Answer Addiction

Tag: panic attacks

  • Gina Rodriguez Stepped Away From "Jane The Virgin" To Focus On Mental Health

    Gina Rodriguez Stepped Away From "Jane The Virgin" To Focus On Mental Health

    Rodriguez said she had to advocate for herself to protect her mental health.

    Actress Gina Rodriguez recently expanded on her experience with depression and anxiety, and how she was finally able to advocate for her own mental health by stepping away from filming Jane the Virgin.

    During a conversation with NBC News’s Kate Snow at The Kennedy Forum in Chicago, Rodriguez was prompted to speak about her personal battles when Snow’s husband Chris Bro shared his experience of losing his father to suicide.

    “I think I started dealing with depression around 16,” said Rodriguez. “I started dealing with the idea of—that same concept that I think your husband was talking about—(that) everything is going to be better when I’m gone. Life will be easier, all the woes will be away, all the problems. Then I wouldn’t have to fail or succeed, right? Then all this surmounting pressure would go away. It would just go away.”

    Snow remembered her father-in-law in a June 2018 essay on Today.com. “It’s been almost eight years now, but it’s still fresh. Not just for me, but my entire extended family.”

    Rodriguez said that after suffering a panic attack while filming the final season of Jane the Virgin, she had to take time away from set. She said it was the first time she was able to advocate for herself to protect her mental health. “There was a point where I couldn’t push through every single time anymore. It came to a point, this last season was the first season where I had to stop production. I just had a really tumultuous season and I was unafraid for the first time to be like, ‘I can’t.’”

    Growing up like many of us do, with no outlet to express our feelings or struggles, Rodriguez said she is now learning how to express herself in this way, and says she is hoping to pass on this important lesson to young people through speaking up about it herself. “It has to be a part of the conversation I have with these young girls,” she said. “I can’t just tell them to go out and make their dreams come true and then to ignore everything else.”

    The actress—who is the voice of Carmen Sandiego in the new Netflix animated series—revealed in 2017 that she is struggling just like anybody else with depression and anxiety.

    As part of artist Anton Soggiu’s #TenSecondPortraits project, Rodriguez posed for the camera for a 10-second shot. She wrote in the caption, “I suffer from anxiety. And watching this clip I could see how anxious I was, but I empathize with myself. I wanted to protect her and tell her it’s okay to be anxious, there is nothing different or strange about having anxiety and I will prevail.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Memories Like Velvet: Fear and Panic in Childhood

    Memories Like Velvet: Fear and Panic in Childhood

    Knowing that it’s “an emotional thing” doesn’t help much when I’m going through the anxiety and the terror and the fear in me, wondering if it will ever go away.

    I listen to the radio mornings while I’m getting breakfast and I hear all of this bad news. I don’t like it. It’s too much. Too sad, too violent. Not my thing.

    All I can say is I’m glad these things don’t happen around me. Then people would really be sorry.

    I mean, the other day I had a dentist appointment. I was scared and jittery and I’d thought about calling the whole thing off. Of course my dentist is a man. He could have started right in, slipping his hand along my legs, up around my thighs and that would have been that.

    And Saturday I had to go shopping. Needed some shampoo and conditioner and things like that. I was sixth on line and there was only one cashier so it was taking forever. I felt the sweat build up then drip down my face in little droplets but I don’t think anyone noticed.

    The skinny lady ahead of me turned sideways once but I think that was to see the price on these furry little doggies hanging down that the store was trying to get rid of fast. I don’t think she was too impressed because it didn’t take her long to read the tag and turn forward again. To wait, bored, wait her turn.

    Meantime I kept shifting from foot to foot and back again but so did everyone else so I felt like part of the crowd.

    As I kept hopping around I kept praying that no one ahead of me would get grumpy and start a fight with the cashier because, slow as she was, it was one of my days and I would have burst right out crying. I can’t help it. People say “stop it” and they think that’s so easy to do but it ain’t. Just being around people fighting and cussin’ gets me going and once that starts there’s no telling what’ll happen next. It’s what I call unpredictable.

    It’s one of those emotional problems, that’s what they call it. All I know is when things are calm, I’m okay. But once people get to fussing, it touches off something inside — sort of a frightened part — and I get hysterical.

