Shailene Woodley Felt Like She Was in “Constant State of Fight or Flight” When Dealing With Illness in Her 20s
Shailene Woodley is giving further insight into what she experienced when she was undergoing several health issues in her early 20s.
The actress made an appearance on the SHE MD podcast, hosted by Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Tha?s Aliabadi, where she discussed her new series, Three Women, and her struggles with an undisclosed illness during the early peak of her fame.
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When asked if she’d be willing to elaborate on her previous comments about how she was “very sick” while filming the Divergent films, she said she doesn’t feel the need to share what she was diagnosed with because it’s personal but would be willing to talk about what she went through more in-depth.
“It got to the point where 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 said on the podcast. “Everything I ate hurt my stomach. It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”
The Big Little Lies star explained it was a long journey that spanned about a decade of her health fluctuating between healing and struggling. She noted that the stomach pains she felt eventually led to her being afraid of food.
“Then, going into the mental fuckery that can happen with that of body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin, and what that meant and what that should be,” Woodley continued. “It was a journey that, ultimately, physically resolved itself. And I am very healthy. I’m so happy to be able to say that. And, also, it forced me to really take a deep look and become introspective.”
Looking back now at what she experienced, she realizes that in addition to her body needing to heal physically, she also was able to heal mentally from “real traumas and real PTSD” she had from different times throughout her life, which took a toll on her body and her emotionally.
The Fault in Our Stars actress was especially confused because she recalled always eating healthily and being very athletic, so she couldn’t understand what she was doing wrong that was causing her body to react in the ways that it did. Separately, she also recounted having health struggles with her “reproductive and female cycle” but not being able to get a consistent diagnosis from a doctor.
“Every person I went to was giving me mixed information, and it set me on my own journey of, ‘OK … I don’t feel safe with any of these people that are guiding me because I feel like they actually are figuring it out along the way as well,” she said. “And so, I might as well take this into my own hands and devote myself to educating myself about so many subjects and approaching it from an internal holistic place.'”
At this point in her life, she’s no longer on any medication, and her body has returned to its healthy status, with everything “pumping in the way that it should.”
“I believe, ultimately, the thing that led me there, alongside, again, the physical aspects, was acknowledging that I was in a constant state of fight or flight,” she said. “My nervous system was super sympathetic and just very much operating from a place of fear and a place of where’s the lion in the room?”
Woodley opened up about her health issues to The Hollywood Reporter in a 2021 cover story in which she revealed she had to turn down some acting jobs at the time because she physically could not participate in them.
“It was pretty debilitating,” she said. “I definitely suffered a lot more than I had to because I didn’t take care of myself. The self-inflicted pressure of not wanting to be helped or taken care of created more physical unrest throughout those years.”
While she’s fully recovered from her health struggles now, when she previously spoke to THR she shared that she was at the tail end of it and was almost back to normal but that it had a lasting mark on her because of the way people perceived her.
“It’s an interesting thing, going through something so physically dominating while also having so many people pay attention to the choices you make, the things you say, what you do, what you look like,” the Divergent star noted. “It spun me out for a while. You feel so incredibly isolated and alone. Unless someone can see that you have a broken arm or a broken leg, it’s really difficult for people to relate to the pain that you’re experiencing when it’s a silent, quiet and invisible pain.”
Three Women is debuting every Friday on Starz until the Nov. 15 finale.
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