Scout Sobel | Navigating Bipolar Disorder by Harnessing Emotions & Entrepreneurship

Season Three
Written By Nicole Christie

Scout Sobel, founder & CEO of Scout’s Agency, author, and podcast host, opens up about living with bipolar disorder and how she learned to manage it by finding safety in her emotional landscape, practicing rigorous self-care, and finding a path for herself as an entrepreneur. From sharing her struggles to function in society to the empowerment she found as a business owner, wife, and mother, and candidly discussing the struggles of early motherhood and the death of self it requires, this conversation is raw, emotional, eye-opening, and wildly inspiring.

Show Notes:

  • Nicole: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, it's Nicole. Before we get into my conversation with Scout Sobel, I wanted to give you a heads up that we discuss bipolar disorder in depth, including many of its symptoms and how Scout manages the disorder. She shares her story with grace and compassion, but I want to give you this heads up so you can ensure you're somewhere you can safely process any emotions you may experience as you listen.

    Thanks for tuning in. And now here's Scout and me in conversation.

    Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because, just as we say “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.

    Today I'm talking with Scout Sobel. Scout is the founder of Scouts Agency, a PR firm that helps women tell their stories, grow their businesses, and become thought leaders through the power of podcasts. Just four years into its tenure, it's the leading agency of its kind, working with clients like Rebecca Minkoff and Catt Sadler.

    A veteran of the podcast world herself, Scout is co-host of the popular podcast OK Sis, as well as the author of The Emotional Entrepreneur, a wife, and a mother. Scout has also lived with bipolar disorder for 16 years, which once rendered her unable to function in society. She dropped out of college, couldn't hold a job, and went through both inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment.

    Her journey of learning to manage her disorder, and how finding entrepreneurship was the key to fighting for her life, is a harrowing yet inspiring story of prevailing despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

    Scout Sobel, welcome to Here For Me.

    Scout: [00:02:08] Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be here. You know, I've done like, what, 200 podcast episodes. But this one I'm like, I can't wait to see what you pull out of me is what I'm really excited for.

    Nicole: [00:02:20] You're setting the bar high.

    Scout: [00:02:21] Yes I am.

    Nicole: [00:02:22] I appreciate that. So you and I met earlier this year in February of 2023, when I started working with you and your team to share my story. And in just under a year, I have come to love everyone at Scouts Agency.

    And as a fellow entrepreneur, I admire how you have built this team of women empowering women. I'm lifting them up, amplifying their voices. Not only the people that work for you, but your clients. And as a human, you are someone who is open about your journey. You're always willing to pick up the phone [00:03:00] and share your wisdom, your advice, and connect people for everyone's highest good. So I just want to say I am deeply grateful for how you show up in the world with such authenticity.

    And now we get to have this conversation, and your journey is mind-blowing to me. There are so many aspects of it that I want to get into, but I want to start with the one that everyone is probably the most curious about. After hearing your intro, I want to talk about your journey with bipolar disorder, how it unfolded, and how was it affecting your life.

    Scout: [00:03:35] I usually start my story when I was 14, but if you go back into my early childhood, I believe I was starting to exhibit signs of mental illness or suffering from mental health at the age of four.

    One of my earliest memories is feeling anxiety and not knowing what it was, and having it stick to me for like three days in a row in kindergarten. It's one of my earliest, earliest memories. And looking back, I was a child who wanted to isolate. I didn't want to go to camp. I didn't want to be social. I didn't want to go to school.

    I really just wanted to sit in my room and write and read and be alone. So I would have fits when my mom would try to get me out of the door. So there are signs of it, but there's only so much you can remember when you're four and five. But I definitely can look back and be like, yeah, there were things that were brewing even at that young of an age.

    But my story really starts at the age of 14, when I dipped into my first depressive episode. I was a freshman in high school and I went down so fast. I started becoming a little bit more sensitive in eighth grade, and I was like writing really deep lyrical poetry in my notebook at 13. And so I lean on the sensitive, creative side as it is.

    And then my mother got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it just sent me down this wormhole of depression. I stopped taking care of myself, and it was very apparent to the school and to my friends that something was wrong.

    Scout: [00:05:02] I was self-harming. I was controlling food as a means to cope with whatever it was I was feeling internally. And when the school found out about the self-harm, they notified my parents.

    So I went into therapy in high school. However, when you're a high school girl, it's the question is it hormones or is it mental illness? And I'm grateful that that question wasn't answered and I wasn't necessarily put on a bunch of medication or anything that young, but I definitely fluctuated up and down.

    I scored between clinical and chronic depression on a 500-question test. And it was very apparent to everyone around me that I went through like this emotional paralysis moment where I was fine and then all of a sudden I was taking all these mental health days or I couldn't complete my homework, not out of cognitive ability, but because I just couldn't get myself there.

    But it wasn't until I went to college that my parents got divorced, I left for college, and I started losing touch with reality, so I thought men were following me home, I thought they were underneath my bed, I thought they were in my closet, in the trunk of my car, waiting to harm and kill me, and I would start planning escape routes in my head.

    And that's when I realized that something bigger was happening to my mind. And it wasn't just your typical, like, moody teenager. And that's when I called my parents and they started listening a little bit more and they were like, okay, something else is going on. And that really started my long road down a much more clinical path. Psychiatry, medication, 5150, outpatient twice.

    Nicole: [00:06:35] Can you talk about 5150? Because I'm not sure if it's outside of California.

    Scout: [00:06:39] It's when they put you on an involuntary hold at a hospital for up to 72 hours because you are deemed a threat to yourself and to society. So that happened when I was 19. So, you know, my symptoms have run the gamut from psychosis, depression, hypomania, anxiety, catatonia, suicidal ideation.

    And there was once a time where I was deemed unfunctionable. They weren't sure if I was going to make something of myself, so I had to drop out of college. It was a clinical experience of the mental health world for sure, but 20s, filled with a lot of hopelessness, a lot of feeling stuck. My life was on pause. I was home from college. So that's kind of how the origins of this really came to fruition.

    Nicole: [00:07:27] And so you were talking about the different healing modalities, medication, hospitalization, there were twelve-step programs.

