I'm going to get into my girl therapy favorites.
Okay first watching your favorite show which right now I'm kind of realizing it isn't technically free because most shows you need a subscription for which is so unfortunate but loophole for that uh to make it free still find someone else that has a subscription like I have my brother's ex's optimum
account. I think I have my friend's abc account that's the loophole but my point was just like watching your favorite show.
I just finished Love Island.
I am obsessed with Leah and Janae and Serena.
I love Sex and the City that was like my favorite show growing up in high school my best friend and I would watch it all the time together in bed like binge it.
Still love that it's like my comfort show that I put on to fall asleep too.
I love the summer I turned pretty but right now I'm not watching anything so yeah please give me recommendations.
Going off of that watching a feel good movie.
See this is a good loophole if you don't have a subscription just look up on google movies 123 and you can stream movies for free.
You might get a virus on your computer.
I haven't yet but that's how I find my movies and just like watch your favorite comfort movies.
Mine are perks of being a wallflower, gone girl, Matilda, girl interrupted and I there's probably more but that's all I wrote down.
Next reading a book.
I haven't gotten into fictional books.
Everyone and their mother it's reading right now.
I don't know where this like reading wave came from.
I'm sure everyone was reading I think just now everyone's posting about it but I haven't gotten into reading like romance books or anything like that.
Whenever I read I typically go for self -care and like manifestation related books.
Books that are gonna help me in my everyday life only because I struggle really hard with paying attention and when I'm reading I get lost in the page.
Like I'll be reading but my mind is somewhere else and I'm like fuck like I don't remember anything I just read and I'll end up reading that page like five times until I absorb the information.
But maybe if I tried audiobooks that could help so recommend me your favorite books that aren't like self -help.
I love bringing a book with me especially like if I'm traveling, going to the beach or even at night just to wind down and not be on my phone.
I'll grab a book and read that and it just makes me feel productive.
It helps me and it calms me down.
Another thing that I really like that calms me down and just keeps me off social media or keeps me from spiraling is working on an art project.
Obviously you still need to buy materials like paint and clay and whatever it is that you need to do your project but the good thing is most art projects consist of the same things or if you don't want to go out and buy materials and spend money you can do an art project with things around your house
like use old magazines, make a scrapbook of trash that you have, or even just making like a vision board on Pinterest or doing an art project online is also really good and fun to do.
One of my favorite things is making playlists and I feel like there's still a lot of creative freedom in doing that.
Listening to your favorite music or podcasts, journaling, meditating, following a free workout class on your computer, making yourself a coffee or a really good beverage like a matcha, a mocktail, sleepy girl mocktail, a nowadays drink or if it's in the morning I love drinking my coffee outside and just
again being one with nature you could go for a walk, you could go for a drive, you can go for a drive and listen to your music and then the last one that I wrote on my list and honestly one of my favorite ones is declutter your phone especially your social media, unfollow people, block people, mute
people, follow accounts that inspire you and make you feel good, delete apps, delete photos, delete anything and everything that feels unproductive or makes you feel bad.
I love to block people, I love to delete any negativity on my phone and it's like it's fine if you want to talk badly about me on your social media but do it on yours, like you're not going to come into my phone and ruin my day like it's my phone, it's my social media like do that on your time, have fun
with it but I don't want to see it so I'm not going to.
Now to close the episode off, I want to give you my specific girl therapy essentials.
I love the idea of girl therapy because it's doing all these things that we've been talking about this episode while romanticizing them and making it more feminine.
So here are some of my favorite girl therapy favorites.
Again I'm going to try to speed through them because I could definitely go off on each one like on a tangent on every single one and give you all this information which like if you want to let me know but I'll try to keep it short and sweet.
First girl therapy favorite is just like prioritizing my morning routine and romanticizing my morning routine.
I love waking up and putting on a robe, doing my red light therapy mask.
If I want to get crazy, I'll do a lymphatic drainage massage which normally I won't because it does take a few minutes and don't really want to do that.
I'll do my skincare routine, I'll have my vitamins, every single morning I drink my AG1 and I have my D3K2 drops from AG1 and then I'll also take these like wellness shots from Target.
Well no, they're sold at Target.
It's called like So You or So Good and I've been doing that every morning, so I'll have all of that.
I'll drink my water, I'll do some type of workout.
Most days I'll shower after this and I say most days because like if I do yoga, I don't need to shower but most days I'll shower and then I'll make myself coffee and a cute cup and I'll drink my coffee and make myself breakfast while I listen to music.
I love playing music on my Alexa.
Usually I'll throw on like Taylor Swift or again a self -help podcast which some of my self -favorite self -help podcasts are Mindset Magic and Manifestation.
If you know, you know 80 -20, Sad to Savage, Hot Girl Energy podcast.
