Shailene Woodley spoke at length this week about a “personal” health struggle she went through in her early 20s.
The 32-year-old “Ferrari” actress said that while filming “Divergent” in 2014, her health deteriorated to the point where she could barely walk, eat or hear.
“I haven’t talked about exactly what it was because it feels like a personal thing that I don’t need to disclose,” she told Dear Media’s “SHE MD” podcast hosts Dr. Thais Alialabi and Mary Alice Haney, “but basically I was in a situation in my early 20s where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for more than five minutes at a time without having to lie down and sleep for hours. Everything I ate hurt my stomach. It was this series of problems and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”
She said that because she “comes from a very holistic background” and studied herbalism, she decided to work with “real doctors” and “independent healers” “to just try to find a sense of well-being in her own skin.”
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Shailene Woodley spoke at length this week about a “personal” health struggle she went through in her early 20s. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME)
“And it was a long journey, about a decade of relaxing and healing and getting well, and during that decade a lot of other things came out of feeling uncomfortable, which was, ‘My God, if everything I eat gives me a stomachache, I’m suddenly afraid of food.’ And then I got into that kind of mental mess that can happen with body dysmorphia and confusion about, you know, identity, feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin and what that means and what that should be.”
She said the disease had eventually “resolved itself” physically and that she was now “very healthy.”
“I’m so happy to be able to say that,” she confessed.
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Woodley played Tris in Divergent, a story about a woman who realizes she doesn’t fit into a dystopian world and her life is in danger. She directed two more films in the series: Insurgent and Allegiant in 2015 and 2016.
Woodley told the podcast hosts that her health situation forced her to become “more thoughtful.”
Woodley said her journey to better health forced her to become “more thoughtful.” (JC Olivera/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
“I guess that was a way for me to acknowledge, in addition to the physical healing, the psychological side of the healing process for myself. That involved coming to terms with real trauma and real PTSD that I had experienced at different times in my life without going into detail about what they were,” Woodey explained.
She said these traumas “definitely took their toll on my body and I think emotionally as well, which then stuck in my body and affected me. I’ve always eaten very healthy and I’m very athletic, so it was a confusing process for me to ask myself, ‘What am I doing wrong? Why do I pass out every month when I get my period? Why do I have an underactive thyroid? Why am I doing all these things?'”
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The 32-year-old “Ferrari” actress said that while filming “Divergent” in 2014, her health deteriorated to the point where she could barely walk, eat or hear. (Corine Solberg/Getty Images)
Several doctors suspected that she was suffering from endometriosis, a tilted uterus or a heart-shaped uterus, she said.
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“Every person I went to gave me conflicting information, and that sent me on my own journey. I didn’t feel safe, as you just said, with any of the people who were guiding me, because I feel like they were actually figuring it out along the way, too. So I might as well take matters into my own hands and dedicate myself to educating myself on so many topics and approaching them from an inner, holistic standpoint.”
Woodley said she no longer needs to take thyroid medication or any other medications.
“My hormones are so balanced and everything is going the way it should,” she added. “And I think that, in addition to the physical aspects, what ultimately got me here was the realization that I was in a constant fight-or-flight state.”
“My nervous system was very compassionate and operating very much out of fear and from the perspective of ‘where is the lion in the room?’. I was meeting every single moment with high alert and warning signals because I hadn’t yet figured out what a calm nervous system could look like and what true safety within myself could look like. And when I focused on that and became really dedicated and disciplined in this practice, everything started to change and balance out for me physically.”
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She later explained that she tends to run headlong into obstacles in her life, “but in the past I’ve run toward them without realizing that I need to make sure I’m OK along the way.”