    Can you talk about the different things that you tried, how they impacted you, and then how you got to where you are now? How do you take care of your mental health now?

    Scout: [00:07:44] You know, when I was diagnosed and they told me I was manic depressive. It was 12 years ago, and there wasn't Instagram, or podcasts, or thought leaders.

    The word bipolar disorder wasn't a thing that one heard, and so I thought that I was crazy, and that I was done for. And I didn't think my life was going to amount to anything because of this, and I felt very, very alone. And so my healing journey was...a complete trial and error, one step in front of the other.

    My husband, I credit as sort of the catalyst of my healing, we started dating and a couple months in, he comes from the recovery world. So today he is proudly 12 years sober. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I don't care if you're depressed. If you're depressed and hopeful, I can be in this relationship. If you're depressed and hopeless, I can't be here.

    And it was this moment where I was like, okay, it's okay to be me. It's okay that this experience is happening. But what he said showed me that there are areas that are in my control. And so what would it look like if I just had hope? So that's where I started.

    Scout: [00:08:56] And I went to the self-help aisle in Barnes & Noble and made sure no one saw me there, because it really was not cool back then.

    And I started practicing, you know, gratitude. I was like, there's this thing called gratitude. And I started going to support groups because my husband came from support groups and I would go with him, actually, to his twelve-step support groups. And I found immense healing in them. Anyone who is listening, who either finds therapy to be unaffordable or too tedious to get to, or whatever the case is, where therapy is not available for you, there are free support groups. And I actually believe true healing starts in support groups. People don't pay enough attention to that healing modality.

    So in the meantime, I've tried every psych medicine under the sun. Oftentimes, it left me worse, and I got myself to a place where I was functioning. I started Scout's Agency. I was, you know, financially making a little bit of money, and I was able to stand on my own two feet, but I was still really afraid of my inner landscape.

    I was afraid of what my emotions could do to my life. I felt very disempowered in them and I felt as if they had the control. So if they decided to turn on, my life could go to shit. And it wasn't until I met my coach, Amy Natalie, who I work with still today. She looked at me and we were talking about me signing up and I said, well, you know, Are you sure you can do this? Because I get suicidal ideation, I hear voices, I think people are there that aren't there. Are you sure you could do this? And it's okay if you can't. I'm okay with this being a little too much for you to handle.

    And she looked at me and she said, you're just a human having a human experience.

    And in that moment, I recognized that the language and the approach that traditional psychology and psychiatry had was subconsciously keeping me very small. They would always use words like, you know you can go to the hospital, right? And you have a very severe case. And the way they would speak to me was degrading. I would look at them and I would just want to scream, do you even fucking know what's going on? Like, have you ever fucking…?

    Nicole: [00:11:20] Putting you into a box, right? And not seeing you as this whole person and yes. And what is individual about your experience.

    Scout: [00:11:25] Yes. And just throwing meds at me and making me feel like this was something so out of my control. And that kept me within the narrative and within the identity of mental illness. So a beautiful example of this is when I decided to start a family. My psychiatrist and my therapist did not feel comfortable with me going off medication. Everybody else did not feel safe with my emotional landscape. And so with that, they projected their own fears to minimize and control me.

    And because they said they didn't feel safe with me going off my medication to get pregnant, I was going to get a surrogate. I was about to outsource one of the most important jobs I have ever done because medical professionals didn't feel safe within my human experience. And the minute I realized that, first that they were all men too, I was like, nobody gets to tell me how much control I actually have.

    And that's when I decided to go off medication and get pregnant, naturally. And I'm still standing here today with a beautiful baby girl. But when you talk about my healing journey, the point being is that I had to go through a traditional route to understand how limiting and disempowering that was. And I had to find my voice. I had to find a safety net within myself.

    Today I feel safe within my emotional landscape. My bipolar does not scare me. And using a more empowering lens, where I actually have so much more control over my life than previously thought, that's how I've been able to get to my healing place today.

    Nicole: [00:13:17] I feel like what I'll call Western medicine or traditional medicine. It has its place. I had cancer, right? They had to cut cancer out of my body. But it's exactly what you're saying. Throw meds at it. We don't want to deal with it. It's so much more difficult and time consuming and individual.

    And so for you to take control of that journey and be like, I'm going to figure this out. That is such a gift.

    How did you go through that when you were like, I am going to stop these meds and get pregnant naturally and give birth? What was that journey like? Because I'm sure that there are women listening who are on medication and are probably having the same experience.

    Scout: [00:13:52] Yeah, I always first like to throw a quick disclaimer on the medication conversation, which is that there is no shame in taking medication.

    And I really want you to be your own advocate in that room. You deserve to ask questions. You deserve to know the side effects. You deserve to know what it's like to withdraw. You deserve to understand what you're taking. For some people, it works beautifully. For others, it doesn't.

    So know yourself and educate yourself before you hop on medication and find a psychiatrist that will sit with you and answer your questions.

    So I think it was a series of understanding, this is part of my challenge, talking about my healing because, and sometimes I feel very jealous of my husband, which is a strange thing to say, because he's sober and went through a tremendous hardship to get there.

    But when one gets sober, there's 12 steps. There's a rehab, there's meetings, there's sober living, there's structure and there's community and there's a path.

    For me, I was grasping. I was like, is there a book that will tell me what to do? So my healing journey, I wish that I could spit out five steps that happened. And it really wasn't that.

    It was ten years of consistently just keeping going every day. One step in front of the other. What works, what doesn't work. And I can tell you what works for me now. Journaling, meditation, movement, eating right, sleep. I take care of myself like a frickin dictator for the most part because I know what happens on the other end if I don't. So I've found my groove.

    Nicole: [00:15:25] Self-care is not a choice for you.

    Scout: [00:15:26] It's not a choice for me. But I will say, I think one of the catalysts for everything really switching for me was recognizing that I had a core belief that I was unsafe in my emotions. It was two things. It was recognizing I believe I am unsafe in my emotions, so how can I ever feel safe as a human being and within my mental illness if I feel unsafe in my emotional landscape?

    And I said, well, why do I feel unsafe in my emotional landscape? And I realize that I was collecting evidence as to why it's ruined my life before. So I said, let me reprogram this. And I don't know how I knew this because this was before we were all seriously talking about limiting beliefs and reprogramming on the internet.

