Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Finding Control in Chaos: A Skincare Founder's Journey Through Panic Disorder | Jeanne founder of Figgi Skincare
When Jeanne - Human Design 1/3 emotional projector - first reached out about being featured on the podcast, I was skeptical—what does skincare have to do with wellness? Then we spoke, and I discovered something remarkable: the powerful, rarely-discussed connection between anxiety disorders and skin conditions.
Jeanne shares her raw journey from panic disorder diagnosis to founding Figgy Beauty, a skincare line specifically formulated for sensitive skin using South African rooibos. She clarifies the critical difference between everyday stress and clinical anxiety: "Stress is something that happens to you because of a certain situation, and when that situation is cleared up, the stress goes away. With anxiety, you never come down from that." This persistent state of fight-or-flight sends continuous signals to your nerve endings, many of which lie just beneath the first layer of skin—creating burning, itching, and inflammation.
What makes Jeanne's approach unique is her dual focus on both internal management and external symptoms. Figgi Soul, her educational platform, teaches others how to navigate their anxiety journey, while Figgi Beauty addresses the sensitive skin that often accompanies anxiety disorders. As she beautifully puts it, "I can't cure you. I don't have the golden ticket. But I have learned how to read my manual well, and I can teach you how to read yours."
Ready to explore both the science of anxiety and the soothing power of rooibos skincare? Listen now, and discover how understanding your unique wiring might be the first step toward both inner peace and healthier skin.
Check out Figgi Beauty at figgibeauty.com or connect on IG @figgi.beauty
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. So today I am joined by Jean. She's the founder of Figgy and Figgy Soul, which is a skincare company, and I have to I'm going to let you introduce yourself in a second, but I have to like share a little bit in one second. She's also a one three emotional projector, before I forget that.
Speaker 1:But when, when you first reached out to me, I was like I don't know, do I want to have someone like on a skincare that sells skincare on my podcast? That's not. That's interesting, like why did you reach out to me? And then we hopped on a call and we're chatting and one of the things that I love so much about you and I love so much about having this conversation is that we are talking about two things that I've never heard talked about in the same sentence, which is anxiety, panic disorder and skincare. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with you. I'm going to let you introduce yourself now and then we're going to kind of talk about how those two can even be in the same sentence together.
Speaker 2:Oh cool, Thank you so much. So I'm so happy to be here. I am Jean, the founder of Figgy Beauty and Figgy Soul, and I'm just a panicked overachiever finding my way through life like everybody else.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's true, yeah, we're all trying. We're all trying to figure it out. I also really want to talk about you being a projector, because I know that you know a little bit about human design as well. So we'll get, we'll get all into that, and emotional projector, I mean, there's a lot of pieces, I think, that I would love to bring together, but first of all, let's start at the beginning. How do we, how do we get from anxiety, panic disorder to founding a skincare company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the skincare was really founded out of kind of raw survival instinct. Because when I was diagnosed with panic disorder and I'm sure we will talk about what it is and what it isn't, but, if I can kind of say it in quotation marks, you know I was diagnosed before it was cool for everybody had an anxiety disorder, so it was still very much stigmatized. I came from a background that didn't, that was filled with mental illness but never talked about just very bizarre behaviors. So it was a very difficult diagnosis for me to accept.
Speaker 2:It took a long time to diagnose me correctly and there's a lot about it that I cannot control, which is very hard for me and my personality type and just me as a person, and I needed to find something, no matter how small of my diagnosis, that I could feel I had control over, and one of my biggest external symptoms is very sensitive skin. I'm South African. I know rooibos, the main ingredient we use. I grew up drinking the tea. I grew up with it, using it on my skin, so I knew about this ingredient and I decided well, this is something I think I can do to make me feel like I'm, just like I have one still foot in the storm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh, I love that, and I think a lot of people can relate to finding something out and feeling like you have no control over it and that's so difficult to deal with. And what a powerful way that you moved through that situation or continue to right. It's not like we ever achieve anything. So I'm curious you said you know before before it became popular in quotes, and I really want to. I really want to kind of dive in there, because I agree with you and and, and I think one of my most important messages, especially with anxiety, is that everyone's anxiety is different. So I don't ever want to come from a place of like you are not experiencing this or bringing anyone down in the same breath.
