Lili Reinhart opened up about her battle with depression and anxiety and revealed that therapy has truly been one of the things that has helped make her life better.
“I’ve experienced depression and anxiety,” the 23-year-old actress shared with Glamour UK in a piece published Thursday. “Not constantly, but I’m still experiencing it.” (RELATED: Riverdale’ Creator Opens Up About Luke Perry’s Character’s Death)
“I have spells of time where I feel completely unmotivated, I don’t want to do anything and I question myself,” she added. “I don’t know how to handle stress very well. I find that talking about it and sharing my experience with other people, and reminding myself that I’m not alone has been incredibly therapeutic.”
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Reinhart continued, “When I first started going to therapy, it was out of my incredible social anxiety. I was having trouble going to school every day. I was crying before school. I would fake being sick so my mom would let me stay home.”(RELATED: ‘Riverdale’ Renewed For A Fourth Season On The CW)
The “Riverdale” star explained that she had “crippling anxiety” when she was just “14 years old.”
“Seeing the therapist allowed me to be understood,” the young actress shared. “The goal for me has been to always leave therapy feeling a couple of inches taller.”
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“Feeling like I’ve alleviated myself of a problem by learning how to solve it,” she added. “Not everything has a straight answer – it’s not just going to take one session – but I start to think, ‘I’ve grown, I’ve done this, I’ve figured this out, now can I go off into the world and try to put what I’ve learned into action.'”
The “Hustlers” star continued, while explaining that is how she sees “therapy.”
“I am not crazy, and I am not problematic,” Reinhart said. “I am just a human who’s feeling something in a different way than some other people would.
The young star then went on to share how she has come to accept her anxiety, but finds it incredibly “frustrating” too.
“Sometimes I wake up and I’m like, ‘OK, I have anxiety today,” Lili explained. “I’m not really sure why, I’m more irritable than usual. It’s like an undercurrent that lives within me, and certain social situations can obviously trigger my anxiety. I work a lot of hours, sometimes I don’t get a lot of sleep, and that makes me anxious. I’ve found a way to talk myself down when I’m getting super anxious.”