    But I wrote down I'm safe in my emotions hundreds of times a day. I put it as my background on my phone. I put post-it notes all over the house in the mirror, and I just kept telling myself that I was safe in my emotions with repetition, repetition, repetition.

    And then I was reading Glennon Doyle's book, and there was this one chapter where she says, I think it's when she went to get sober, and she realized that she used to say, I just can't do it anymore.

    Scout: [00:16:33] And that was my thing. I would say, I can't do this anymore, and it would scare my family and my husband, because obviously when someone has suicidal ideation and they say those words, but it always felt like that. It was like, I'm at my threshold, like I can't feel this pain anymore.

    And Glennon Doyle so beautifully and profoundly recognized that she can do it because she is doing it. And that's when I recognized, oh, I can survive my emotions because I have survived my emotions over and over and over again.

    And it was a mindset shift, and my mom would always sit with me and say, it always passes. And I would say, but it comes back. And it took moving into this passes and I can survive this. So it was when I realized that I had survived every single depressive episode, anxiety attack, catatonic episode. I recognized that I'm capable and that there's actually a lot more evidence that I'm safe in this expression, because I'm still standing here and I'm still interested in moving forward.

    Nicole: [00:17:43] I had a therapist who called that riding the wave. She was like, every time an emotional anything comes through, get on your surfboard and ride it because it takes you to shore. And you're right. The wave comes back and you're back out in the ocean again.

    When I don't allow myself to feel safe in emotions and really just sit with them, I almost dissociate. And that's when I go down a rabbit hole. So it's like if you just sit in it and learn how to care for yourself in it. And again, there are some people that medication works well for them, we're not shaming that. But if you just be in it and own it, you do ride that wave and then you're like, okay, you survive 100% of your bad days. You survive 100% of those episodes.

    Scout: [00:18:23] Yeah. And even with medication, the amount of work you got to do, I think that's another misconception about medication. It's a 15% bump if it works at the best, you know, the rest has got to be internal.

    I remember driving one time to go to lunch with my grandma and anxiety hit me and I was like, okay, I'm safe in this. So I took a deep breath. I put my hands on the wheel and I said, let's go. Give me what you got. You obviously have something to say to me. Tell me what you need to tell me. And it overcame my body and it was so painful that anxiety. I wanted to itch out of my skin, but I gave it the voice that it needed in that moment, and within two minutes it calmed down. Our emotions are like us, right? Like we want to be validated and heard.

    Nicole: [00:19:09] Yeah, our emotions are a cue to what is going on. And I did a lot of somatic experiencing work with my therapist where she was like, go into your body. And then like you were saying, you felt it in your body and you're like, whoa, there's anxiety. It's really powerful.

    And that puts you back in control of yourself and also owning all of yourself, which I think when people break away from that, in my opinion, that's when people start relying on other things. You know, for me, that was codependency, that was my addiction. I have friends who have had other addictions, but mine was like, oh, I can't deal with my own shit, so I'm going to go fix somebody else. And that gives me a sense of control and power that is totally false. It's like, no, bring it back to you.

    Scout: [00:19:50] And then you're the guide of it, right? Like then your anxiety says, okay, this, this home of mine has my back. Yeah. This home of mine respects me. This home of mine sees me and I get to have a voice. I say, your emotions get to have a seat at the table. But they don't get to have a vote. That's what I say. So thank you.

    Nicole: [00:20:06] Thank you for your opinion.

    Scout: [00:20:07] Yeah. Thank you for your opinion. Yeah. Let me hear it. Beautiful. You've been heard. And I'm going to make the final decision and you're writing forward.

    Nicole: [00:20:14] That's all they want is to be heard. Yeah. And if you think of it that way…as my, my therapist worked with me in schema therapy and internal family systems is kind of the same.

    You name your parts, right? When you're naming those parts of like the wounded child, the person who subjugates their needs, it's exactly what you're talking about. You're accepting all these parts of you that are screaming for attention and wanting to drive. And you're like, You don't get to drive. I see you. I see you, but you got to stand in the backseat. Yeah, but you are still in this car. You are part of the ride. It releases the power.

    Scout: [00:20:47] And that takes, by the way, such a level of mastery to really fine tune that moment by moment experience.

    So if you're listening to this and you're like, that feels very off, you know, that feels far away from where I am today. I like to offer to give yourself time, like commit the next five years of your life, five years to not necessarily get it perfect and not necessarily feel better on a linear trajectory, but to be committed to curiosity and to exploring and to trying things on and to checking in and to internally committing to feeling your emotions. Give it five years.

    Nicole: [00:21:28] Thank you for the five year timeline, because I think everybody, and it's part of our culture, they want that quick fix. You're right. It's not linear, like anything, like grieving. Healing is not linear. Being gentle with yourself because you're going to slide. Sometimes it's two steps forward, two steps back, fall down, cry, have a meltdown and be in it and feel bad and then find the self-compassion.

    You mentioned that journaling is important to you. What else helped you get into that five-year, non-linear space where you learned to embrace this?

    Scout: [00:21:57] Journaling is my number one non-negotiable. I do it first thing every single morning. I'm grateful that now my baby's sleep schedule is a little bit more predictable.

    So I wake up early and I journal for 20 to 30 minutes every morning. I think if you run anxious, this is a really beautiful way to get that energy out in a constructive and very illuminating way. So I journal. I try to meditate as much as I can. Obviously, I'm, I have a baby, so, you know, I used to have like a three-hour routine every day, guys.

    Now it's a little bit different, but I either get in journaling and movement or journaling and meditation every day. I really, really, really monitor my thoughts, so anything that feels like it's a door-closer, like, that's never gonna happen, or that's not possible. That's a door-closer, that's a limiting belief, how can I reframe that and say something to myself that's a lot more empowering and a lot more open-ended for opportunity to come in.

    So, monitoring your mindset and your thoughts is free and single-handedly the thing that's going to change your life. That's one of my most foundational things that everyone can start today. Start thinking about the things that you say to yourself. Is it victim? Is it blaming? Is it low energy? Or is it empowering?

