For Samantha Bee, following the news is her job. That's why consumption guardrails are so important for her mental health.

The Unwind is Yahoo Life’s well-being series in which experts, influencers and celebrities share their approaches to wellness and mental health, from self-care rituals to setting healthy boundaries to the mantras that keep them afloat.

From 2016 to 2022, comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee put her nose to the grindstone helming her late-night show, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. After seven seasons, the award-winning TBS program was canceled last year. And while Full Frontal is much missed, there is one silver lining for Bee, who is finding “it’s a little easier” now to hold certain boundaries that are essential to her mental well-being.

“I definitely often falter, but I actually have a very robust knowledge of my own boundaries,” Bee tells Yahoo Life. “And I really am quite religious about keeping them firmly in place.” Specifically, Bee says she’s “pretty strict” about family time and “guardrails around social media and screen time.” As a mom who has three children with husband (and fellow former Daily Show correspondent) Jason Jones, “I definitely need to step away from chaos,” she notes.

That was something Bee admits was “very challenging to keep on a path” with when Full Frontal was on the air. “I’m a very, very early riser,” she says. “So past 7:30 [at night], I'm just not making good decisions no matter what. I can't think straight, my vision’s blurry. I don't know what the hell is going on. I really need to be progressing toward being horizontal in my bed. I need to be, like, en route to sleep by 7:30.”

Yet, “when you’re running a big operation like that, it's hard to be like, ‘Don't text me after 7:30,’” she says. "A writer or producer might be just producing something or editing at 9 at night, because that's the schedule that works for them. Or there's this tight deadline. And so I had to transgress those boundaries pretty much every day. And it was very challenging for everyone. We all were pushed to our personal limits.”

Although unplugging in the evenings is coming more naturally these days, Bee is, like many of us, no stranger to falling down a rabbit hole while looking at the news. “I went abroad for work just for a couple of days,” Bee shares. “And I was fiendishly on my phone at the breakfast — by myself with poached eggs in a beautiful room. It was so nice there, and I was on the New York Times, scrolling, scrolling. Even my body language was hunched over, and I'm sure I had deep creases in my face — just like intense phone work. At one point, I looked up, and literally, I was the only person in a pretty full place doing that. And I felt like such an idiot. I actually felt ashamed. I was like, ‘Oh, do I not know that I could just take 20 minutes and enjoy these eggs? I don't need to know what is happening every second.’”

Ultimately, Bee felt like that “kernel of shame” was useful for her. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ll feel it. These people [around me] are doing something right that I should emulate for a couple of minutes.’”

While she aims for “effortless mindfulness," Bee still believes it’s important to be invested in world events. “It's OK to care,” she says. “You have to care. And you have to know. You have to pay attention. I'm not suggesting that we can all tra-la-la through the fields and ignore the depths of what is happening in this world. But it is not that effective if you're completely strung out all the time.”

Another way to cope is by finding opportunities to make a difference, points out Bee. It’s something she’s been focused on while working on The Defenders, a Lemonada Media podcast she is co-hosting alongside ABC News correspondent Gloria Riviera that focuses on reproductive rights and spotlights heroes helping women to access safe abortion care.

“The extra juice, the thing that makes me love the project, even more than I thought was possible, is that there is a really positive message to it,” she says of The Defenders. “It’s framed in a way to feature the unexpected heroes in the fight to help people access their proper health care. The people who run abortion funds to providers to pilots who donate their planes to help women cross state lines [and] faith leaders shifting dialogues in their communities. We're hearing from the most amazing people in the podcast, and that actually brings me lightness.”

Though the news is “so dire,” Bee is grateful for the chance to connect with people doing meaningful work. “When [I] look for the helpers all around, it makes me feel stronger,” she explains. “It makes me feel like, ‘OK, I can help too. Maybe I didn't realize how bad it was. Maybe I should do more. Maybe I can do this little thing.’ It's very helpful in that regard [and] gets you out of the constant weakness. It is solutions-oriented.”

And when she’s ready to take a timeout altogether, Bee — a self-described “homebody” — cooks and bakes. “The process of it requires your attention [and] having to follow a recipe or a sequence of events, for me is very unwinding, because I have to get outside of whatever primal feelings I'm having to just focus on making the thing,” she says. “Working with your hands even a little bit is, for me, very helpful. It's like a meditation in a way.”

Bee also prioritizes challenging cardio workouts as a way to blow off steam. “I will do a hard-ass spin class,” the comedian says. “It is an almost demonic intensity that I bring to it. I go into the darkened room, and I sweat beyond what I thought was physically possible.”

Bee finds that moving her body daily makes a huge difference for her mood. “[I’m] truly a different person on days when I don't do some form of cardio exercise, like either a really long walk or intense exercise,” she says. “There are days when I just do more stretching. But something physical has to happen [or] I will definitely feel that at 8 [p.m.]. I'll be like, ‘Why do I feel this way? Right, because I didn't do anything with this old janky body. I didn't put her through anything. There was no resistance to anything I did.’ I get anxious or grumpy, just like a bad mood.”

On the flip side, moments in which Bee finds herself cracking up with her family is a natural boon for her mental health. “My husband’s really funny,” she says. “We have three children. They are very funny, so it's like the amniotic fluid that surrounds us. We eat dinner together, and we just end up either laughing — or my son yells at everybody for making crumbs. He hates crumbs on the floor so much, and then, he whips out a special vacuum we bought him. We all watch him operating his stick vacuum, and you can't not love it. We’re always trying to find ways to laugh.”