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MANILA, Philippines – Ellen Adarna opened up about her experience of dealing with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, saying that she was “in a very dark place” for almost 3 years.
In a video on Instagram stories, Ellen explained why she chose to undergo “mental training,” saying she did so as a way to deal with her diagnoses.
“I went to therapy. I had two psychiatrists. I did counselling and a lot of talking…yes, I was on medications. I was on a lot of tranquilizers,” she said in the video.
She then described experiencing bad panic attacks and depression.
“My panic attacks were really, really bad to the point that my body would shake and then I’d puke. It was so weird. And you know at that time I didn’t know what it was because I never had anxiety that serious. At first I thought it was gonna die because everything was getting hard, my muscles were getting so stiff and I felt like I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “So that was my anxiety, and then I was just also very sad. I was in a very dark place for two years, almost 3 years.”
“I thought I wasn’t gonna snap out of it. It was that bad,” she said.
She also said that her medications made her feel numb and that she slept all the time and had difficulty even getting out of bed.
“I was always sleeping…like that was my thing, sleeping was my thing. I’d wake up, and think about sleeping again. I would eat in bed. I wouldn’t even shower for days. I was just in bed all the time. If I try to think about those two years…it’s a blur,” she said. “I basically slept for almost 3 years. That was it.”
She said that she eventually decided to stop taking medication because “when I took it I didn’t feel the sadness, but it didn’t make me happy either.”
“I didn’t have feelings. Like I felt like a robot…It helped though, it helped with the sadness, but it just wasn’t my thing,” she said. She then went on a month-long vacation with her family, during which her depression worsened.
“I thought I was getting better but I wasn’t. I was in a nice country, went to nice places, and I still felt the same. It made it even worse because at that time I didn’t bring my pills and I was in a nice country with my family, and I was just still sad and I felt really empty,” she said.
She decided to do “mental training” under the Kokoro Program in Bali to deal with her depression.
In the video, Ellen didn’t go into much detail about what led to her mental health issues, but said that it was “something very personal.”
“Let’s just say that so many things happened all at once, in a span of 4 months or less than 4 months. Everything happened, all the bad things that I imagined happened. So it was very traumatic for me,” she said.
In the caption of her video, she assured followers that she was “101% okay now.”
“No more meds and sadness…just love and smiles. I’m out of that black hole,” she said.
The actress went on showbiz hiatus in 2017, after she reportedly got pregnant with her child with then partner John Lloyd Cruz. The two never confirmed their relationship, or talked publicly about their son, Elias. They reportedly broke up in 2019. – Rappler.com
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