    And if it's not empowering, how can you start feeding yourself an empowering mindset?

    I use a lot of different spiritual modalities or more natural healing modalities, cupping, Reiki, acupuncture. I monitor the content that I feed myself. Podcasts, Instagram, television. I don't look at my phone for the first hour to two hours in the morning and the last 30 minutes at night.

    Frequent breaks from my phone is really healthy and helpful. Practicing gratitude. Every now and then I'll rely on my spiritual practice and I'll pray. So it's kind of like, what do I feel like today? Do I need to dance? Do I need to cry? How do I release this energy? It's kind of minute by minute, but those are some of the tools in my toolbox.

    Nicole: [00:23:52] I love you talking about the emotional toolkit and all of that. You have to lean on multiple modalities, find what's right for you, and figure that out. It's a phrase, when I went through abuse recovery, that my therapist used as well. Having that emotional toolkit that you can tap into.

    You wrote the book, The Emotional Entrepreneur. You are the emotional entrepreneur. It's obviously so important to you in your personal life and in your healing and managing bipolar. How does that come to life as an entrepreneur?

    Scout: [00:24:22] When I found entrepreneurship, everything changed for me.

    Nicole: [00:24:26] It was healing in its own right for you.

    Scout: [00:24:27] It was empowering and very healing. I would say first it was empowering and then it was healing.

    So I was 22 when I started my first business. College dropout. I was a barista. I was very bipolar. I could hold down the minimum wage job pretty well, so I was starting to get my feet on the ground. And I looked at my friend and I said, do you want to start a magazine? It'll be an art project, and we'll print it at Kinko's, and we'll take all the photos with the disposable cameras, and then we'll just pass it out to our friends.

    And five minutes later, something in my brain switched. Call it the hypomania, call it what you will. But I was like, okay, we need a domain name. We need an Instagram handle. I'm going to research the best printers. And all of a sudden I had all of these meetings. I just focused and then the printers like, well, if you want the best paper, it's going to be $10,000. I'm like, well, now I have to go get $10,000. So then I started a Kickstarter and then I got the $10,000 and we had our first issue.

    The second issue, we got a distributor and it was on every newsstand across the country. And then the third issue, we had Halsey, a famous musician, on the cover, and Barnes & Noble emailed me and asked me if they could pick up my magazine. And that's really…sorry. I haven't thought about that moment in a really long time, so I don't know why it's making me so emotional.

    Nicole: [00:25:46] Because I think it was the turning point that brought you to this place that you are now, you know, think about the business you're building and how you're empowering women. And you have this beautiful baby and your husband. I mean, girl, that was your moment.

    Scout: [00:25:56] It was my moment where I recognized that there was a path for me. That there was, I didn't have to be this girl who couldn't function, but that entrepreneurship was a vehicle I could drive. And there are so many parallels between bipolar disorder and entrepreneurship, the high highs, the low lows. And also I recognize that as someone with a mental illness, I have to be so all in that.

    I can't just write a psychiatrist note to get out of my business. You know, I could do that as a hostess, right? I could get the doctor's note. Yep. But when all of the responsibility is on your shoulders, you, you have no choice but to show up. And so it gave me a new spark for life. It showed me that I could be successful.

    It showed me that I could follow through with a project. It showed me that I could bring something in my mind into physical reality. And it showed me what it's like to be in love with what you do. So. That was the beginning. I was very young. I couldn't figure out how to monetize it for the life of me. I spent my mid 20s curious.

    I started this, I started that. Nothing really stuck. I really wanted to be a successful business owner though, and I started Scout’s Agency. And I was like, this is gonna be the thing that I am going to financially support myself with, this is gonna be the thing I build. And once I started getting clients who were paying me, and I had a business running, I recognized how emotional it was.

    I mean, I was anxious, and my people pleasing shit came up, and all of the stuff, and I recognized that as someone who has been through healing and has been through therapy my whole life, I'm like, I'm feeling this craziness over here, and I realized that my girlfriends and my peers, they weren't starting businesses.

    They had the resources, they had the education, they had the experience. Most of the times they had the money. They weren't starting it because of fear, because of anxiety, because of their relationship to uncertainty. And that's when I realized that. Business is an emotional game and it's going to bring out all of your shit and you have to work on it or else your business will swallow you whole and you won't make it.

    Nicole: [00:28:01] And you're built for it because of what you went through.

    Scout: [00:28:03] Oh yeah. This is like, sometimes I wonder why this is my path. Because it's masochistic as fuck. I'm openly like, this shit is the worst, and don't ever tell me to do something else. Yeah.

    So that's when the concept of the emotional entrepreneur came, because there were so many women who wouldn't start the YouTube channel, the podcast, the agency, the product based business because they were afraid, because they couldn't get over the emotional parts.

    And then once they started, they were like, why do I have all this self-doubt? Why do I have imposter syndrome? Why does this suck? I thought this was my dream and I'm like, no, you just need to figure out how to harness your emotions properly within this space.

    Nicole: [00:28:44] We talked a little bit on this podcast, and I have a feeling you will relate, the idea of an awakening. And how it feels like absolute fucking garbage.

    It feels terrible. You feel like you're going crazy. You feel like you're stupid, not on the right path. It leads you to what you're meant for, but man, does it feel like shit. God, it feels so bad.

    So I'll say the same as a fellow entrepreneur on that journey too. You're right. It is a roller coaster every day. It is one day of like, I am the best everrrr and dancing in the kitchen and the next day on the couch crying.

    Scout: [00:29:17] Yep, yep. Yep. It is soooo crazy. And it's…I know it's for me because I've really recognized that what my purpose here is to move through high levels of discomfort.

    I do think a purpose that my soul came here is to alchemize discomfort into purpose and beauty and fulfillment. I am not afraid anymore of a very uncomfortable emotional challenge. Does some of it really bring me to my knees in my business? Yes.

    There are moments where it is, almost feels too much to bear. But I know what I'm built for and I know why I'm here. Everything gets connected in your life. My bipolar set me up for this type of a job.

    Nicole: [00:29:58] I'm putting this in quotes, but it was “the gift”. Yes, you're grateful for it…

    Scout: [00:30:03] Oh my God, grateful is an understatement. I mean, yeah, when someone DMs me, I mean the best I've ever received, ever received is a girl DMs me.

