Shailene Woodley is ready to talk about a frightening health issue that once took over her life.
“I haven’t spoken about what exactly it was because that just feels like a personal thing that I don’t need to disclose,” Woodley, 32, said on the Tuesday, September 24, episode of the “She MD” podcast. “But essentially, I was in a position in my early 20s. It got to the point where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours and hours and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach.”
While working with “real MDs” and “independent healers,” the actress tried to search for answers and “some sort of comfort.”
Instead, she initially got a variety of diagnoses with doctors telling her different things.
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“It was a long journey, about a decade of unwinding and healing and getting healthy,” she shared. “And throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically.”
Woodley said she suddenly became afraid of food and went into the “mental f—ery that can happen” with body dysmorphia and identity confusion.
“It was a journey that ultimately physically resolved itself,” she revealed. “I am very healthy. I’m so happy to be able to say that. And also, it forced me to really take a deep look and become introspective.”
Woodley previously opened up about the effects of her undisclosed illness. While she didn’t disclose the particulars of her health scare, the actress said it caused her to turn down offers following her appearance in Divergent. (She starred as Beatrice Prior in the series from 2014 to 2016.)
“I was very, very sick in my early 20s,” she told The New York Times in 2020. “While I was doing the Divergent movies and working hard, I also was struggling with a deeply personal, very scary physical situation.”
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Luckily, Woodley has been able to bounce back from a challenging time in her life.
In addition to landing a starring role on HBO’s Big Little Lies in 2017, Woodley has appeared in the TV series Three Women and the original movie Killer Heat.
“A lot of the last few years has been about focusing on mental health for me, and it’s a slow process,” Woodley previously told the Times. “But because of that work, I feel very grounded and rooted in who I am and very clear about everything in my life, whether it’s my career or my relationships or my own internal worth.”
