Elyse Myers Tells ‘Real Pod’ Why She Stopped Trying To ‘Fix’ Herself

Elyse Myers has more than 12 million followers, a new book, and claims to have something most of us are still chasing—actual peace. On Real Pod with Victoria Garrick Browne, the internet’s favorite comfort creator explains why she’s done trying to “fix” herself and has started letting herself just be human. 

The shift touches everything. She’s pulled her husband and kids off her page. She turns down almost every brand deal. And when it comes to self-love, she’s over performative positivity. “I just want to be like, there I am…I’m happy to be here.” 

Elyse Myers Reveals The Steps She Took to Finally Feel Calm

“I’m gonna have a panic attack now”

For most of her life, Myers tried to think her way out of anxiety. She’d analyze every moment, retrace every thought, and try to find a reason—as if knowing the “why” could stop it from ever happening again. But now, she handles it differently. When she feels the wave coming, she names it. “I’m gonna have a panic attack now,” she tells her husband, Jonas. “And he goes, ‘OK.’ And then I have it, and it finishes, and I’m like, ‘OK.’ Then I go back to watching TV.”

It’s simple, but radical—letting the body do what it needs to without trying to control or explain it. “I have anxiety…whether I understand why it’s happening or I don’t, it’s a clinical, like chemical thing in my body that sometimes it’s just gonna happen.”

She’s stopped journaling about every episode or trying to “fix” her feelings. Instead, she lets them crest and fall, like a wave that passes on its own. “The freedom of just going with it and being like, ‘I’m just gonna have a panic attack.’ OK, it’s done. And then I just go back to watching Below Deck.”

She stopped giving the Internet her whole life

When Myers took a break from social media, it wasn’t part of a grand rebrand. It was survival. Her son was diagnosed with a heart condition, and she suddenly found herself processing that in front of millions of strangers. “It feels like you all of a sudden, something bad happens at this party in your house, and there’s 12 million people in your house, and all of a sudden the lights come on,” she says. “You’re like, holy shit, now I have to get all these people out of my house and fix this.”

That moment was her wake-up call. When she returned online, she decided to share a lot less of her personal life. “I don’t want to be home thinking about other people, about strangers when I’m home,” she explains. Her office is where she creates; her home is where she rests. “When I’m here, my brain is creatively switched on…and then I go home and I’m home.”

Now, she’s clear about the line between content and connection. “I don’t look at my husband and think like, when is our next date night video gonna be?” she says. The photos she takes aren’t for followers anymore—they’re for her. “That photo is for me and him.”

And Myers knows some people miss seeing her family, but she’s okay with that. “People are like, where did your family go? Are you divorced? Are you in another state? And I totally understand…but yeah, pulling back how much I share of the personal side of my life…has been really helpful for me because I feel like I have more of a personal life now.”

Boundaries are the new flex

Myers has zero interest in the “do it all” influencer life. While most creators would chase every opportunity that hits their inbox, she’s intentionally doing the opposite. “I work with maybe one out of every 50 that come into my inbox because I’m not doing this to be busy,” she says. 

Myers left a career in web development not to work more, but to live more. “I picked this job over my web development career because it opened up my schedule,” she explains. “It helped me be home more, and I had to, I got to work less and I made more money.” Success, for her, is being able to say no without guilt. “What I’m not going to do is load my schedule up with a bunch of shit that takes me away from my family when I picked this life to be home more with my family.”

That mindset extends far beyond her career. She’s no longer trying to please everyone or prove her worth through productivity. Her metric for success is peace. Every decision runs through one simple filter: “Is this really what I want to be doing right now? No? Then I’m not gonna add it to my schedule.”

Body neutrality over hype in the mirror

For Myers, self-acceptance doesn’t look like morning mantras—it looks like peace. She’s tried the whole “stand naked in the mirror and hype yourself up” thing, but it never landed. “I tried to do the self-love, the body positivity thing for me and like stand in front of a mirror and like worship my body and be like, ‘Yes, I’m so f*cking hot, dude,’” she says. “And I do say that to myself because I love saying that to myself…but I think more than anything, I just want to be here, cause how great is that? I’m just here.”

It’s refreshing. She doesn’t need to feel amazing about her body every day, and that’s fine. “I just want to be like, there I am. I’m happy to be here.” That perspective also reshapes what she values in herself and others. “It assigns too much value to something that is pretty not valuable,” she says of obsessing over appearance. “You’re f*cking smart, you’re funny, you’re incredibly talented.”

Getting diagnosed gave her clarity

Myers spent most of her life being called “obsessive.” Teachers, friends, even family chalked up her hyperfixations as quirks or overreactions. It wasn’t until adulthood that she learned there was a reason. “Getting diagnosed as autistic has really changed my life,” she says. “And I did not think it would.”

The process was long, uncomfortable, and at times painful, but it gave her a language for things she’d spent years blaming herself for—and, just as importantly, it helped her better support her children. “If there is a diagnosis in a parent, then it makes a child’s diagnosis a lot easier to get into the waitlists,” she explains.

But Myers doesn’t see it as a label that boxes her in. Instead, it helped her design a life that actually fits. One of her favorite examples is sweet and simple. Her husband, Jonas, quietly orders ramen spoons off Amazon because she’s in a ramen phase. “He’s like, ‘Here ‘cause I know that you’re into ramen right now…we might as well have the proper utensils to eat with.’ Like, I love him.”

It’s small, but it captures everything Myers is learning—how to be known, supported, and understood without needing to overexplain.

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