Speaker 1:I also do think that we use the term anxiety very lightly and very loosely today and we use it almost in different meanings, right, like sometimes it's excited, like I'm really anxious to have this conversation with you today, and it's not like I'm like having an anxiety attack. It's that I'm kind of excited to have this conversation with you today, or I was really anxious to go into that meeting, and it's maybe meaning more like nervous. So I'm curious to hear you define what is anxiety. What's a panic disorder, and I would love to start with what is it not? And then, once we define what it's not, then we can define what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, I think I would just like to kind of set the foundation as confirming that it's not at all, that I obviously don't believe there are things like I have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. It's not that I want to take away from somebody's very, very scary experience. I'm just saying that there is a lot of kind of focus on anxiety at the moment in the world that I feel has shifted to a space where those of us that really really really do struggle and have been properly diagnosed have extra challenges to face in trying to exist in this world. So what anxiety is not is, it's for sure, not some kind of pop culture cool word like if you watch these real reality tv shows, how often do you hear somebody saying, oh, you're giving me so such anxiety right now. Or, yeah, I went to my coffee shop and they didn't have my latte and gave me such anxiety. That is not. That is not anxiety.
Speaker 2:And you know we do live in a world where we have been blessed with a myriad of human emotions and not all of them are fun. It's not nice and fun to feel angry or frustrated or irritated or sad or, you know, really sad, and it's also not a great feeling to be super stressed, but it's normal. It's part of the normal frame of human emotion. Stress is a good thing in certain senses, because it activates your fight or flight. It helps you understand when there's danger. It helps you prepare for big moments like that kind of stressed, fluttering feeling you get before a big speech or an important meeting. And it's completely normal to have phases and stages in our lives on a weekly basis where we're more stressed than we are at other times. Right so anxiety is not stress.
Speaker 2:There is a difference between stress and anxiety. Stress is something that happens to you because of a certain situation, and when that situation or something connected to it is cleared up, the stress goes away. So you're really stressed about the speech. When the speech is over, you feel so much better. Over you feel so much better. And of course there can be other instances that overlap with a kind of heightened, chronic period of stress in your life. For example, perhaps you've experienced burnout, perhaps you've gone through a really difficult life change, or perhaps you've just been in a kind of business situation where you've been operating on a very high stress level for a long period of time and you need some intermediate help to help you kind of cross this bridge back into a place of normalcy. But again, like that is chronic or heightened stress. It's not anxiety or heightened stress.
Speaker 1:It's not anxiety.
Speaker 2:Anxiety, on the other hand, is actually anxiety disorder. There are many different types. Those include general anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder. Obsessive compulsive disorder is a type of anxiety, and what differentiates anxiety from stress is where you go down from stress, feeling better when the situation is cleared up. You never, ever, come down from that.
Speaker 2:When you're anxious, it is so intense that you cannot function normally every day because you're always shaking. Every day, because you're you're always shaking, you're always buzzing, you're always concerned and overwhelmed with these constant worries and overwhelming thoughts. And then what happens is your, your body starts sending these fight or flight signals. Right, Everything starts going crazy run, hide, protect yourself. And when that happens to you on a daily basis, when you're never coming down from that, your body starts getting fatigued and it starts getting tired and it starts sending wrong signals because it's confused.
Speaker 2:So you may see something. It may not be stressful to anybody else around you, but your body may interpret it as okay, this is a tiger, it's attacking me. Yeah, that is anxiety, and with that comes an entire life change, because it affects everything in your life. Because it affects everything in your life, you know it has little tentacles that reach out. So you may have gut issues like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease or celiac or you know any other type of gut issue that comes with that anxiety, insomnia, migraine attacks, food sensitivities, having really weird or bizarre symptoms when you get hungry, sensitivity to light, smell, touch, sound that living with that every single day, that is anxiety.
Speaker 1:Thank you that living with that every single day, that is anxiety, thank you. Thank you for defining that and and really kind of shedding light on both of them.
