My Real Routine

Blog

  • The Supplement Stack That Actually Helps My Anxiety

    I’ve been medicated for anxiety since my late-twenties. That part isn’t new. What’s new is that somewhere around my divorce, my anxiety got loud enough that I needed more than my prescription to get through a Tuesday, and that’s how I ended up with a drawer full of supplements that actually earn their spot.

    This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use and trust.

    I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or licensed healthcare provider. Everything I share is based on my personal experience. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement, medication, or health routine.

    Where My Prescription Fits In

    I take a prescription anti-anxiety medication, and I have for a long time. It is the foundation, not the whole house. Nothing below replaces it, and I’d never suggest swapping a prescription for a supplement — please talk to your doctor before you change anything about your medication.

    What the supplements do is fill in the gaps my prescription doesn’t touch: the overthinking at 11 p.m., the tight chest before a hard conversation, the days my brain just will not slow down.

    Ashwagandha, Morning and Non-Negotiable

    Ashwagandha is the first thing I take every morning, fasted, before coffee. I rotate between Gaia Herbs PRO ashwagandha (700mg liquid phyto-caps) and Himalaya Organic caplets, depending on what’s in my cabinet, and sometimes I’ll use Himalaya StressCare instead, which combines ashwagandha with holy basil.

    It’s an adaptogen, which is a fancy way of saying it helps my body handle stress instead of spiking straight into it. I noticed the difference more in what didn’t happen — fewer mornings where I woke up already anxious about nothing specific — than in some dramatic before and after.

    Magnesium Glycinate, My Actual Rescue Supplement

    If I had to keep only one supplement on this list, it would be magnesium glycinate. I keep a bottle from Gaia or Integrative Therapeutics in my bag and take one or two capsules during the day whenever the overthinking starts — not on a schedule, just when I need it. At night I take two capsules before bed.

    Magnesium glycinate calms my nervous system in a way I can actually feel, usually within twenty minutes. It helps with the anxious spiral, the insomnia that comes with it, and the general sense that my brain is a browser with forty tabs open.

    The B-Vitamins and Adaptogens That Round It Out

    I take Nature’s Bounty B-12 (1,000 mcg) and their Super B-Complex with folic acid and vitamin C every morning for energy and general nervous system support — anxiety is exhausting, and low energy makes it worse. I also take Apex Energetics Adaptocrine XL, a practitioner-grade adaptogen blend, and Gaia Herbs gelatinized Peruvian maca root for energy on the days I need a push.

    None of these are dramatic on their own. Stacked together, every single morning, they’re the difference between a manageable day and a day that gets away from me.

    Magnesium L-Threonate for the Nights My Brain Won’t Quiet Down

    On top of magnesium glycinate, I’ll sometimes take Natural Vitality CALM powder, which uses magnesium L-threonate specifically for brain health. It’s a different form than the glycinate, and I use it more for the racing-thoughts kind of anxiety than the physically tense kind.

    I go deeper into how this fits into my actual bedtime routine, along with the eye mask and brown noise setup that finishes the job, in My Sleep Ritual for Anxious Minds.

    What I Don’t Take With Food

    Because I fast until noon, all of this happens on an empty stomach, which took some adjusting to. I break my fast with bone broth and then real food, and I don’t take any of these supplements again later in the day unless I need an extra magnesium glycinate to reset.

    I walk through the rest of that fasted morning — skincare, coffee, all of it — in My Complete Morning Routine at 40+ if you want the full picture of how this stack fits into an actual Tuesday.

    What This Stack Isn’t

    This isn’t a cure. My anxiety didn’t disappear because I started taking ashwagandha, and it won’t disappear for you either. What changed is that I have more tools now than I did a year ago, and most days that’s enough to get through the hard parts without it taking over.

    If you’re dealing with anxiety, please talk to your doctor or therapist before adding anything to your routine, especially if you’re already on a prescription. This worked for me. That doesn’t mean it’s the right stack for you.

  • My Complete Morning Routine at 40+

    My alarm goes off at around 6:45 a.m. and for a long time that felt like the worst part of my day. Now it’s the part I actually look forward to — not because mornings got magically easier, but because I built a routine that meets me where I am instead of where I think I should be.

    This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use and trust.

    I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or licensed healthcare provider. Everything I share is based on my personal experience. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement, medication, or health routine.

    The First Five Minutes

    Before anything else, I splash cold water on my face using my Makeup Eraser — the pink reusable towel everyone on the internet has already told you about. I focus mostly around my eyes, where dried residue from the night before collects overnight.

