Elizabeth Olsen got candid about her struggles with anxiety.
Elizabeth Olsen Admits She Frequently Suffered Panic Attacks in Her 20s
Elizabeth Olsen isn't shying away from being honest about her demons.
The WandaVision actress, 35, opened up about her struggles with anxiety, mental health and how intense it was to deal with when she was younger.
Elizabeth Olsen got candid about her battle with anxiety.
"I’ve gone through phases of it," she explained in a recent interview about dealing with psychological hurdles. "Figuring out what works for me, or what works enough. No one talked about panic attacks in the mid-2000s."
"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," Olsen noted.
Elizabeth Olsen didn't realize anxiety was 'something you had no control over.'
When questioned about how often she endured the panic attacks, she said, "Like, almost every hour! 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."
The Ingrid Goes West star noted how she's learned to better manage her mental health and hasn't had as many since. "You learn very quickly who you feel comfortable around and who you don’t," she explained.
Elizabeth Olsen said she used to get panic attacks 'every hour.'
Olsen previously revealed how tough things were when she was first coming up as an actress in New York City. "I remember I would get [panic attacks] on the hour every hour," she recalled in a 2022 interview. "I used to live on 13th Street between 6th and 7th. I was crossing 6th Avenue at 14th Street, and I realized I couldn't cross the street — I stood up against the wall, and I just thought I was going to drop dead at any moment."
"If I went from cold to hot, hot to cold, full to hungry, hungry to full — any kind of shift in my body, my whole body thought, 'Uh oh, something's wrong!' And I just started spiraling. It was so weird," the famous sibling revealed.
Elizabeth Olsen thought she was going to 'drop dead' from her panic attacks.
Despite how scary the jump was, Olsen never regretted her decisions. "When you are a teenager and you're choosing colleges and universities, and there's this immense pressure of being able to go to that next phase in your life, it actually is so profound how important that decision is," she shared in a separate 2022 interview. "If I hadn't gone to NYU, I wouldn't have started working when I did. I wouldn't have been in New York. I wouldn't have been in an acting conservatory, I don't think. So, it is wild to think about the different versions of ourselves that are out there and the choices we make and how it completely alters where we are today."
The Guardian conducted the interview with Olsen.
Variety conducted the 2022 interview with Olsen.