Speaker 1:And again, not that we're negating anyone's situation, and oh, not call it stress, call it anxiety, but, but I do think that it's really important to have these conversations, because we also don't really know what we're going through until somebody shares it with us. And somebody shares and we hear some information about like, oh, maybe this is something that I need to look into or that I need to learn more about. So I think it's really important to have that conversation. I'm curious if you're willing to share a little bit more about your story, how that experience was kind of going through the diagnosis process. But now I mean, this has been when did you found FIGI? Figi was founded in 2022. Okay, yeah, so, yeah, so this has at least been a few years. Um, so how, yeah, how has that journey been from the beginning to where you are now?
Speaker 2:So for me it's been, it was. I've always had issues with anxiety. My entire life I've been. It's affected me.
Speaker 2:For example, I would get so before I understood the difference stressed because that's what I thought it was. I would regularly have, like I had periods where twice a month, I would have, uh, symptoms akin to food poisoning, you know, like I've eaten something wrong, I'd be vomiting, I'd be sick, I wouldn't be able to function for three days and this was all a symptom of my stress. You know, this was just. This is how I operated.
Speaker 2:I was always shaking, I was always overthinking things, I was always, you know, making things so big in my mind, um, but I came from a difficult upbringing with, um, long periods of of sexual abuse, um, a lot of very horrific, deeply rooted generational trauma in my family, undiagnosed mental illnesses, and the message to me was always you're always so sensitive, why are you always stressing so much? Why can't you just be normal? You know, if I would cry, for example, if I was sensitive, I would be told I was once told why are you peeing out of your eyes again? Can't you just get yourself together? So these are the messages that I had and I just figured, I'm wrong. There's nothing medically diagnosable about it. I'm just weird, I'm just wrong. You know there's nothing like medically diagnosable about. I'm just weird, I'm just wrong.
Speaker 2:And with that came the message also, if we come from this history of such intense trauma, what happened to you is bad, but it's not as bad as so listen, stand still, you know, and and one of the favorite things that I was told very often is the world owes you nothing Get up and be stronger and those things kind of settle into you and it becomes your own, it becomes how you define yourself. So when I was properly diagnosed in 2015, I completely ignored it and that's what made it so bad in the breaking 2020 and 2021.
Speaker 2:Because the first thing I thought was well, I cannot have this, because this means I'm like them and I don't want to be like them. And I didn't understand that it's completely different. Like all, mental illnesses are not the same. And also, I found that the group of anxiety disorder I have, which is panic disorder, isn't necessarily genetic. It's born from complex post-traumatic stress, which is, long periods of being exposed to trauma committed by somebody in a position of trust to you, and so small pieces of my life started kind of making sense, you know. And that's how I very difficultly went from being diagnosed, understanding the diagnosis and still today, trying my best to accept it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you said about trauma, which I love having this conversation of trauma is oh, I didn't think like we always compare and we're like, well, mine isn't like this or mine isn't as bad as someone else's and I'm sure you know this, but I don't want to misquote, but I'm pretty sure it's. Gabor Mate is uh, says that trauma isn't what happens to you, it's how you, your body, responds to it. So you and I could go through, and Bessel van der Kolk too, because he did a lot of studies on PTSD and and um veterans, and so two army people, soldiers, could go through the same experience and one has strong symptoms of PTSD and the other doesn't, or they show up some different way, just like you're talking about the anxiety disorders. There's so many different kinds and even I would imagine, if we pull together 10 people that are diagnosed with panic disorder, that they're all going to have different symptoms and they're all going to have different experiences of how they walk through life and past experiences, what happened to them, and we spend so much time.
