Elizabeth Olsen opens up about past mental health issues.
Opening in a new interview with The Guardianreleased on Sunday, September 29, the actress, 35, highlighted how she relates to her character Christina – who finds peace through breathing exercises and meditation – in the 2023 Netflix film. His three daughters.
“I went through phases of it,” Olsen said of anxiety and panic attacks during her 20s. “Determining what suits me or what works well enough. Nobody was talking about panic attacks in the mid-2000s.”
She added: “I thought it meant you just write a list, tick things off and get over it. I didn’t know it was something you had no control over, but I had to figure out how to have control.”
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Elizabeth Olsen at the 2023 Academy Awards March 12, 2023
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Explaining that there were times when she had panic attacks multiple times a day, she added, “Almost every hour!”
“It was literally, every time there was a change in something: hot to cold, hungry to full. I thought, ‘Oh, is this OK?’ And then it would spiral and it just became a habit,” she continued.
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Talking about how she overcame the attacks, Olsen said she would “stop the thought process” and name anything she saw in her head to stop it.
Having not had a panic attack since, the star added: “You learn very quickly who you feel comfortable with and who you don’t.”
Meanwhile, back in 2022, Olsen opened up about how intense her panic attacks were.
Talking to Diversitythe WandaVision star said she experienced seizures while living in New York at the age of 21.
“I remember that I would get [panic attacks] on the hour every hour,” she said at the time. “I lived on 13th Street between 6th and 7th. I was crossing 6th Avenue at 14th Street and realized I couldn’t cross the street — I was standing against the wall and I thought I was going to drop dead at any moment.”
She continued by noting, “If I went from cold to hot, hot to cold, full to hungry, hungry to full — any change in my body, my whole body thought, ‘Uh oh, something’s wrong!’ And I just started spiraling.
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Source: HIS Education