    Like the time Jessica and I were playing some music. Things were good — we had raided the refrigerator and gotten pretzels and Diet Cokes and everything we wanted when all of a sudden her parents burst in the front door yelling at the top of their lungs. It was a fight between them, I knew that, but that didn’t stop the upset that started rising.

    I tried telling myself that it was nothing, that it wasn’t my fault or Jessica’s but sure enough I felt the lump in my throat grow bigger and bigger and lodge itself right smack where I didn’t want it. My hands grew clammy and I got up and walked around.

    Jessica could tell that something was going on, something was definitely brewing. She asked, “What’s up?” but when I tried to respond the words just didn’t come out right. Sounded like I was talking backwards.

    Meantime they kept at it and I got frantic. Did they always fucking talk this way? They glanced over at us girls and I thought they knew something was wrong, thought they could tell I wasn’t right, but I guess since I didn’t show any outward sign, they couldn’t tell. They weren’t perceptive.

    They just kept going so Jessica called them to come quick and then — then — they knew that something was up so they stopped yelling at each other’s foolishness and insanity and concentrated on me and kept holding my hands asking what was wrong. I couldn’t even begin to explain.

    After a while of no yelling and peace and quiet, I came back to reality. I calmed down. My distress sure scared the hell out of them and out of me. Knowing that it’s “an emotional thing” doesn’t help much when I’m going through the anxiety and the terror and the fear in me, wondering if it will ever go away. Then wondering if this thing is a keeper. I don’t want it to be a keeper. Go away, I say to myself and sometimes out loud. Go away and don’t come back again. It’s a nice sentiment but the reality is that the peace, quiet, and calm don’t last. They never do.

    Last year and the year before that I thought drinking some beers would help the anxiety — so I drank myself senseless — but the beers didn’t help at all. The high just made me feel paranoid and during the lows I’d feel even more depressed than before I started drinking. So that was that. No more beers, I said to myself. It was a horror giving it up and going through the feelings. Going through the terror.

    Will this always be with me?

    Will “e” always mean “emotional” to me or will there come a time when, someday down the road, when I’m all grown up and working and thinking of other things, will the letter “e” represent anything else to me other than emotional? Will I maybe think of “enterprising” or “entrepreneurial” or even “evergreen”?

    Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think that my first thought will be “emotional.” And if you say “what’s an ‘a’ word,” I’ll always say “alcohol.” Hey, it’s the hand I was dealt. It’s the genes I got or maybe, just maybe I was conditioned to be fine-tuned. Sensitive is what some people call it.

    Some people react so strangely when they find out what’s wrong. They think it’s either imagined or it isn’t that bad. So they smile or wave or talk condescendingly to me. They use simple words and they try to placate me, and when the waves of panic are still riding over me I look at them like they’re crazy. Can’t they even imagine what sheer terror is like?

    In front of Jessica’s parents my anxiety passed eventually. It rode its course. I breathed again, normally, and the clamminess began to subside. They still looked at me funny, like Jessica’s friend here is a bit of an oddball but I looked at them funny, too, because why would they walk into their home yelling and screaming like some fucking idiots? Besides, I know what’s wrong with me. It’s emotional.

    Sometimes I think that the world is nice and sometimes I wonder what it’s all about. I can’t take it when people scream, as I already told you, or when pans crash to the floor. Or when a balloon bursts. When several balloons burst at the same time it’s not good. Not good at all.

    I hate it when we’re driving along nice and smooth and someone gets too close to our car and we hit the brakes hard, hard, hard; the screech of the tires on the road just gets right under my skin.

    Backed up lines on parkways? Traffic stopped on New York bridges? Especially when we’re at the highest point on the bridge — no longer going up and not yet heading down? That damn pinnacle is not my favorite place to be.

    I imagine all of us dangling over the side of that metal bridge with each one of us holding on with one hand, holding on for dear life and that sweat breaks out once again as I concentrate so hard to hold on and wait, wait, wait for someone to come along and rescue us. And I know it’s my overactive imagination at work, but why do the pictures it paints have to be so damned vivid?

    Walking along from one house to another when suddenly a lawn mower starts up so loudly I jump and cover my ears. Talk about breaking the sound barrier. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. I freeze in my tracks but then realize I’m not getting anywhere at all so I carry on, wondering why it is that a silent lawn mower can’t be made or at least a lawn mower that’s nice and quiet? That would be good. That shouldn’t be too hard to invent.