Speaker 1:I know I resonate with that, not that my story is anywhere similar to yours, but I resonate with the kind of plain downplaying things that I've gone, that have happened to me, that I've experienced in my life, and saying, oh well, it's not as bad as this and why can't I just kind of get over it? Right, and and thankfully I I'm I am so blessed that I didn't have someone telling me that, like why can't you just get over it? I actually had told people telling me it's OK, what you went through and you have to experience, you have to acknowledge it. But I can't imagine, I can't imagine that everyone can resonate with this to some level, especially when we're talking in terms of these uncomfortable emotions. Like you said in the beginning, nobody really wants to experience anxiety, to whatever level you do. Nobody wants to experience panic, nobody wants to experience grief and trauma and processing. You know, these things that maybe have happened to them, that they felt that they had no control over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:It's not easy. It's not easy. So thank you. I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing your story, because it's obviously this is not an easy conversation to have, I would imagine, but thank you, thank you for sharing your story and thank you for shedding light on it, Because I do believe that we do need to have more conversations like this and we need to be open with each other, because it gives other people permission to be open with themselves and say, oh, maybe what I went through was a big deal to me, and maybe it's not a big deal to someone else, but it's a big deal to me and because of that it's important and it's valid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's why it's also so unbelievably important to get properly diagnosed. This was one of my obviously big fears in the beginning. I didn't want to be like, but now I have come to realize that there's a really big chance that if you get diagnosed, you may not have an anxiety disorder, which is wonderful because they can give you other tools to help yourself in this moment. If you do end up having an anxiety disorder, it's also wonderful in a way, because now you get to understand yourself. You get to understand why you are the way you are and what kind of tools you need in your toolkit, without which you wouldn't know. So it's so, so, so, so important to find a doctor, a psychiatrist or psychologist that you resonate with. It's okay to say no and to choose somebody else that you feel comfortable with and get yourself properly diagnosed.
Speaker 1:I love that. So how? How do you feel that that has helped you in your life, in your story?
Speaker 2:I think it has helped me a lot, because it's helped me Like.
Speaker 2:One of the things about this is that you often feel like you're going crazy or you're going insane. You often feel like you are imagining things or maybe it's not as bad as you think, and those thoughts can get extremely intrusive and you can become extremely doubtful. And when you have panic attacks, when you have episodes of panic, all reasonable thought leaves your mind. Like I'm talking to you here now, that doesn't exist at all in that moment and you cannot logically explain to yourself okay, I'm having a panic attack, like my brain is knocking out the alarm gloss, it's sending all of these signs and signals you go to I'm having a heart attack, I'm having a stroke, and you go through that whole process of again, it cannot just be stress. It must be way worse than like anxiety. Anxiety can do this to you way worse than like anxiety. Anxiety can't do this to you. So it's so, so, so important to understand that um and to know what the what, the different parameters are and how you're going to see where you need to go do you mind?
Speaker 1:do you mind sharing some tools that have been very helpful and supportive for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for me, one of the tools that have been really good for me is, first and foremost, finding a psychiatrist I feel comfortable with. For me, in the beginning, I had a very I went. It took a year to diagnose me correctly. I went through all the tests I was with a cardiologist, I was with a neurologist, I was with a gastroenterologist, so everything was tested before they diagnosed me with this, which was great because they ruled out him. Um, but I did find that I think I had three psychiatrists before I I have the one that's walked the longest path with me, and the reason for that was just that I never felt good if I was in a situation where the consultation was super fast and the first thing they almost said is you have anxiety, here's medication. Yeah. So you know, make sure they take the time to speak with you, to ask questions, to discover, to make an effort to understand if there's something else they can do for you. Is this really it? Have they done all the tests? That's something that helped me a lot, because that gives you in your calmer moments, the peace of mind that you need to be able to tell yourself okay, this is what's happening to me when these things happen. This is how I am wired. It's been confirmed. I understand what I can do to help myself.
Speaker 2:And then the second part of that, once you know this, is to start identifying your triggers. What's triggering your? So anxiety attacks are different from panic attacks. Not all anxiety disorders look the same. For me specifically, I needed to find out what is triggering my panic attacks, and then there are things that I realized I don't do well with, like, for example, large crowds, big noises and a lot of flashing lights. I can't get hungry. I need to have kind of physical exertion every day. With that, keeping in mind that there are some triggers that I will never fully understand, that come back from subconscious trauma which you can't stop. But those were the two biggest things for me finding that doctor that really takes the time to understand and then figuring out what your triggers are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. And and, yeah, understanding that sometimes we don't know what the triggers are and that's okay. You have in.
Speaker 1:In the beginning, I shared your a one three emotional projector and and one part of that you and I both are one threes is our profile and the one line, yeah, so I think we have some I'm a one three sacral manifesting generator, though so, uh, different, but the, the profile is the same, and one of the things that I love that you keep reiterating is uh is for me, like my language is is that that one line coming out, because the one line is the investigator. And I do really well when I can understand something. So if I have, like you're saying, like once you have the diagnosis, or once I figured out these triggers, or once I did the research on this medication or whatever it is like, the investigator does really well with data and and and investigating and researching. It's also called a researcher, so I don't know. That's just really interesting to me and I love that.
