Tay Lautner Talks Mental Health, Self-Care and Skin Care

Tay Lautner—host of The Squeeze podcast—is a rising voice in the wellness and mental health space, cultivating a loyal following across platforms via her raw authenticity, openness and willingness to share her personal journey with anxiety and self-worth. Far more than an engaging podcast host (she is also a registered nurse who served on the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic), Lautner aims to bring compassion and real-world experience to everything she does, using her platform to champion self-care, empower women and promote honest, intentional living. Whether she’s breaking down insights from therapy, reflecting on the challenges of navigating a public marriage or simply sharing a candid life moment, her mission remains unwavering—to help others feel seen and supported.

You have a huge mental-health summit coming out this week. Are you all ready to go?

“This is going to be the first real big community event that we’ve done. I am just so excited because I love being with people. I’m such a people person. Getting people together to talk and learn about mental health truly just really, it gets me going. It gets me excited. This is going to be a one-day event where basically, we’re just going to have different panels talking about a range of mental health topics from grief to addiction, anxiety, women’s mental health, motherhood, identity and just everything in between. I’m such a believer that coming together and having that human-to-human interaction is really necessary. I’m truly so pumped for it.”

I think it’s fair to say you are an expert in wellness and mental health and everything that comes along with that. How do you go about your own day when you are feeling overwhelmed, or when you just want to get away from the day and go to sleep? What are some of the things in your toolbox that you rely on?

“I definitely have a lot of them depending on the day and what’s going on. I always say…if I’m having a busy work-from-home day, and I’m on back-to-back calls or meetings, whatever it may be, when I start to feel a little overwhelmed, I love going in, laying outside, just literally on the concrete, like getting some sunshine. I think that there’s just a beauty in laying there and not being on your phone, just like five minutes even. Just getting a little sweat going. Getting your heart rate up, feeling the sun, and just taking a moment to pause and breathe.

I do that truly so often my husband laughs at me because we have lounge chairs and furniture in our backyard, and I’ll fully just lay on the cement and he’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m grounding.” It sounds so silly, but I am truly such a believer in grounding techniques or anything like that. I think that would probably be my biggest one, which is something that is pretty accessible to most people because it doesn’t really require anything. Only thing it requires is the sun, but also just being outdoors, off of your phone is great too.

Just really trying to prioritize the time to close the laptop, turn the phone on do not disturb, not looking at emails, not looking at social media, just really disconnecting from electronics. Having that time because we live in a world where everything is on our phone, not even just our social life, but our work life is all on our phone. We put this expectation on ourselves to reply right away, to be available 24/7, when that’s not how it used to be, so making sure that there is some time where I’m not available to people.”

I love that. I just removed my email from my phone, which most likely won’t last, but I’m trying. For now, it just means running to my laptop every minute.

“That’s so good! I am jealous! I think that is a great idea.”

It is something anyone can do…self-care is part of wellness, and not to water it down, but how does beauty play into your self-care and wellness routine?

“I am the biggest self-care advocate—especially when it comes to beauty products and self-care products. I think it’s partially because I grew up with an aesthetician as a mother…so I’ve been around skin care for a very long time. I love doing a full face wash and putting the products on. Every morning, I do the whole thing; I’ll wash my face, I put on the toner, and then I do the moisturizer. I don’t do makeup, but just having that moment of skin care is a moment for you—you’re not on your phone and you’re just focusing on what you’re doing. It can be very soothing.

I also love putting on an LED face mask for the same reason—because I can’t be on my phone, and I can just lay there and I can still talk or listen to a TV show that my husband and I are watching. It just makes you lay there.

Skin care is something that’s fun; I’m all for the little things with self-care, whether it’s the under-eye patches in the morning when I’m having my coffee or anything that’s in my routine on the regular. I like being able to say: ‘Okay, I’m getting myself set and ready for the day.’ So, yes, I feel like beauty and skin care really go hand-in-hand with self-care.”

They do. I love that answer. Your life is out there with the podcast and with the social media, but are there any days you just check out…is there anything you don’t share? Is there anything that’s just for you?

“Yes, that’s a good question. I feel like I was actually just talking about this with someone recently…it’s so funny because I don’t give much value to press or how many likes I get. I don’t put value into the views and stuff like that. I genuinely do like social media because it’s fun or whatever, but it is crazy to think about how much of my life is on the internet.

I recently had a little weekend with my parents, celebrating my dad’s birthday, and just little things like that…I never share my parents online because it’s just something that’s special to me. Same with my family and my close friends. Obviously, I will, if there’s a TikTok we want to do and have fun, but it’s really changed my perspective on valuing my family and friends, and having that intimate time together—time that is not being shared on the internet, whatever it may be.

Mental health-wise, if I’m struggling with something, I will totally talk about it. For some reason, that’s not a secret thing for me to talk about. I feel so comfortable opening up and sharing what I’m going through, but when it comes to my family and friends, I’d love to keep that to myself.”