    She says, I'm leaving my psychiatrist's office right now. I just got diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Because of you, I'm not afraid.

    And I just started crying, because I'm like, I was like, I was very afraid, right? And so, whenever someone tells me, a lot of women DM me when they get diagnosed, I tell them, congratulations. You're one of the lucky ones. Because guess what won't happen to me? I'm 32 years old right now. I will never wake up at the age of 50, 60, 70 and wonder where my life went.

    I will never wake up and say wait a minute, how did I get here? I will never wake up and think that I wasted my potential, or I didn't follow my dreams, or I didn't live it to the fullest, [00:31:00] or I wasn't in integrity, or I wasn't in my personal power. That will never, ever, ever happen to me.

    Because if I make one decision that is out of alignment with my highest purpose, my bipolar will knock me off my feet. And if that isn't the greatest compass that God could give me, I don't know what is. Because there is no way that this life, when I get to the end, there will be any pocket that wasn't fully, fully maximized towards what I really, really believe I should be doing here.

    There's no such thing as regret for me. I don't have regret, and I know I'm going to be on my deathbed and not regret anything because it keeps me so in check. And if that is not the greatest gift as a human being, I honestly don't know what is.

    So whenever someone gets diagnosed, my first line is, welcome, you are one of the lucky ones if you learn how to manage and harness it appropriately.

    Nicole: [00:31:53] It’s a super power.

    Scout: [00:31:54] It's a super power. It's a super power.

    Scout: [00:31:57] Yeah. A friend of mine recently gave me a book about midlife and the back of the book said most people die at 50 and wait to be buried until they're 80. And I was like, noooo, NOOO! And, you know, we all know people like this, right? You're right. You will not have that moment.

    You have harnessed this and been like, this is not a liability. It's a fucking asset. It's an asset. I feel the same about having been in an abusive relationship. That it gave me the greatest gift, which was myself, which I had buried in a shallow grave.

    And if you can look at something like bipolar or whatever challenge you have in your life, everybody pretty much has at least one big one, whatever it is, how do I make this work for me and reframe that narrative? There's so much power to be gained from that.

    Scout: [00:32:46] Yeah, most of our pain, if properly processed and transformed, actually gets us to the most insanely beautiful place in our lives. Not that it's fair that we have to go through it. Not that it's okay, not that it's your fault, but it happened. So what are you going to do about it?

    Nicole: [00:33:03] Exactly. I just framed a little piece of art in my office, and it says, Difficult roads lead to the most beautiful destinations. And that is exactly what you're embodying.

    You mentioned your husband and what he said to you about like, if you are depressed and hopeful I can be in this relationship. I think a lot of us believe that we need to be fully healed. And when you're fully healed, your dream person will drop out of the sky and also be fully healed. And off into the sunset will go.

    Harville Hendrix does great work in Imago therapy, which is we choose someone in the image of generally our caretakers, so that we basically have a mirror to fix our wounds. And I love that idea of like, it's two people, no one is ever fully healed. So good luck with that fucking philosophy.

    But if two people come together on a healing journey of their own and say, I'm going to be there for you on this journey. What has that journey looked like for you as a couple and how do you support each other?

    Scout: [00:34:03] So I think that for me, my relationship with my husband is something that is incredibly divinely orchestrated in my opinion. I met him when I was 14. I remember the moment I saw him and we had a couple flings through high school and it wasn't the right timing, and when we got back together, it was fast and it was very serious right off the bat.

    Nicole: [00:34:32] How old were you at that point?

    Scout: [00:34:33] I was 20. But, you know, I think that you can't really plan because if you look back, I mean, I was a total shit show. I just turned 21. I got diagnosed a year ago, a college dropout. He was a year and a half sober. I didn't love myself. And they say, you got to do all those things before you find the person, right?

    I think you find the person you're supposed to be with in this lifetime, and that person brings out something that you need and you bring up become yes, yes, or you're the person who heals and then finds the person.

    Every person's path is so different when it comes to relationships, but I think it's such a beautiful pairing because he comes from the recovery world. And while that has sometimes clashed for us, because how you heal from addiction and how you heal from a bipolar disorder are very different, it's given us a level of a foundation of commonality, and it's allowed us to push one another to continue to do better.

    It's been incredibly hard for him to watch me go through this, incredibly difficult, and it's left a huge, painful mark on his heart throughout all of these years. Because most people don't see the bipolar, most people don't. Not even my closest friends. I'm someone who handles her mental illness behind closed doors.

    I talk about it, but the people who have really seen it are my immediate family and my husband and maybe two or three friends. So he's had a very, very firsthand view, a front row seat to this, and it's been very hard for him.

    But through that there has always, always, always been this…foundational, unequivocal, no questions asked that we are meant to be together. And I don't feel as if, and I say this in the best way possible, because it's that meant to be. I don't feel like I had a decision in that.

    Nicole: [00:36:19] Well, you said you feel like you're divinely guided toward each other, so it's something otherworldly.

    Scout: [00:36:24] Otherworldly for sure. I believe that. I believe it. And so like any couple, you have to figure out how to support each other the right way and communicate.

    But I think that our shared experiences, having to overcome something very difficult, has kept us very uniquely tied to one another, and we have an unwavering commitment to support each other. He's beyond supportive of me. You know, it's difficult, I think, for many men to be with a strong woman who makes money and has her own thing going on, and so I feel very, very fortunate.

    We've grown up together. We've been together for 11 years. He's like, you know, you don't choose your family. That's how it feels. I'm beyond blessed.

    Nicole: [00:37:10] And now you have this little girl I know who is almost a year. Lily Konstantine. What do you want her to know about being here for herself as a woman in this world?

    Scout: [00:37:20] I was pretty clear in pregnancy what I wanted as a mother to model for her. And it still rings true today.

    You know, out there outside of my house, I can't control what people say to her and how they make her feel. And if she gets bullied, or if she gets rejected, or if she gets her heart broken, or if something doesn't work out because that will happen.

    But I can control how safe and non-judgmental I approach her. And, I know that my daughter will come to me with things that I can't understand. Generationally it'll happen.