Speaker 1:And and for me, I'm very much the same way. I think that we have similarities, especially when you shared with your the skincare portion of. I want to be able to feel like I'm in control in some way, and I think that that's pretty normal for a lot of people. We want to feel in control of our lives and everyone has that different sliding scale of how much control they need to hold and how much surrender they're able to give, and so being able to have some sort of like, to me it's a, it is a control thing when I can understand the science or the diagnosis or the reason behind something. That is calming to me in in general, just just knowing and understanding if that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I want to talk skincare because I am curious. I mean, you gave us a little teaser of it was something that you could control and, having very sensitive skin, you and I are approaching this from a different perspective. I just have sensitive skin Like I grew up. I was born with, born with I don't know. I even as a baby my mom says I had really dry, sensitive skin and she tried everything Like she tried the natural things, she tried what the doctors suggest, she tried lotions and oils and you know coconut oil and baby oil and all of it and everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 1:So growing up and I've had a different degrees, I used to have more psoriasis and I would get patches on my face or on my hands of really dry skin, and now it's kind of like a little more equalized. But I still do have pretty sensitive skin and I'm very mindful of what I put on my skin, especially ingredients, wise, um. So I had the gift of trying these skincare products and I absolutely love them, I do have to say, because I have very dry skin. One of the things that I love the most is that it's moisturizing, like even the face wash. I've used face washes before that you wash your face and then you feel like tight, you're like my skin is already so dry and now I have to lather on so much moisturizer and then you go to bed and you wake up and your skin is dry again. So I really do love that, love that there's no smell, like literally no smell.
Speaker 1:A lot of things say unfragranced and then they still have a smell. But this like you. You're like, are you putting? If you couldn't feel anything, you wouldn't know that you're putting anything on your face because you can't smell it at all. Um, so I really do love those two things. But I just went on a tangent talking about the skincare. What's my question?
Speaker 2:Tell me about it.
Speaker 1:Tell me about this skincare and then I'll tell you more things that I love. But, thank, thank you, for I really do, I really do love, I really do love the product so far. They're super in line with what my skin needs too, which is oh.
Speaker 2:I'm so happy you enjoyed them, and it's great to hear that.
Speaker 2:Because, too which is, oh, I'm so happy you enjoyed them and it's great to hear that because, um figgy is specifically made for dry, sensitive skin. We don't advertise as anything else We've had many times where people ask us I have oily skin and can I use it? I I mean, if you want to use it and you have a great experience with it, I love that for you, but I'm never going to recommend it to you because we really really formulated it for dry and sensitive skin and that's what you were talking about with a cleanser as well, because I completely stand by my double cleanse, but for somebody with dry, sensitive skin, that can be a lot for your skin to handle. So I wanted it to be a cleanser duo that didn't leave your skin completely stripped but clean. So it's interesting that you say that, because a lot of times when people try the products, especially at events or trade shows, they're often confused when we then give them the moisturizer, because after they've tried the cleanser, they think they've had the moisturizer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could see that. For sure, I love that.
Speaker 2:And I like the double cleanse. Yeah yeah, the double cleanse is something that took quite a while to formulate, but what's really special about our products is that it's made with rooibos tea. Have you ever had rooibos tea?
Speaker 1:I haven't. I know what it is, but I think I've had like maybe something that uh, rooibos tea. Have you ever had rooibos tea? I haven't, I know what it is, but I I think I've had like maybe something that has rooibos in it, but I've never straight up.
Speaker 2:So if you have the chance to actually have straight up pure south african rooibos tea, you should try it.
Speaker 2:And I mean south africans, we grow up with this Like that's the first thing you get in your baby bottle after mommy's milk, right, because this they call it a tea, but it's actually a herb, so you're actually drinking a herbal brew.
