Kerry Washington Details Panic Attacks She Suffered at Age 7 in New Memoir: 'Dizzied with Terror'

Kerry Washington is opening up about her mental health.

On Wednesday (August 9), Oprah Daily excerpted a section of the 46-year-old actresses upcoming memoir Thicker Than Water in which she revealed that she suffered from debilitating panic attacks at the age of seven.

Keep reading to find out what she wrote…

Kerry explained that she began experiencing the panic attacks after overhearing her parents’ arguments when she had fallen asleep.

“They manifested first as a rhythm of anxiety that encircled my brain, then evolved into a rapid pulsing, a whirling frenzy of metallic thumps, like those nauseating old spinning rides at a county fair,” she shared.

The Scandal star wrote that “the sound of terror, wholly unnatural and unconnected to the rhythms of my heart.”

“I was dizzied with terror, no ground beneath me; it was crazy-­making, endless. And sad,” she recalled. “There was something so sad about the rhythm. And I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t sleep. It was as though the alarms within me had been triggered and there was no turning them off.”

Kerry went on to say that while she didn’t have a panic attack “every single night”, she “trembled at the possibility of it.”

“Lying in bed, I would race to fall asleep before the sounds would leak from my bones. I would force myself to try to have ‘good’ thoughts,” she wrote.

“I hated that the rhythm came from within me,” she continued. “I hated that my own brain was not to be trusted. If I lost the race to sleep and got caught by the rhythm, I had no tools to escape it, no way of controlling my own brain as it conspired against me.”

Kerry noted that she had “tried everything to avoid it”, including singing and reciting poetry. She added that no matter what she did, “it would take hold in my fascia, then work outward through my muscles and tendons.”

“Sometimes, I would rock my body back and forth, vibrating, rattling, trying to drown out the pulsing noise and regain control of my body. Sometimes I would put my head under a pillow, trying to ignore the fact that the torture was coming from within me,” she detailed.

“But only exhaustion would override the rhythm, lulling me to the dream state beyond my fears,” Kerry continued. “I would fight the haunting rhythm as it rose in me, often having to compete with my parents’ fights in the next room. If my inner rhythm won, I was tortured by the tempo of my own obsessive brain; if my parents’ arguing won, I was trapped by fear.”

She said that after watching one of her parents’ fights, she became “more private and withdrawn.”

“I resolved to stay in my room at night while the dreaded internal pulse of the rhythm terrorized me to sleep,” she said. “My mind and body became the enemy; I was trapped within them.”

It was at that point that Kerry said she began “to develop a role, a character that would stay with me: The good girl. The perfect child,” she recalled. Kerry added that she had hoped “my goodness could inspire a renewed tenderness between them, which would in turn create more emotional security for me, something that I so desperately needed.”

Thicker Than Water is set to be released on Sept. 26.

Earlier this year, Kerry shared some new details about her personal life in a candid interview. Find out more here.