    I won't understand, and for me, I'm very clear that it's not my job to understand. It's my job to support.

    And so if she comes to me with her dreams, and even if I disagree with them, or even if it's not what I thought for her, it is my job to support her in the exploration of that.

    My biggest wish for her is that she grows up and finds the thing. The thing that I've found this, like, purpose and passion and hunger for life. And I want whatever she chooses to be so uniquely hers.

    I know the world will put expectations and throw their ideas at her and what she should or shouldn't be. In my eyes, there is no should, there is no shouldn't. There is literally just her soul and that's it. And my ego will try to find the shoulds. It really will. I know it will. Yeah. And that's my work privately. She will never, ever see that from me. I hope she doesn't ever see that from me.

    I hope that she knows that she can listen inside and that her personal power is her compass. That's my biggest dream for her.

    It's a wild, wild thing to have a child. I look at humans differently. I look at life differently. I look at creation differently. It's a lot. It's a lot.

    Nicole: [00:39:37] You're seeing it through her eyes now? Yeah, it's a completely different…it’s like putting on a different pair of glasses. There's like, here's your glasses, your perspective, your experience, your life. Let me put Lily’s on.

    Scout: [00:39:47] But then I can never take hers off either.

    Nicole: [00:39:49] Ohhhh.

    Scout: [00:39:51] There's no more, just my sight. And that's a hard thing. It's…you have to grieve that. I'm grieving that right now. I'm throwing a little bit of a tantrum myself. Yeah. I don't have freedom.

    Nicole: [00:40:02] Mhm.

    Scout: [00:40:03] I can't do my routine.

    Nicole: [00:40:05] Your heart's walking around outside of you.

    Scout: [00:40:07] Yeah I'm here. But you better believe I know that a part of me is somewhere else. It's this inability, I think, to be fully present in your life no matter what. It's also this inability to run your life through your own lens anymore.

    My freedom is completely gone. The way I do my days is out the window. It's all around her. And that's a bummer, to be honest. It's a fucking bummer.

    I want to go to dinner with my friends and not have to pay $100 for someone to watch her. I want to just go somewhere without her nap schedule and her this and her that.

    And I don't think parents talk enough about how frustrating it is the first year to relinquish every free second of your day to another being who can't even talk back to you. So it's a little difficult at times. Yeah. So yeah, it's. It's everything one could imagine, but right now I think I'm grieving my old self and the fact that I can never take those glasses off.

    I can never unsee what I've seen. I can never go back to Scout who didn't have a daughter. My sister jokes, she says the Taylor Swift lyric, the old Scout's dead, she can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because I killed her. I mean, she's gone. Yeah. She's legitimately gone. Yeah. And I can never get her back.

    And it's a really sad thing to move through, but really beautiful because you're in pursuit of something bigger and grander, but it is a journey.

    Nicole: [00:41:29] In the first episode of season two, All Signs Point to Healing, I talked about disenfranchised grief, which is what you are experiencing. And a culture doesn't recognize that grieving happens when something good happens, because all change is loss, and all loss is grief.

    And therapists will say, and I went through this with a therapist, because there is a change, there is a loss, and your body's triggering the grieving process.

    But we live in a culture, it's like, what are you talking about? You have a beautiful little girl, what’s your problem? It doesn't matter. You lost your child-free self. And even what you said, it is beautiful on the other side of it. You have this gorgeous little being. You worked so hard for her, put so much thought and intention into it.

    It is still loss and it's a true grieving process. I just want to acknowledge you for that and acknowledge you for acknowledging it to yourself and honoring it.

    Scout: [00:42:24] Yeah, it makes me want to throw up when I feel like I have to be like, but I'm so grateful and I love my daughter. Don't worry about it. And I'm like, that's just, it's so gaslighting in my opinion. And it's okay to admit that this is incredibly difficult and isolating and depressing at times and foreign and a complete identity loss, because if you don't go through it now, like what we said, let the emotion be here.

    It wants to say something or else I can never move forward and create like the new scout is being built right now. And I'm not rushing her. I'm not pushing her. Whoever she will be, she will be. And she's coming through. But I know I can't skip this part.

    Nicole: [00:43:12] You can't because you're right. If you skip this part, it will hit you at a time when it is really inopportune for yourself, for your family, for Lily, it'll hurt her. It will hurt her. So go through it. Feel it.

    A practice that I use, and we've talked about it on Here For Me before, is called JournalSpeak. Have you heard of JournalSpeak? But you basically just said it, you're doing it whether you know it or not.

    Nicole Sachs, she has a great podcast called “The Cure for Chronic Pain,” I’ve mentioned her a couple times on the podcast because I just love what she does. But JournalSpeak is you sit down for 20 minutes and you barf every horrible emotion without judgment onto the page. And you don't save it. So if you're writing, you tear up the piece of paper and throw it away. If it's a document, you just close it without saving. And then you do a 10 minute self-compassion meditation to be like, I'm giving myself grace for allowing myself to feel that emotion.

    And it was the thing that allowed me to have the very difficult conversation with my now ex-husband. I did JournalSpeak every day for a very long time. But Nicole Sachs said she sat down and the first thing that she wrote was, I hate being a mother. And she said the same thing. Our culture is like, but come on, it's a blessing. And it's like, yes, it's both. I love my daughter. I love what this experience brings me. I also fucking hate it because I lost the person that I was.

    The things that I did in JournalSpeak before I ended my marriage, the stuff that I was typing was so horrible and awful, but I was like, you have to free that from you. Then I was able to have a compassionate conversation with my now ex-husband, because otherwise all of that would have come out on him.

    So get it out and then just be like, close it. That's gone. And now I'm going to sit here for ten minutes with my InsightTimer and Sarah Blondin just talking me through it.

    Scout: [00:44:58] Oh my god, Sarah Blondin, don't even get me started.

    Nicole: [00:45:01] You're doing it whether you know it or not. And it probably comes up in your journaling, but just barf out every horrible thing you think without judgment because then you free its power on you.

    Scout: [00:45:09] And I think the main tool that's coming out of all this, because, as you were saying, is you have to figure out how to let the energy go.