Speaker 2:It's not from the Camillus sinensis plant and it has decades of scientific research behind it, like from all corners of the world. And if you drink it as a tea, it's been proven to be cancer preventative because of its very unique anti-inflammatory properties. It's been proven to help prevent heart disease, diabetes They've just finished new tests with it that proves that it is an intense help to irritable bowel syndrome, again because of this inflammation, um, and it's a very unique antioxidant. So it only grows in a very small part of south africa, specifically in that region, and it has a polyphenol structure or structure to the plant that no other plant or species on earth has. And we actually had an issue where france tried to reproduce it and plant it and sell it as rooibos and south africa won the court case to say that you can't do that because as soon as you take it out of that specific region, it loses all of its magical properties. It's not the same.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have any of those abilities yeah it has to grow in that soil, in that climate. Um, and we want the protected designation of origins. So you know it's, it's just so well researched. Also, as a topical application, we use it for baby bum creams because it's so good at soothing sensitive skin. It's a natural antimicrobial, um, if you're struggling with acne. Um, it's, it's moisturizing. So all of our products contain rooibos. Um, for that, extra, extra, super sensitive you know, something I am interested to see.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe I've been using it two weeks now, um, but I will say, in the past I I typically like sometime around my cycle, like a week before my cycle, I'll get some like just a couple little acne bumps or whatever. So I am curious to see, after using it for a month or so or more, if that happens, if that happens, to go away too with you just, oh, I would be so interested to know.
Speaker 2:I mean, we do have to understand that there are also obviously internal things that affect our skin that no skincare product can ever cure, unfortunately. But it does help to avoid putting things on sensitive skin that has been scientifically proven to upset sensitive skin. So that goes back to what you said. It really has no smell and the reason for that is most sensitive skincare products are fragrance free, but they are filled with essential oils and, unfortunately, if you have sensitive skin, you can be very sensitive to that because it comes from plants, botanicals, fruits, fruits, and it's very highly concentrated and these plants and botanicals have their own natural fragrances that upset your skin and the fruits have natural exfoliating acids which you should absolutely avoid if you have sensitive skin yeah, yeah, and I haven't.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's been a few, a few products that I found over the years that obviously work, but I don't always love I think I was telling you this in the beginning. I've tried the natural stuff and sometimes they just still smell, like I'm like we don't need that strong of a scent. Whatever it is I don't even know what was in my, in my stuff, but it is. It is really great. Um, so, yeah, we have a double cleanser moisturizer. I was curious and I should have looked on your website. But how about, like eye stuff? What about the anti-aging stuff? Do you have anything in there, ingredients wise or product wise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what you got is the SensiSoul regimen, and the whole point of that is going back to the absolute basics, which is really what you need when you have sensitive skin. Unfortunately, as sensitive souls, we just can't do all those intense, targeted treatments. We have to bring our skin back to a good basis, so cleanse and moisturize, and we recently launched our two new products. One is the miracle mist, which just won the universal beauty awards silver award for best toning mist of 2025, so we're super happy. Um, yeah, it's our highest concentration rooibos and it's. You can use it as a hydrating refresher.
Speaker 2:I use it for bug bites, eczema outbreaks on my little girl, to set your makeup to tone. It's really like an all-rounder. And then the second one is our slow glow serum, and that is our first say anti-aging for sensitive skin, because I absolutely cannot tolerate retinol. I get the worst effects from it. Um, so this serum it took two years to develop and it has the lowest percentage of retinol of any serum on the market. And it has a very special form of retinol which has to go through a little process in your skin before it gets absorbed to do the things that it does. So it takes out that immediate kind of harshness and inflammation and it's, as I say, a super low percentage.
Speaker 1:And we combine that with the rooibos and barrage seed oil to still calm and soothe and then it helps with your dark spots and uneven skin tone and since we launched that one, we also won the award for emerging indie brand of the year wow, oh my gosh, are we allowed to say what you shared with me about launching into a different store?
Speaker 2:yes, of course. Yes, yes, um, tell us. We're opening our we launched in the uk and we're opening our own store in Scotland in two weeks, so that would be the 17th of April.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you. I love all of this. I also really love the science. I actually one of my previous lives I worked for a skincare company. So learning the and I love learning that's part of the one line too so like not related necessarily to my business, but learning the science behind ingredients and formulations and like how to create. I mean not that I know anything really about it, but I love learning about it and I really like how we can. I really really like how this is targeted towards sensitive skin, because I have not come across like you said. They market it's for sensitive skin and I would try it and it wouldn't. Thing for me is I go to bed and feel moisturized and then I wake up and I feel very dry and I don't like nobody likes to have their skin feel dry.
