Elizabeth Olsen “didn’t understand” feelings of panic until she reached a certain age.
The Marvel actress got candid about how she experienced panic attacks in New York at age 21, a feeling she said she wasn’t aware of as she was a very loud and confident kid growing up.
“I remember I would get [panick attacks] on the hour every hour,” Olsen said in an interview with Variety published Oct. 3. “I used to live on 13th Street between 6th and 7th. I was crossing 6th Avenue at 14th Street, and I realized I couldn’t cross the street — I stood up against the wall, and I just thought I was going to drop dead at any moment.”
Olsen described the “spiraling” feeling that would happen in her body at signs of change in her environment.
“If I went from cold to hot, hot to cold, full to hungry, hungry to full — any kind of shift in my body, my whole body thought, ‘Uh oh, something’s wrong!'” Olsen told the publication. “It was so weird. A ENT doctor said that it could be vertigo related because it was all about truly spinning. So it was an interesting six months.”