    Whether it's journaling, meditating, moving your body, punching a pillow, calling a friend, recording a voice note, crying, that's really all emotional management is. It's like, okay, I have this emotion. Is it going to be best expressed if I dance real quick? Is it going to be best expressed if I hit a pillow? Is it going to be best expressed if I sit quietly in journal or do the JournalSpeak? Is it best if I send a voice note to myself?

    How do I move this emotion? Because once you move it, then you're clear. But what you were just saying when you were writing all of those things out, it's because you took out society's eyes. You allowed yourself to express in a safe space without, not your judgment, society's judgment.

    As a mom, the fact that that woman said that there is a lot of shame when I talk about motherhood in a way that's anything other than beautiful and miraculous and a blessing and perfect.

    I'm like, oh, I love my daughter. Just letting everybody know because there is no space for women and mothers to to really speak honestly. Like, I hate being alone in my house with my baby. Nope. Not for me. Absolutely not. Don't want it. So if I have to be alone with her for more than three hours, I go somewhere, I go crazy. It's not my jam.

    Nicole: [00:46:26] And just owning that and being like, because if you don't own that and you force yourself into what you think you're supposed to be, it will affect her. Because you're like, I'm not being true to myself.

    This is the classic example: If someone wants to stay home with their baby or work. You got to do whatever's right for you. Don't stay home because you think that's the right thing to do, or work because you think that's right. What are you called to do?

    You are a better person when you do whatever that is. If you're a better person when you go to work and you're doing something you feel passionate about, you will bring that home and be a better mother.

    Scout: [00:46:59] So just like in life, just like if you're not a mom, just like, do the thing, do the thing, do the thing that is aligned for you in all areas and everything.

    Nicole: [00:47:07] Yeah. Do the thing. And all the modalities we talked about are ways that you get in touch with what that is.

    No one would say I'm a bad corporate employee. I never had a bad review or anything, but I am not built to be corporate. It just doesn't fucking work for me. In order for me to be that, I had to fake it. I was faking it till I made it.

    I mean, I had a successful corporate career, but it was built on being a person that I was not and just shoving things down. And guess what? We all know how my body talked to me. You know, my skin fucking fell off and toenails turned black and popped off. And then I got cancer in my eye. So it will come out in some way if you don't find your true self and honor it.

    Scout: [00:47:43] Isn't it amazing how the body responds that way? I think that people are starting to really come online to the fact that a lot of our physical disease manifests from emotional distress.

    Nicole: [00:47:56] Yeah, I 100% believe it. Even if you think about emotional distress often causes people to make unhealthy life choices. You're not eating right. You're not moving your body because you're stressed out or you're getting into some sort of addiction or whatever.

    Scout: [00:48:08] You know so, doctors will say that stress creates disease, right? If stress creates disease, what does peace and fulfillment and healing create?

    Nicole: [00:48:15] Beautiful.

    Scout: [00:48:15] Right? Exactly. Like, why don't we focus on how powerful that side of the coin is? Because that could create some real physical harmony, I believe.

    Nicole: [00:48:24] Oh, 100%. Yeah. Something that my experience taught me is if you are living out of alignment, your body will talk to you and force you into alignment.

    It was one thing after another of stuff going wrong. It was like the hits keep on coming was a mantra in our household. Sometimes it's truly a run of bad luck, but at some point it's like, wait a second, stop, where am I out of alignment? And then make a conscious choice to get aligned, or you just ignore it and let the hits keep on coming.

    Something's going to kick you into alignment. You're going to choose it or you're going to die unfulfilled and unhappy. I'm just going to say it.

    Scout: [00:48:57] I love the fact that you just brought up choices because I go back to that all the time when I'm in resistance and I'm like, this isn't fair though. I don't want to do that.

    I want this. It's like, okay, well, what are the choices here? You keep resisting and you keep hitting your head against the wall and you keep feeling this way or you make a change. That might not be the way you want it to be, it might not be the work you want to do, it might not be the healing you want to do, it might be inconvenient for you at this time, but you relinquish level of control, and you move towards alignment, it's like, okay, you can bitch, but you're gonna stay here, you're just gonna stay here, and when we realize that we actually have choice, I think we think that we don't have choices, and we don't have control over our lives.

    I love how healing is such a paradox, because we have no control, and we have control, right? We have more control than we think, and we have less control than we think, but Whenever I'm stuck in resistance, my favorite quote is what you resist persists. And so if you're just sitting there stuck in the shit, complaining about the shit, wondering why the shit's happening to you, you will receive the same results.

    Nicole: [00:50:05] Absolutely. You will. You have to do the thing, I refer to it as, it's the thing you don't want to do, but the thing you know you need to do. It doesn't feel good. I didn't want to leave my marriage. I fought for it for 10 years. We had a beautiful life. From the outside, everything looked perfect. And I was like, I don't want to do this, holy shit!

    But you know, I knew I had to. So people know what they have to do. And it's not to say that like finances or children or there aren't those things, but in my experience, and I don't want to encourage anybody to do something that's truly risky, but in my experience, when you do the thing that you know you have to do, I'm going to just get spiritual, the universe aligns behind you to take care of you and protect you.

    Scout: [00:50:45] Can I add one more thing? The universe will align with you eventually.

    Nicole: [00:50:50] That's true. Sometimes it's right away.

    Scout: [00:50:52] Sometimes it's right away.

    Nicole: [00:50:54] Sometimes it's not.

    Scout: [00:50:55] Sometimes it's not.

    Nicole: [00:50:56] But it’s got your back.

    Scout: [00:50:58] It will happen. Yes. I'm in a situation like that right now where I took massive action and made decisions that were difficult for me to make in pursuit of the reality in front of me, as well as realigning myself.

    And it hasn't fully come back to me yet in this new phase. And that's okay, because I am trusting the process. Because every time I've done this in the past, in hindsight, that is what happens. But it's okay if you're listening to this and you feel like you're taking the risk and you feel like you're about to do the thing.

    And,and again, back to like that five year thing, allow time, allow your outer world to catch up with your inner world. Allow the decisions to bear the fruit that you need them to. But know that sometimes it's fast and sometimes it takes a little longer. But trust that that timing perspective is important for your specific eventual outcome.