Speaker 1:It's just not a comfortable feeling, um, so I don't like that. I don't like waking up and feeling like my skin is. I have to immediately run to the bathroom and like put more moisturizer on, or you make it through halfway through your day and you have your you know your makeup on and then you're like scratching your face because your skin's so dry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a horrible feeling.
Speaker 2:And also just to maybe explain that kind of connection between anxiety and how your skin acts, because you were talking about your psoriasis and the reason why anxiety is linked to that is because when you go into such a period of stress, your brain dumps a whole bunch of cortisol and adrenaline into your body and that tells your body fight, you know, get ready, be aware. And it sends all of these signals to your nerve endings to be ready, and all of your most sensitive nerve endings are just beneath the first layer of skin. So your brain's getting confused, it's sending all of these signals, your nerve endings are starting to fire and that's why you get this uncomfortable sensation of burning, itching, redness. If you have psoriasis or eczema, shingles, um, you may notice that it's worse when you're super stressed because of that whole process going through your body, causing that inflammation and making it worse, or or breakouts even, um, so it's really such a connected process that we don't think about there's there's such a connection between the mind and the skin, which we often forget is our largest organ.
Speaker 2:We're so concerned with the heart and the liver and the kidneys and the gut, but it's our largest organ, so it only makes sense that it would be one of those most affected by whatever is happening in the mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for explaining that. So let's let's then talk about Figgy Soul, because that is your community platform, and I imagine that there's a lot of fun teachings of what you just shared, similar to what you just shared connecting skin and or other symptoms, right like you mentioned your gut health and all of that too. So can you tell me a little bit about that community?
Speaker 2:yeah, so figgy soul is an online learning platform and that speaks purely to how to deal with an anxiety disorder or a heightened level of stress. So it's a dualistic approach.
Speaker 2:The skincare looks at the external one of the external symptoms, which is sensitive skin, and then Figgy Soul looks at the inner, the soul, the spirit, the mind, and it's based on my own journey. I present the courses and I take you literally from the breaking, from the moment where you're diagnosed or you go through this big shift in your life, or maybe you had burnout or whatever it is from the moment you're there where you're so broken that you absolutely do not know what's going on. Should you see a doctor? Shouldn't you? Who should you talk to? What questions should you be asking? No-transcript, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:I wish I could, but I can't cure you. I don't have the cure, I don't have the golden ticket, I don't have the answer. If I did, I wouldn't be in this situation. But I have learned how to read my manual well and I can teach you how to read yours so that you can be the best that you can be with the way that you are wired. Because I think we're continuously getting this message, when you're diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, that you are somehow wrong, you're broken, you're not functioning the way you should be functioning, and I used to believe that too, and I just simply don't anymore, because nothing I do is going to change the way that I have been made, so I need to understand how do I work with that?
Speaker 1:I like that you know that's a big, that's a big pillar of my business is in my community is that there's so many people out there gonna tell you, like, what the right answer is, what the golden ticket is for whatever to find business success, to cure your anxiety disorder, to find the right person, whatever the topic is.
Speaker 1:There's so many people out there that are kind of spurting out this is, this is the answer.
Speaker 1:And we're so individual, we have so many differences and there's no possible way that I could tell you what the right thing is for you.
Speaker 1:But I can share what the right thing is, what things have worked for me, and teach you how to like in my line of work, how to look at your human design and how to use those tools, how you're uniquely created and designed and then how you can continue to build your life whatever you want to do. So I really love that about Figgy and I know that I could have used you a couple years ago. Like, I know that there's so many people out there when we're struggling, we don't know where to turn, especially if it's something new and scary or throwing us off, and that's one of the reasons that I have these podcasts is because we have to. We have to talk more about how you know our stories and how we can help, and and I love that you created this platform and this community, um, that not only looks on the outside but also looks on the inside and has these, these views, beautiful juicy nuggets I can imagine that it's a really great platform and so often platform and so authentic too.
