Oct 01, 2024 - 08:29
By huffpost.com

Elizabeth Olsen Reveals Why She Used To Have Panic Attacks 'Almost Every Hour'

Elizabeth Olsen is opening up about how debilitating her anxiety used to be.

In an interview with The Guardian published Sunday, the “His Three Daughters” star admitted that she used to have panic attacks daily in her 20s.

“Multiple times, like, almost every hour!” Olsen said, noting that tiny changes around her would often trigger them.

“It was literally, like, any time there was a shift in something: hot to cold, hungry to full. I thought, ‘Oh, is this OK?’ And then it would spiral and it just became this habit,” she said.

The “WandVision” star added that when she was younger, conversations regarding mental health weren’t as prevalent, and she had no idea how to deal with her physical response to anxiety.

“No one talked about panic attacks in the mid-2000s,” Olsen said. “I thought it meant you just write a list and check things off and get over it. I didn’t realize it was something you had no control over, but I had to figure out how to have some control.”

She said that she finally got a handle on it when she figured “out what works for me, or what works enough.”

The “Love & Death” star explained that when she now feels an attack coming on, she has to “interrupt the thinking process,” by naming everything she saw in her head to disrupt the pattern.

She also told the outlet she doesn’t wear heels because they made her feel like she’d get vertigo, which would bring on the anxiety. She explained that is why sometimes when she wears heels during public appearances, she takes them off as soon as she’s seated.