‘I am bigger than my anxiety’

Emma Stone, who is currently busy promoting her upcoming movie Battle of the Sexes, has revealed about a real-life ‘battle’ that she has been battling since the age of seven. While appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Oscar-winning actress spoke about living with anxiety from a very young age. Stone was asked by the host to elaborate on the meaning behind a picture she’d drawn when she was nine, which featured the words “I’m bigger than my anxiety”. 

She replied, “I drew this in therapy. I was a very, very, very anxious child, and I had a lot of panic attacks. I benefited in a big way from therapy. I started at 7.” She also added, “This is me, I guess, and this is anxiety, a little green monster that looks a little bit like, as someone backstage said, a uterus with some ovaries. I didn’t mean it to be hormonally related in any way, as I said, I was 9.” The actress shared that acting and early improvisational work helped her deal with her anxiety.  —ANI