    I like the Fourth of July because everything looks so pretty with the sky all lit up like that with the pyrotechnics going off in various designs but I get so scared when a cherry bomb or something goes off next door. I just have to cry. I can’t help it.

    Noises aren’t the only things. Flashing lights set me off, too, like the time we had a school dance on a Friday night and someone hit the ceiling lights and suddenly those strobe lights were flashing, flashing, flashing and I know those disco lights were meant to add a certain ambiance to the party but my head started spinning and I had to just get out of there. Fast.

    It’s a weird thing. But the good times are good times. I like looking at flowers out in the backyard so closely, I want to squint to see every inch of them. Velvet they feel like.

    I love running around with my dog Penny, spinning and twirling and feeling the grass cool beneath my feet while an airplane flies gently overhead. You could call that one of my good days. It’s peace, quiet, and feeling comfortable. I call it progress. I’ll take it.

    I guess for once I feel I’m as free as the birds I see gliding overhead and I know there’s nothing to cry over and nothing to be afraid of anymore.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Emma Stone Talks Anxiety, Panic Attacks

    Emma Stone Talks Anxiety, Panic Attacks

    “You don’t have to be actor to overcome anxiety. You just have to find that thing within you that you are drawn to.”

    Emma Stone can vividly remember her first panic attack at age seven. 

    “I was sitting at a friend’s house and all of a sudden I was absolutely convinced that the house was on fire,” Stone recalled. “I was just sitting in her bedroom and obviously the house wasn’t on fire but there was nothing in me that didn’t think I was going to die.”

    On Monday, October 1, the actress sat down with Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz for a 30-minute conversation at the Child Mind Institute in New York City. She discussed her history of anxiety, beginning with the panic attack. Stone went on to describe how she would visit the nurse daily during second grade, where she would then call her mom. 

    “I had deep separation anxiety,” she told Koplewicz.

    Stone’s mother decided to take her to therapy and was informed her daughter had generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, ABC News reports. However, she chose not to tell her daughter, which is something Stone says she has appreciated. 

    “I am very grateful I didn’t know that I had a disorder,” Stone said. “I wanted to be an actor and there weren’t a lot of actors who spoke about having panic attacks.”

    Stone described how in therapy, she came up with a book called, I Am Bigger Than My Anxiety. She says she drew photos inside of “a little green monster that sits on my shoulder.” In the book, the monster — her anxiety — would increase in size if she listened and decrease if she didn’t.

    A few years after her first panic attack, at age 11, Stone says she began acting in improv and realized “my feelings could be productive.”

    She says she also kept involved in the local children’s theater which was helpful in managing anxiety.

    “I believe the people who have anxiety and depression are very, very sensitive and very, very smart,” she said. “Because the world is hard and scary and there’s a lot that goes on and if you’re very attuned to it, it can be crippling. But if you don’t let it cripple you and use it for something productive, it’s like a superpower.”

    Today, Stone says, she manages her anxiety disorder through therapy, medication, the company of others and staying busy. She also avoids social media. 

    “That would send me into a spin,” she said. “I don’t need to be getting constant feedback on who I am.”

    For anyone battling anxiety, Stone says the key is finding somewhere else to shift your focus. 

    “You don’t have to be actor to overcome anxiety, you don’t have to be a writer to overcome it,” she told Koplewicz. “You just have to find that thing within you that you are drawn to.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Gisele Bundchen Details Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation In New Memoir

    Gisele Bundchen Details Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation In New Memoir

    “I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up…I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad.”

    In an upcoming memoir, Gisele Bündchen reveals that her life as a supermodel was far from perfect, despite how it appeared on the outside.

    Behind the scenes, the Brazil native, who retired from the runway in 2015 after 20 years in the business, struggled with panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, People reports.

    In a new interview, the 38-year-old mother-of-three said she is ready to share the pain she struggled with as she went from small town life to global stardom as a young woman.

    Bündchen was 14 when she got her first taste of modeling in Brazil. The rest was history. 

    “Things can be looking perfect on the outside, but you have no idea what’s really going on,” she told People. “I felt like maybe it was time to share some of my vulnerabilities, and it made me realize, everything I’ve lived through, I would never change, because I think I am who I am because of those experiences.”