    Cold water wakes my face up faster than coffee wakes up the rest of me. It’s a small thing, but small things are basically my whole philosophy at this point.

    The Step I Never Skip

    If my morning falls apart and I only get to do one thing to my face, it’s the Garnier SkinActive Clearly Brighter Anti-Puff Eye Roller. As I’ve gotten older, a bad night’s sleep shows up on my face almost immediately, and this cold metal roller is the first thing I reach for. Some mornings I’ll also use a rose quartz gua sha stone from Target if I have a few extra minutes.

    If sleep has been rough lately, I wrote about the whole wind-down process I use now in My Sleep Ritual for Anxious Minds — it’s made mornings like this a lot less common.

    Eyes and Face Cream

    Next comes a tiny amount of Froya Organics eye balm, pressed in with my pinky finger around my crow’s feet. Then I take a small amount of Froya Organics Anti-Age and Insane Glow Day Balm, rub it between my palms to warm it up, and apply it to my face, neck, and decolletage.

    I always, always bring skincare down to my neck and chest. It’s one of the first places that shows age, and it’s the place everyone forgets. Some mornings, especially when I’m in a hurry, I’ll swap in L’Oreal Age Perfect Cell Renewal with SPF instead, because it saves me a separate sunscreen step.

    Primer and a Little Color

    For primer, I rotate between RMS Beauty ReEvolve Radiance Locking Primer, a ZO Skin Health product, or the NYX Bare With Me Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil Primer, which has the most perfect pink tint on my skin tone. After that, RMS Beauty Bronzer goes on my forehead near the hairline, cheekbones, jawline, and the tip of my nose, and NARS Orgasm blush goes on top of my cheekbones.

    Brows, Lashes, and the 90s Regret

    My brows are thin and overplucked from the 90s, which is a decision my teenage self made that I am still paying for. I fill them in with the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Powder Duo, sometimes swapping in a brown tinted brow gel from Thrive Causemetics. I keep up with tweezers daily — brows and the faint hair above my lip — because letting it go a week is a visible mistake.

    For eyes, I use Revlon ColorStay Liquid Liner in dark brown most days, which reads softer than black but still feels finished. Then Thrive Causemetics Liquid Lash Extensions Tubing Mascara in Black goes on last, in black.

    Lips and Hair, in About Ninety Seconds

    Naturium Phyto-Glow Lip Mask goes on last, or Neal’s Yard Remedies Wild Rose Beauty Balm if I want something a little more balm-like. I brush my hair, and if it’s been a couple of days since washing, Dove Volumizing Dry Shampoo buys me another day.

    Here’s the truth: on the mornings when everything else falls apart, the non-negotiables are face cream, eyeliner, and mascara. That’s it. Everything else is a bonus, not a requirement.

    What I Take Before I Eat Anything

    I fast until noon — just water and black coffee — so my supplements all happen fasted, first thing. I take an ashwagandha (usually Gaia Herbs PRO liquid phyto-caps, sometimes Himalaya Organic caplets), my Vitamin D3 and K2 from Mary Ruth’s liquid spray, a Vitamin C spray from Garden of Life, and Country Life Easy Iron for anemia I was diagnosed with a few years ago.

    On top of that: three capsules of Sports Research Omega-3 Fish Oil, which is non-GMO and wild caught, a Garden of Life women’s probiotic, Nature’s Bounty B-12 and Super B-Complex, Thorne Zinc Bisglycinate, a liquid Eidon Ionic Minerals selenium, and Gaia Herbs gelatinized Peruvian maca root for energy. I also take a prescription medication for inflammation every morning through the Ageless website — that one is between me and my doctor, and I’d encourage you to talk to yours before adding anything like it to your own routine.

    This is a lot of capsules, I know. I go into exactly why I take each one, and which ones are actually doing something for my anxiety specifically, in The Supplement Stack That Actually Helps My Anxiety.

    Breaking the Fast

    Around noon I break my fast with bone broth, then real food. Before that first real meal, I try to eat something green first — a salad with a vinegar-based dressing — which is the one piece of the Glucose Goddess method I’ve actually kept up with. It helps blunt the blood sugar spike that used to leave me shaky and irritable by 2 p.m.

    The Actual Point of All This

    None of this fixed my life. What fixed my life was leaving a marriage that wasn’t working, getting a job that gave me my footing back, and doing the slow, unglamorous work of therapy every week. This routine didn’t cause any of that.