Sometimes I'll watch the Wizard Liz on, or not Spotify, YouTube.
I don't know if she has a podcast but it's essentially a podcast.
It's just like her talking about self -improvement things and then if I'm not really feeling listening to a self -help podcast because I really do think that too much self -improvement isn't good for you, I think you need to take breaks here and there and just let yourself live and make mistakes and just
be a human. So I'll listen to the canceled podcast Pretty Lonesome, Jess Trish, Anything Goes on my mind.
There's so many more but those are some really good ones.
My next girl therapy favorite is cozy yoga or Pilates.
I know it can be so difficult to motivate yourself to work out, especially if you're on your period or you don't feel good or you just like don't want to but I really like doing a cozy yoga Pilates situation at night, dimming the lights, lighting some candles, maybe put some relaxing music on, maybe
some jazz music, some ambience.
I'll put on a cozy outfit and just have a very chill workout.
You can romanticize anything.
You can romanticize working out, making food, doing your makeup, taking a shit.
Like genuinely you can romanticize anything and I think it's really beneficial to do that because not only is it fun but you actually get things done.
Next girl therapy favorite watching YouTube videos.
I am a YouTube girlie through and through.
I love watching my comfort YouTubers off the top of my head.
Tana. I love watching Ava Jules.
I love Nikki Demar.
I love Caitlin Ray, Olivia Jade, Emma Chamberlain.
There's so many. I also love sitting in bed and following a makeup tutorial.
It's just very therapeutic to play with your makeup and watch someone else do their makeup.
I love watching Vogue Beauty Secrets.
The videos that I gravitate towards are people just vlogging their everyday lives because they're showing very mundane, almost boring things and making them more exciting and just romanticizing away.
Like I eat it up when someone shows me making their coffee.
I'm like, yes spectacular give me 14 of them.
Like please I love it but that's a very ordinary thing that we all do.
And when you're doing it in your everyday life you're like okay making myself a coffee.
That's my point. Like you can romanticize anything.
Other favorites hot girl walks journaling.
I really like journaling.
I recommend it all the time because I just feel like it helps you get your thoughts and emotions out and make sense of how you're feeling and that's why I love doing this podcast because although it's not journaling I feel like it's a brain dump in a sense where I'm saying everything into a microphone
for all of you to listen instead of writing in my journal.
And some people might say that's problematic and maybe I should keep it to myself.
I think there's a lot of good that comes from expressing yourself and taking everything that's going on in your mind and putting it into words and putting it on paper, putting it out on the internet for everyone and their mother to listen to.
Again you can romanticize anything.
Romanticize yapping.
And then my last two girl therapy favorites I wrote down are everything showers.
I love a good backwards.
Sweating. Out of breath.
Having an asthma attack.
Basically doing gymnastics.
Trying to shave every inch of my body.
Yeah but it's basically therapy because I'm taking care of myself and like I was saying before I'm not juggling a bunch of things except for like shaving my body, washing my body, exfoliating my body, washing my hair.
I'm focusing on all of that rather than scrolling on my phone or worrying about what someone else is doing or being stressed out about something or trying to finish.
I don't know. You know what I mean?
I'm taking 20 minutes out of my day to really take care of myself and it pays off because afterwards I feel good.
And then last girl therapy favorite are self -improvement books like I was saying but I wanted to give you some of my recommendations.
I have them all linked on my Amazon storefront under self -improvement I think but just a list of them.
The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra.
The Law of Attraction.
Ask and It's Given.
The Secret and if you're not a book girly you can actually watch that.
They have a documentary of that.
It used to be on YouTube but I think they took it off so you can buy it on like Amazon but it's really good.
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.
Wishes Fulfilled which I'm rereading right now and then The Manifestation Wheel and all of those except for The Law of Attraction, Ask and It's Given and The Secret.
I found a Goodwill so if you're not trying to spend a lot of money go to your local thrift store and look through the books.
It obviously takes some time but you'll probably find a self -improvement book there.
Spotify just added a comment section on like under podcast episodes so you can leave a comment and I can respond.
So if you have any book recommendations or any self -care recommendations girl therapy favorites leave them for me and I'll comment and let you know if I've tried it or if I'm going to try it.
I hope that this episode helped you in some way and gave you some ideas on how to take care of yourself without spending a lot of money because you don't have to.
It's not necessary to spend a billion dollars just to take care of you and feel good.
If you like today's episode let me know.
Let me know on Spotify.
Let me know on Instagram, TikTok, my DMs are open.
Make sure to follow my socials, my Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, everything's in the show notes and also make sure to check out today's sponsors because I love them and I think you will too.
That is everything for today's episode.
Thanks for hanging out with me.
I love you guys so much and I just appreciate you.
So thanks for listening.
I love you. I will talk to you guys next Monday.
Goodbye besties.