Originally appeared on E! Online.
Reese Witherspoon is reflecting on a difficult chapter in her life.
“The Morning Show” actress recently detailed her lifelong struggles with depression and anxiety, noting that she was hit with a particularly bad bout of low feelings while postpartum with her daughter Ava Phillippe, now 26, whom she shares with ex Ryan Phillippe.
“It was really bad,” Witherspoon admitted to Harper’s Bazaar in an interview published Nov. 2. “In the first six months, I was simultaneously happy and depressed. I just cried all the time, I was up all night, I was exhausted. It was a hormone drop I didn’t expect, which I experienced right after birth and again when I stopped nursing six months later.”
Indeed, Witherspoon — who went on to welcome son Deacon Phillippe, now 22, with Phillippe as well as Tennessee Toth, 13, with ex Jim Toth — detailed how overwhelming it was for her when she became a mom at just 23.
“Everyone has an opinion,” the now-49-year-old recalled. “It’s hard being a young mom and having people tell you how to be, how to react, how to give birth, how to nurse and how to feed your baby. It’s inundating.”
READ: Reese Witherspoon Says She Had to “Rewire” Her Brain After Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Despite her struggle, Witherspoon emphasized that she simultaneously felt lucky she could get herself the support she needed.
“I had the connections and the means to get to a doctor, a mental-health specialist, but a lot of people don’t,” she detailed. “They struggle on their own and hide it.”
Witherspoon credited her mom Betty Reese with teaching her to monitor her symptoms after watching her grandmother Dorothea Draper go through similar struggles. And while she has battled depression and anxiety since being a teenager, she credits part of her professional success to her wavering mental health.
Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
Lionel Hahn/Getty Images Reese Witherspoon and her eldest daughter, Ava Phillippe, attend the 29th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Barker Hangar on Jan. 14, 2024, in Santa Monica, California.
“I was probably successful because I had so much anxiety,” Witherspoon posited. “They go hand in hand. I had pressured myself to extreme levels to show up at work in a perfect way. We all now know — perfect is not attainable. It’s not sustainable. I stressed myself out in service of my job, and it got me really, really far.”
As she put it, “I’m rewarded for my anxiety and perfectionism.”
Still, as she gets older, the “Sweet Home Alabama” star shared she is starting to meet herself where she’s at.
“I’m starting to relax into the idea that I’m enough,” she added. “I’ve had an abundance of good fortune, great work opportunities and worked with some of the greatest people on Earth.”