    As a young model, Bündchen suffered her first panic attack in 2003 during a bumpy plane ride. She struggled to accept the pain she was feeling while at the height of her success.

    “I had a wonderful position in my career, and I was very close to my family, and I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up… I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,” she told People.

    The model said she felt “powerless.” In her memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, she described feeling like an “animal trapped inside” a cage. “I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t stand another day of feeling this way,” she said, according to Page Six.

    Unable to make sense of her emotions at the time, her anxiety only worsened.

    “The idea swept over me then: Maybe it will be easier if I just jump. It will be all over. I can get out of this. When I think back on that moment, and that 23-year-old girl, I want to cry. I want to tell her that everything will be all right, and that she hasn’t even begun to live her life. But in that moment, the only answer seemed to be to jump.”

    The former Victoria’s Secret model was prescribed Xanax by a treatment professional, but wasn’t enthusiastic about receiving medication for her problems.

    “The thought of being dependent on something felt, in my mind, even worse, because I was like, ‘What if I lose that [pill]? Then what? Am I going to die?’ The only thing I knew was, I needed help,” she said, according to People.

    Since then, she made some changes to her lifestyle—like cutting sugar and relieving stress with yoga and meditation—that she said were the building blocks to her recovery.

    “I had been smoking cigarettes, drinking a bottle of wine and three mocha Frappuccinos every day, and I gave up everything in one day. I thought, if this stuff is in any way the cause of this pain in my life, it’s gotta go.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Carson Daly & NBA Star Kevin Love Discuss Anxiety on Today Show

    Carson Daly & NBA Star Kevin Love Discuss Anxiety on Today Show

    “I had a moment where I thought I was going to die. I had never experienced something like that. I thought I was having a heart attack,” Love told Carson Daly.

    NBA All Star Kevin Love and Carson Daly have something in common—they both struggle with managing their anxiety.

    This came up in a recent interview on the Today show, where Love, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, described the panic attack that set off his quest to spread mental health awareness.

    “I had a moment where I thought I was going to die. I had never experienced something like that. I thought I was having a heart attack,” he told Carson Daly.

    Love is sharing his experience in hopes that he’ll encourage more people to feel comfortable doing the same. Men in particular, Love says, have a hard time opening up about mental health issues.

    Raised on this mindset, at first Love, too, tried downplaying his panic attack. “I kind of brushed it off, because in our sport or in life, and being a man, you’re taught to suppress it. You’re taught to suffer in silence,” he said.

    Love’s essay “Everyone Is Going Through Something” was published in The Players’ Tribune in March 2018. In it, Love discussed the panic attack and the importance of talking about mental health.

    “To me, it was a form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different,” he wrote.

    “If you’re suffering silently like I was, then you know how it can feel like nobody gets it,” he wrote. “Partly, I want to do it for me, but mostly, I want to do it because people don’t talk about mental health enough. And men and boys are probably the farthest behind.”

    With Love and fellow NBA players DeMar DeRozan and Channing Frye speaking up about mental health, the NBA has addressed mental health in the league. It launched a new initiative under NBA Cares called Mind Health, aiming to teach people how to recognize and manage stress, while providing support.

    And the NBA Players Association appointed its first director of mental health and wellness, Dr. William Parham.

    TV anchor Carson Daly previously shared his struggles with anxiety disorder in March. The former Total Request Live (TRL) host said he was a “worrywart kid” and was “nervous my whole life.”

    His anxiety reached a breaking point the more success he achieved. “I had no idea what [a panic attack] was at the time,” he recalled. “The success of my career, I flew to New York, and my life changed overnight. I had a hard time breathing. I was terrified for no apparent reason.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Descendants" Star Dove Cameron Gets Candid About Anxiety, Panic Attacks

    "Descendants" Star Dove Cameron Gets Candid About Anxiety, Panic Attacks

    “Today I had my first full on panic attack in months. Out of nowhere, and for no reason. That’s just sometimes how anxiety goes.”

    Dove Cameron, the star of the Disney Channel film series Descendants, recently took to Twitter to discuss her struggles with anxiety and to offer advice to fans who may be dealing with it as well.

