Anxiety and mental health are a huge struggle that Millie Bobby Brown said she is still fighting today.
During her acceptance speech at Glamour’s Women of the Year 2023 awards ceremony in New York on Tuesday, the Stranger Things The star opened up more about how her mental health has been affected over the years.
“Growing up in the industry, I felt very aware of the feeling of rejection,” Brown, 19, said. “As I got older, I started reading various things people said about me and I felt the same feeling of rejection, like when I didn’t get acting work. I felt alone in this feeling, as if no one else knew. what I was experiencing.”
“The influence of social media and the press has had a negative effect on my mental health and anxiety remains a huge struggle I face today,” she continued. “Luckily, thanks to the love and support of my friends and family, I feel pretty strong. I don’t feel alone anymore.”
As Brown continued her speech, she said she now uses her platform to advocate for other child actors and young people struggling with this same feeling of loneliness.
“Social media can be harmful to the minds of my generation and those that follow. Mental health is not a taboo subject. It is a necessary subject. Remember, we are human beings,” she declared.
She added: “For eight years, I wanted to shine, to flourish and to break out of the box that everyone tried to put me in. I decided to keep quiet when I was taking interviews and not say anything that would could be distorted because I was afraid. But that fire and free spirit within me was bursting to come out. It didn’t take me long to finally realize that I didn’t care, that who I was was enough.
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Brown recently shared with Charm that her fiancé Jake Bongiovi helped play a role in her recovery of her self-esteem.
The actress recalled how she was able to fully express herself with 21-year-old Bongiovi. She said: “When I met Jake I just felt like I could be loud. He accepted this and encouraged it. And I fell in love with myself while being with him.
“I was like, ‘Why do you love me? And then he listed all these things that I hated about myself. I was like, ‘Do you see the good in these things?’ And he said, ‘Of course I do,'” she recalls.
“These are things I love about myself now,” she continued. “He played a very important role in me wanting to love myself and becoming a woman. It was like, ‘Wow, I really love this person because he allows me to love myself.'”
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Brown, who got engaged to Bongiovi in April, claimed they both had the support of their families as they took the next step in their relationship.
“We were shaped by wonderful, loving relationships,” she explained. “So it was something that we both had a mutual desire for. His family was so accepting me wonderfully and hugged me, and it’s so nice to find a second family in there.”
