Yahoo Lifestyle Shailene Woodley Reveals What Helped Her Heal From Debilitating Mystery Illness
Shailene Woodley is opening up about a debilitating health scare she endured in her early 20s and how she had to address her past trauma to let herself heal.
Appearing on Tuesday’s episode of the “SHE MD” podcast, the star, 32, told hosts Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi about the trouble she had trying to figure out the cause of her crushing mystery illness and how it led her to some revelations about her mental health.
“I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours and hours and hours and sleep,” she told the hosts. “Everything I ate hurt my stomach.”
While Woodley opted to keep her exact diagnosis private, telling the hosts the her health status “feels like a personal thing,” she said she was overwhelmed by the amount of “mixed information” doctors offered when she sought out help.
“It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things,” the “Big Little Lies” actor said, noting how it took her nearly a decade to understand what exactly was happening.
Woodley told the hosts how her symptoms unleashed a world of “mental fuckery” into her life, and described how her physical pain impacted the way she behaved and thought.
“Throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” she went on. “Like, oh my gosh, if everything hurts my stomach, I’m now suddenly afraid of food.”
While the star of “Three Women” was “so happy” to share that she’s now healthy, she revealed how the years-long ordeal made her have to take a hard look at how she’d been impacted by emotional trauma.
“It forced me to really take a deep look and become introspective,” the star said, revealing how addressing her PTSD ended up being another side of her healing process.
″[That trauma] definitely took a toll on my body and took a toll emotionally, which then stuck in my body and affected me,” she said.
“I believe ultimately the thing that led me [to heal], alongside, again, the physical aspects, was acknowledging that I was in a constant state of fight or flight ... because I hadn’t yet established what a calm nervous system could look like, and what true safety in myself could look like.”
“Once I focused on that, physically everything began to change and balance out for me,” she explained.
Woodley also told the hosts how much her new show, “Three Women,” resonated with her after she’d grappled with so much pain, both emotionally and physically.
“This felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really dive in and explore themes that most of us go through as women,” she said of the series, which focuses on the sexualities of a group of women.
Pointing to how the series tackles topics like miscarriages, falling in love, body dysmorphia and more, Woodley said she was grateful to be able to address “being in a confusing place where we feel like we can’t communicate what we really want because we don’t feel safe in our own bodies.”
“Three Women” is available to stream on Starz.
