Elizabeth Olsen looks back on troubling mental health episode

Elizabeth Olsen has had her share of panic attacks.

In a new interview, Olsen opened up on her past mental health struggles and shed light on how she related to her character Christina, who learned to calm down through breathing and meditation in the 2023 Netflix movie, His Three Daughters.

“I’ve gone through phases of it,” the WandaVision star said of panic attacks. “Figuring out what works for me, or what works enough. No one talked about panic attacks in the mid-2000s.”

Detailing her experience, she said, “I thought it meant you just write a list and check things off and get over it. I didn’t realize it was something you had no control over, but I had to figure out how to have some control.”

She the panic attacks happened “like, almost every hour!”

“It was literally, like, any time there was a shift in something: hot to cold, hungry to full. I thought, ‘Oh, is this OK?’ And then it would spiral and it just became this habit,” she added.

Eventually, Olsen found out that the way to stop such attacks in their tracks is to “interrupt the thinking process” and name things she saw around her to divert her thoughts.

Fortunately, she doesn't suffer from the attacks anymore.

“You learn very quickly who you feel comfortable around and who you don’t,” Elizabeth Olsen noted.