Willow Smith’s old fears about becoming famous at a young age have resurfaced and she’s struggling to manage her mental health.
The Whip My Hair singer, the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, has opened up about her early struggles with anxiety which came at a time when people didn’t realize what she was going through.
“My mental health is in a very fragile state, but I think it’s in a state where it’s about to grow in a really awesome way,” she told BBC Radio 1’s The YUNGBLUD Podcast.
“For so long I had a lot of fear. I felt extremely unsafe in my music career in the past and that feeling of insecurity or unsafety. I didn’t feel protected, which went really deep,” she shared. “I kinda had to come back from the music industry and now I’m kinda going back in. It’s interesting because all of those memories and emotions have just been resurfacing (sic).
“I was doing the Jimmy Fallon (late night U.S. TV show) performance and I had like a flashback of being like 10 or nine, and having an anxiety attack onset and basically feeling like everyone around me was like ‘You’re just a brat’. ‘Why aren’t you grateful?'”
She explained some people thought she was simply throwing a “tantrum”, but she is now in a much better place herself to understand what happened.
“They didn’t see it as an anxiety attack, they saw it as a tantrum and now I look back and know it was an anxiety attack.
“And so when I’m in these situations now and I have these flashbacks, I need to take the time, I need to go into a little meditation, I need to separate myself from the situation for a little bit. And tell myself that, ‘You’re not nine, you’re a grown a** woman.’ I have to re-train my mind.”
