Ellie Goulding says her anxiety was ‘debilitating’ before she found therapy

When you suffer from anxiety (like I do), you often feel like no one else feels the same way. Everyone else has it together, so why can’t I?

The reality is that so many people deal with some form of mental illness on a daily basis, but for so long it wasn’t talked about. This is slowly changing, thanks to celebrities like Lena Dunham who are willing to tell their stories.

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Add Ellie Goulding to that list now, too. The British singer revealed to Canadian magazine Flare that she suffers from anxiety.

“This was when my career was really taking off,” she said. “My surroundings would trigger a panic attack, so I couldn’t go to the studio unless I was lying down in the car with a pillow over my face. I used to beat myself up about it.”

She sought help from a therapist and found a way to deal with her illness through cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT is goal-oriented, meaning that you take a hands-on approach to alleviating your symptoms.

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“Cognitive behavioral therapists may give you some homework to do to help you master whatever it is you are lacking,” says SheKnows Expert Dr. Cooper Lawrence. “For example, if you go to a CBT for anxiety, they may have you keep a record of when you feel anxious, on a scale of one to 10, how anxious you felt and what thought preceded the anxiety.”

It’s worked for the “Outside” singer. She was “skeptical” at first, “but not being able to leave the house was so debilitating.

“There were a couple of times after I released Delirium when I was doing promo and thought, Oh god, it’s coming back, it’s coming back, but it didn’t,” she told the magazine. “I think my body has become quite good at controlling anxiety.”

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