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

Elizabeth Olsen has opened up about how her anxiety used to be debilitating.

in Interview with the Guardian In a statement released on Sunday, the “His Three Daughters” star admitted that she used to have panic attacks every day in her 20s.

“Many times, almost every hour!” Olsen said, noting that it’s often triggered by small changes in the environment.

“It was literally like when there was a change in something, from hot to cold, from hungry to full. I thought, ‘Oh, is this okay?’ And it just spiraled and it became a habit,” she said.

The Wand Vision star added that when she was younger, conversations about mental health weren’t as prevalent and she had no idea how to deal with her physical reactions to anxiety.

“In the mid-2000s, no one talked about panic attacks,” Olsen says. “I thought it meant writing a list and checking things off and getting through it. I didn’t think it was something that was out of my control, but I had to think about how I could control it.”

She said she finally got a feel for it when she figured out “what works for me and what works well enough for me.”

The ‘Love & Death’ star explains that when you feel like you’re having a seizure, you need to ‘interrupt your thought process’ by naming everything you see in your head to break the pattern. did.

She also told the magazine that she doesn’t wear heels because they make her feel dizzy and cause anxiety. So, she explained, when she wears heels in public, she sometimes takes them off as soon as she gets to her seat.

“People thought it was a feminist choice,” she recalled to the media. “Okay, no! If I were to stand in front of you wearing this, I’d panic. I’d better keep my feet on the ground.”

Olsen’s husband, musician Robbie Arnett, also suffers from anxiety and co-authored a children’s book, Hattie Harmony: Anxious Detective, in 2022. This book follows a cat named Hattie Harmony as she teaches young readers how to deal with this condition. Olsen said this while promoting her second book, Hattie Harmony: Opening Night, which will be published in 2023. to people About fighting panic attacks.

“I definitely thought there was something medically wrong with me,” Olsen told the magazine at the time. “It’s pretty scary when that happens. I’ve learned the game to play to keep myself going and not spin out.”

“We both wanted Hattie when we were younger,” Arnett added at the time.