Speaker 1:I find you very authentic.
Speaker 1:I feel like I could talk to you forever. Um, I want to talk about. I want to pull up your oh, yeah, okay, this makes sense. Um, I want to pull up your human design chart. What I was just saying makes sense. I hate when people do that. So I've not talked about this and this is actually not what I was going to talk about, but I want to point something out because I think it's really cool. I was pulling up your human design chart and we have what's called an incarnation cross, and our incarnation cross is kind of like our life's purpose. Did you ever dive into this? When you dove into human design? A?
Speaker 1:little bit, but it wasn't explained to me in in detail, like this is all new to me, okay, okay so this is a very small part of human design, but in my opinion, we don't talk about it enough, and I think that we should. One of the reasons probably the biggest reason we don't talk most human design people don't publicly talk about it is because, like, there's five energy types, there's only five different energy types, incarnation crosses. There's like thousands of incarnation crosses, so I can't tell you what your incarnation cross means like by itself, without doing like an in-depth kind of conversation, but what I can tell you is our incarnation cross is our life purpose, so one of the fun things to do is like go Google your incarnation cross. It says the right angle, cross of planning, three. So there's not just like planning, there's like one, two, three, a bunch of them, um, and you can Google it and read it, and it will kind of, as you're reading it, lean into what resonates with you, what kind of stands out with, where you have kind of built your life and how you're aligning to your purpose.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I was looking at, though, is we either have a right angle or a left angle. We only have one or two, so the right angles and I am a right angle as well is we do really well. Part of our life purpose is to actually share what we've personally experienced, and we will experience a lot, and one invitation that we have in human design, in our life I mean looking at our human design is that we have that invitation to share what we've experienced, especially with the three line in human design which you also have, that trial and error, especially our trial and error, especially our failures, because our failures always lead us to right here, right now, how we got here. It might've taught us what doesn't work. It might taught us we might have had a couple of failures to then find what does work, but we never really fail right, we always just learn and we can't ever really fail. So the right angles is sharing from a more personal. This is exactly what I went through and this is what helped me versus left angles are more general, like just for the people I guess you could explain it that way.
Speaker 1:Um, so, when you're talking, that's what I, when I said I want to pull up your chart. Oh, that makes sense, is a right angle and and that to me is like confirmation for myself I'll just speak for myself that I'm living in alignment. When I learned my incarnation cross and I learned, I reflected, on how I lead my business. I'm never here to tell you what the right thing is. All I can tell you is what's worked for me and what resonates with me, and those are human design, cycle alignment, breath work, um, podcasting, having conversations with people. That works for me and I'm going to give you that invitation because I've experienced it. Um, so that's a little bit about your design chart.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. Thank you for sharing that with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely Google your incarnation cross, because it can be really powerful. So thank you so much for coming on. I have one more question, but before we do our last question, where can people find you? Where do you hang out? How can they try? If you're listening and you're like I have dry, sensitive, sensitive skin please give me these skincare products where. Where can people connect?
Speaker 2:so, uh, you can go to figgybeautycom and, uh, there you'll find the skincare and figgy soul. And to celebrate our launching in target in april, we have, for the rest of the month of april on our website, an offer where you can try before you buy the skincare. So you can go, you can order it, you can get it, you can use it for a week and if you like it, the it will get paid, and if not, you don't pay. So you can go and try that, um. And you can find us on instagram at figgybeauty um. And if you're in the UK, you can obviously come to our store and also find us online there.
Speaker 1:Ma'am, maybe I'll just plan a trip to the UK. I've always wanted to go to Scotland, so maybe we'll use that as an excuse. Thank you for coming. The last question is if you had, you're standing on a stage and you have a microphone and you have the opportunity to share one message with the world, what would that message be?
Speaker 2:please let me help you if you need it. I mean, that's just really an heartfelt, open invitation. I feel like so many of us are seeking, but we don't know where to find, and if you are seeking, I may be able to help you I love that.
Speaker 1:I, like so many of us, are seeking, but we don't know where to find. We don't, yeah, but we will find the right people when I believe we'll find the right people when we need it. And hopefully this I know that this episode will speak to a lot of people and we'll find the right people.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on. This is a really great conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'm so glad to be here.