Emma Stone Overcomes Anxiety

Emma Stone recently sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone. Here are some of the highlights:

On suffering from panic attacks when she was a kid:
"My brain naturally zooming 30 steps ahead to the worst-case scenario. When I was about seven, I was convinced the house was burning down. I could sense it. Not a hallucination, just a tightening in my chest, feeling I couldn't breathe, like the world was going to end. There were some flare-ups like that, but my anxiety was constant. I would ask my mom a hundred times how the day was gonna lay out. What time was she gonna drop me off? Where was she gonna be? What would happen at lunch? Feeling nauseous. At a certain point, I couldn't go to friends' houses anymore – I could barely get out the door to school."

On overcoming anxiety with the help of a therapist:
"It helped so much. I wrote this book called I Am Bigger Than My Anxiety that I still have: I drew a little green monster on my shoulder that speaks to me in my ear and tells me all these things that aren't true. And every time I listen to it, it grows bigger. If I listen to it enough, it crushes me. But if I turn my head and keep doing what I'm doing – let it speak to me, but don't give it the credit it needs – then it shrinks down and fades away."

On how acting helped ease her anxiety:
"I started acting at this youth theater, doing improv and sketch comedy. You have to be present in improv, and that's the antithesis of anxiety." 

On LA (she now lives in New York City):
"It's what I imagine D.C. is like, where you're surrounded by all these people who are constantly rising and falling in the local power rankings, and it's the only thing they can think and talk about."

On the election:
"It's still so hard to process what happens next, or what to do. It's terrifying, the not-knowing. But I can't stop thinking about vulnerable people being ignored and tossed aside – marginalized more than they've already been for hundreds of years – and how the planet will die without our help. It comes in waves."

Read the full interview at Rolling Stone.