Elizabeth Olsen Talks About Her Panic Attacks That Began at Age 21

Elizabeth Olsen is opening up about suffering from panic attacks while living in New York City.

The 33-year-old actress says that she never experienced a panic attack until the age of 21.

“I didn’t understand what anxiety or a panic attack was until I was 21,” she told Variety.

Click inside to read more from the interview…

“I remember I would get them on the hour every hour. I used to live on 13th Street between 6th and 7th. I was crossing 6th Avenue at 14th Street, and I realized I couldn’t cross the street — I stood up against the wall, and I just thought I was going to drop dead at any moment,” Elizabeth continued. “If I went from cold to hot, hot to cold, full to hungry, hungry to full — any kind of shift in my body, my whole body thought, ‘Uh oh, something’s wrong!’ And I just started spiraling. It was so weird. A ENT doctor said that it could be vertigo related because it was all about truly spinning. So it was an interesting six months.”

Elizabeth opened up about how she got past that attacks.

She said, “I had a friend who was seeing a neuropsychiatrist — or psychologist, I don’t know if they medicated — because she had panic attacks before me. And learned a lot of brain games. It actually was very similar to an acting exercise that we did at Atlantic, which is called repetition, where you just are constantly making observations about the person in front of you and you’re just trying to connect. When I would walk down the street, I would just start naming everything I saw out loud to get myself out of the spiraling thoughts in my brain. That was a helpful tool. But it just became a practice that got me out of it. I didn’t want to be on medication, but I had medication in case I felt like I was having an emergency and just having that in my bag felt good. It’s very weird because I was not an anxious child. I was very loud and confident.”

Elizabeth also responded to the rumors that she’ll be joining the cast of a hugely popular new TV series.