    What it does is give me forty-five minutes in the morning where I take care of myself on purpose, before the day starts taking things from me. Some mornings that’s the only forty-five minutes I get. It’s enough.

  • My Sleep Ritual for Anxious Minds

    For most of my life, bedtime was when my anxiety got the loudest microphone of the day. The house would go quiet and my brain would fill the silence with everything I’d been avoiding since 7 a.m. It took me until my forties to actually build a ritual instead of just lying there hoping for the best.

    This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use and trust.

    I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or licensed healthcare provider. Everything I share is based on my personal experience. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement, medication, or health routine.

    Washing the Day Off

    I always, always wash my face before bed, no matter how tired I am. Most nights it’s just my Makeup Eraser and water. If I’m wearing more makeup or just want it to feel like more of a ritual, I’ll use Tatcha Camellia Cleansing Oil instead — my Thrive tubing mascara usually comes off with plain water, but the oil feels like a small luxury after a long day.

    Once or twice a week I’ll exfoliate at night with either Froya Organics Ultra Cleanse and Revive Face Scrub or Tatcha Rice Polish, depending on how my skin feels. I prefer exfoliating before bed rather than in the morning — it gives my night cream a cleaner, softer surface to actually absorb into.

    Serum, Eye Cream, and the Neck You’re Probably Skipping

    Some nights I’ll use L’Oreal Paris Revitalift Derm Intensives Night Serum, the blue bottle with retinol, before my night cream. Eye cream comes next — either Kiehl’s Super Multi-Corrective Eye Zone Treatment or my Froya Organics eye balm — and then L’Oreal Age Perfect Night Cream or Froya Organics Magic Wrinkle Eraser Night Balm.

    I bring all of it down to my neck and decolletage, every single night. It’s the same rule I follow in the morning, which I write about in My Complete Morning Routine at 40+ — your neck ages exactly as fast as your face does, and it gets ignored constantly.

    After that, Vanicream goes everywhere else. My dermatologist recommended it years ago and it’s still the thickest, most genuinely hydrating body cream I’ve used, at a drugstore price.

    The Magnesium and Tea That Signal “Wind Down” to My Brain

    Two capsules of magnesium glycinate, and a cup of Traditional Medicinals Nighty Night Extra tea with valerian root. I’ve written before about why magnesium glycinate is the supplement doing the most work for my anxiety in The Supplement Stack That Actually Helps My Anxiety, and at night it’s doing double duty — calming my nervous system and easing me toward actual sleep instead of just lying there wired.

    The tea itself is more ritual than science, if I’m honest. Making it, holding the warm mug, sitting with it for a few minutes — that’s half the point.

    Setting Up the Room

    I lower the temperature in my apartment before bed. A cooler room makes a bigger difference to how I sleep than almost anything else on this list, and it costs nothing. I run a Levoit Core 300 air purifier in the living room and a Levoit mini in the bedroom, both from Target, and I use an eskiin filter on my shower and a Brita filter for drinking water — small things, but they add up to a space that feels cared for.

    I sleep on the left side of the bed, every night, no exceptions. I don’t know if it actually matters. It feels like it does.

    The Eye Mask I Recommend to Everyone

    My iCooBreeze 100% Natural Silk Eye Mask in Lotus Pink is big enough to cover most of my face, blocks light completely, and somehow stays in place all night even when I toss around. Some nights I tuck my hair into a loose bun underneath the back strap so it doesn’t slip.

    Turning My Brain Down: Meditation and Brown Noise

    This is the part that actually deals with the anxiety, not just the skincare and supplements around it. I open the Insight Timer app and put on a guided yoga nidra body scan meditation. It shuts my anxious brain off in a way that sitting in silence trying to meditate on my own never did for me.

    Underneath that, I run the BrainWave app playing brown noise on an eleven-hour timer. I don’t actually sleep for eleven hours, but I like knowing it’s still running if I wake up at 3 a.m. The brown noise plays under the meditation and keeps going long after the guided part ends.

    Why I Built It This Way

    None of this is complicated, and that’s the point. My anxiety doesn’t need a complicated bedtime routine — it needs the same handful of signals, in the same order, often enough that my body starts to recognize them as “we are safe now, we can stop.”

    It took me a long time and a lot of bad nights to build this. If you’re in the middle of your own bad nights right now, I promise it’s not about finding one perfect product. It’s about stacking small, boring, repeatable things until your nervous system believes you.