    “Do your best to not speak negatively of others, of life, of any given situation,” Cameron tweeted. “And especially, do your best to not speak negatively of yourself. It’s hard at first, but it gets easier. I am not perfect at it, but it does make a difference for my anxiety and my noise in my mind.”

    Cameron told her Twitter followers that she “wanted to speak honestly,” and that she has been “doing phenomenally” with her anxiety.

    “It’s always there, a little bit, sometimes a lot… but I have gotten more skilled at keeping it quieter, reasoning with myself, breathing… but today I had my first full-on panic attack in months. Out of nowhere, and for no reason. That’s just sometimes how anxiety goes.”

    Cameron revealed that after making it through the panic attack, she wanted to share her experience.

    “I wanted to tell you this so that you don’t look at me and feel hopeless because I always seem stable,” she tweeted. “I know I can present like that sometimes.”

    Cameron continued, “No one is ‘perfect’ and we should not strive to be ‘cured,’ but rather, embrace highs and lows as a fact and centerpiece of being alive. ‘This moment is inevitable…’ There is help, hope, and growth for all of us. But we should never compare our paths to others, but rather, honor, embrace and accept our own path… None of us are OK 100% of the time, and that’s OK.”

    A couple of years ago on Twitter, Cameron addressed the importance of speaking up about mental health issues to help break the stigma.

    “So many people have anxiety/related things. It needs to be less taboo to talk about it, it helps so much to talk.”

    She added that anxiety had “made me that much more disciplined in my thoughts. So it has been a blessing in disguise… It’s not about hiding it, it’s about genuinely embracing, acknowledging and managing it.”

    In previous tweets, Cameron recommended the following to combat anxiety: “Time alone, self-reflection, laughter, getting in touch with my body, journaling, therapy, sleep, nature, exercise.”

    Cameron also revealed that she has taken up meditation in an effort to to deal with her anxiety and she “100% recommends” it to others dealing with the mental health issue. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Korn's Jonathan Davis Talks Addiction: "Benzos Are The Devil"

    Korn's Jonathan Davis Talks Addiction: "Benzos Are The Devil"

    “I’ve dealt with anxiety for a long-ass time. I got prescribed Xanax, benzodiazepine, a long time ago. Benzos are the f—ing devil. They’re horrible drugs.”

    Jonathan Davis, the frontman of the metal band Korn, puts his struggles with drugs and anxiety front and center in a song on his debut solo album, Black Labyrinth.

    In a new interview with Forbes, he spoke frankly about how attempting to treat his anxiety with drugs like Xanax led him to a dark place.

    “I’ve dealt with anxiety for a long-ass time. I got prescribed Xanax, benzodiazepine, a long time ago. Benzos are the f—ing devil. They’re horrible drugs,” he explained. “They feel good at the moment and are a quick fix to get you out of a panic attack, but they’re not designed to be taken long-term—especially Xanax.”

    His song on the album, “Medicate,” is about kicking the benzo dependency he developed.

    “I started taking it for anxiety. I’d take a piece in the morning and a piece at night, then go to bed. You start to build up a resistance,” he recounted. “Two years later and I was trying to kick it. The song is about me dealing with common regrets, that I need this pill to be happy or stay sane.”

    Getting off it was difficult—and dangerous.

    “I started off taking 0.25 milligrams of it, and eventually I got up to 2 milligrams, that’s one bar a day. And eventually I got up to two bars a day later down the road,” he told Forbes. “But the first time I kicked it, I was doing a bar a day, and I slowly weaned down. Which, you cannot function. And if you don’t do it correctly, if you just stop cold turkey off of it, you can go into seizures and die.”

    Nowadays, Davis is living completely sober, and getting high in a different way—sensory deprivation at the center of the Ganzfield experiment.

    “It’s a drug-free hallucination,” Davis says. “You’re staring into your subconscious. To me, it proved that there’s something different out there than what we’ve been taught about God. You see colors and shapes. It’s like you’re staring at the inside of your brain.”

    He also calms himself down with video games, music, and spending time with his children. His band seems to have caught the clean-living bug, too.

    “We just all independently faced our demons. There’s not really any drinking going on in the band anymore,” Davis explained. “It happens, every band that’s been doing it this long. Eventually you need to stop, or you’re gonna die. Everybody got through it their own way.”

    View the original article at thefix.com