    Nicole: [00:52:01] Yes, I've had those moments of realignment. This is probably the third or fourth one in my lifetime, and something I can say from that too, is learning that you start to know what it feels like in your body when you made the right choice, but the external reality isn't.

    And so the more you do it, the more you find, oh, right, this is what that feels like. I'm not seeing the thing that I want to outside of me yet. But I felt that before and eventually it did align, even if it did take five years down the road. So it's almost like the more you practice putting yourself into alignment, the better you get at it, and the better you get at sitting through that discomfort.

    Scout: [00:52:34] Yes, the muscle gets strengthened, and I only say that right now because I feel like in today's day and age, with these conversations being had, which are so helpful, and I'm so grateful because as I said, when I was diagnosed, these things didn't exist.

    There's also been a level of where that concept is taken and it's click baited and it's just distilled into something so simple and so fast that when people are trusting those simple, fast insights, they get frustrated and confused why it's not happening for them. When in reality people are coming to the mic and people are coming to Instagram on the other side of things, where it is easier to distill the lesson down into a very quick hour episode, a very quick Instagram quote.

    And so I only say that to bring light to the fact that. That in between is messy, and it's not linear, and it doesn't make sense, and it's not a proven formula. And it works, but the middle is messy, and it's okay if it doesn't happen as fast as an Instagram quote.

    Nicole: [00:53:39] Thank you for that, for acknowledging the messy middle.

    Like you said, you manage your mental illness behind closed doors, you know? People say, God, you're so strong. You seem like you're doing so well on the other side of all of this shit. And it's like, yeah, you don't see the days when I'm like, kind of struggling to get in the shower, eating a lot of macaroni and cheese.

    We both have had those moments. Own it, be in it. And that's where we talked earlier about letting go of your thoughts. You think it means something? Don't believe your thoughts. They're trying to justify something to you that's not true. So just be like self-compassion. That's where it comes from too.

    Scout: [00:54:13] If you're in business. I use that principle all the time. So like if a client doesn't sign or if a client like leaves halfway through, or if I didn't hit a revenue goal or whatever, it doesn't mean anything about my zoomed out level of success and my inevitable success and my future success and the reality of my business.

    It doesn't mean anything. I think we assign so much meaning to the things that don't go our way, you know? Yeah, and it's not true. It's just, oh yeah, that's business.

    Nicole: [00:54:44] And that's releasing attachment, which is, that's really fucking hard. That's really fucking hard.

    So coming full circle. As we wrap this conversation, reflecting on everything that you have shared, everything you have been through, everything that you have learned. I'm curious what being here for me looks like to you, and one piece of advice you have for listeners on how to be here for themselves

    Scout: [00:55:17] Honestly, I don't know if this is cheesy, but…

    Nicole: [00:55:21] Bring it. Bring the cheese.

    Scout: [00:55:21] I could come up with my own line and go on a spiel about, you know, being here for me means living in in my alignment and making decisions based in my personal power and not the comfortable decisions, but the true ones, the truly, truly fulfilled aligned ones.

    But, you know, Frank Sinatra says it's so much better in his song, “My Way”. If I get to the end of all this, I will know I was here for me. If I can say, let the record show, I took the blows and did it my way.

    Nicole: [00:55:54] That's beautiful. And that's what you want everybody to do.

    Scout: [00:55:57] Yeah. Honestly, beyond the women empowerment and all of that, what I really, really want is someone to get to the end of their life and say that exact sentence to themselves, because that, for me, is the definition of a life that was so beautifully expressed and in purpose and in alignment and fulfillment.

    Nicole: [00:56:17] And can I just say that amongst many other things, being in your presence, that's exactly what makes it such a gift, because you see That in everyone, you see their unique gifts, you see the unique path and you guide them, not even formally, just through the work that you do, but through who you are to follow that.

    That's why you are this beacon and the shining light. That's a huge gift to beam into the world.

    Scout: [00:56:41] Thank you.

    Nicole: [00:56:41] Thank you. Thank you for being here and for being you.

    Scout: [00:56:44] Thank you for having me.

    Nicole: [00:56:52] Scout Sobel is an inspiration. A shining example for anyone managing bipolar disorder or any mental illness that makes daily life a challenge.

    In a world that has only recently embraced sharing our mental health journeys and battles more openly, Scout shows us how not only owning her disorder, but embracing it, harnessing it as a superpower can illuminate a path for a life filled with intention and purpose.

    This isn't something typically touted alongside a mental health diagnosis. As Scout originally experienced when she was struggling at school and at work, eventually being deemed unfunctional by her doctors. Her path of prevailing as an entrepreneur, wife, mother, and mentor, especially to others managing mental illness, is a reminder that we are all fighting a hard battle. That there is no one size fits all path to healing. That doing the work means making the hard choices, falling down, and getting back up, over and over and over. That being here for ourselves means we're committed to finding the right mix of tools and modalities to facilitate our healing through trial and error, blood, sweat and tears.

    It means not being afraid of the darkness inside us, turning ourselves inside out to shed light on it. Accepting all parts of ourselves, believing in ourselves, advocating for ourselves, and prioritizing ourselves above anything else.

    As Scout said, mental illness is in many ways a gift, giving her no choice in this matter. If she makes one decision that is out of alignment for her, her bipolar will knock her off her feet. She's learned to take what could have been a crutch, an excuse, and find empowerment in it.

    I walked away from my conversation with Scout, thinking, if she can do this, what excuse do any of us have? Most of us can, in fact, do the thing. The thing that's aligned for us, that's authentic to us. That's screaming for us to look it square in the eyes. Embrace it, embody it, become it.

    Here's what I know. Life never gets easier. It just asks more of us. And the more we fight and conquer, the better we get at rising to the challenges. We know we're prevailing when the battles are uniquely ours, arising from choosing an authentic path. As Sinatra said, the record will show that we took the blows. And as Scout shows us and hopes for herself, for you, for me, for everyone, we'll have prevailed if we did it our way.

    For more information about Scout and the topics discussed in this episode, check out the show notes at hereformepodcast.com.

    Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris, our audio editor, JD Delgado, designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben, and our production assistant, Sarah Carefoot. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening–here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.

Nicole Christie
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