By Nicholas Rice, People
Bella Hadid is speaking honestly about her mental health.
The 25-year-old supermodel spoke to WSJ. Magazine for the publication’s “My Monday Morning” series, where she opened up about her mental health struggles, which she described as “excruciating and debilitating.”
When asked by the publication what her secret is to putting together her outfit in the morning, Hadid explained that she hasn’t had a stylist “in a long time, maybe two years now,” and she was “in such a weird place mentally that it was really complicated for me to get out of the house and put an outfit together, especially with the anxiety of [paparazzi] being outside and all that.”
But, after learning to deal with her anxiety and other mental health struggles, Hadid said she learned to embrace her fashion and dress in a way that makes her happy.
“In the last year, it was really important for me to learn that even if people talk about my style or if they like it or if they don’t, it doesn’t matter, because it’s my style,” she noted. “When I leave the house in the morning, what I think about is: Does this make me happy? Do I feel good in this and do I feel comfortable?”
In her interview with WSJ. Magazine, Hadid continued to chat about her own mental health, as well as what her thought process was behind an Instagram post she shared in November, where she posted a series of selfies of herself crying.
“I would have really depressive episodes and my mom or my doctor would ask how I was and instead of having to respond in text, I would just send them a photo,” she said. “It was the easiest thing for me to do at the time because I was never able to explain how I was feeling.”
“I would just be in excruciating and debilitating mental and physical pain, and I didn’t know why. That was over the past three years,” she continued. “[When I posted them] it was to make sure that anybody that was feeling that way knew it was OK to feel that way.”
Added Hadid: “Even though on Instagram things look so beautiful, at the end of the day, we are all cut from the same cloth. I felt like it was just good for me to be able to speak my truth and at some point I wasn’t able to post nice pretty pictures anymore. I was over it.”
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