Emma Stone reveals in the July issue of Vogue that she suffers from panic attacks, the first of which she had at just eight years old.
“I was just kind of immobilized by it,” she tells the magazine. “I didn’t want to go to my friends’ houses or hang out with anybody, and nobody really understood.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, panic attacks are characterized by a fear of disaster or of losing control even when there is no real danger. They can strike at any time, and typically begin suddenly, without warning. Symptoms usually don’t appear until late teens or early adulthood, but let’s face it, kids are more stressed than ever before. Emma isn’t the first 8-year-old to suffer panic attacks, and certainly won’t be the last.
While therapy and medications work for some people, the Stone, 23, says she found relief in acting, which changed her life forever.
“It gave me a sense of purpose. I wanted to make people laugh. Comedy was my sport. It taught me how to roll with the punches. Failure is the exact same as success when it comes to comedy because it just keeps coming. It never stops.”
She still has attacks sometimes, and as many people with anxiety know, the attacks don’t always go away. Emma admits she gets them on set sometimes, but found a new approach to keep the attacks from creeping up while shooting “Spider-Man” – baking.
“I think I felt really out of control of my surroundings. I was just baking all the time. There were stacks of things in the kitchen that nobody could possibly go through,” Stone, 23, explains. “It seemed like it made me feel, if I put these in, I’ll know what the outcome is … I was overbaking.”
For more information on panic attacks, visit NIMH.gov.
photo courtesy Vogue
