Actress Rebecca Gibney has bravely gone public with her mental health battle, admitting she was dealing with a resurgence in panic attacks and crippling anxiety until she got help earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Gibney took to Instagram on Monday, sharing the highly-personal message.<\/p>\n
“As some of you know I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks for most of my life,” Gibney wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As a teen, I was often erratic, impulsive, prone to rages and bored easily.”<\/p>\n
Gibney said her mental health struggles saw her leave high school at 15, only to fall into acting by chance.<\/p>\n
By her early 30s, the actress said despite having “everything”, including a “thriving career”, “solid family”, and “extraordinary friendships”, she was mentally spiralling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The weekly panic attacks became daily, then hourly,” she wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The self-loathing was constant and my pain was so deep, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I just knew I wanted it over.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gibney explained her mental health struggles left her suicidal.<\/p>\n
Her spiral only broke as she wrote a goodbye letter to her mother, admitting her mother would have never gotten over losing her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I was lucky,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I got help and with baby steps I eventually came home to myself.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gibney explained earlier this year her “optimistic bubble burst,” leaving her beside herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The panic returned, the stress, the sadness – and I found myself back in the pit of self-doubt, fear and anxiety,” she said.<\/p>\n
Gibney said she decided to pick-up the phone and get help. She encouraged anyone going through a tough time to do the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We all mask our pain but we all also feel it. You’re not alone,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Light really does follow the dark.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The message wasn’t lost on Gibney’s famous pals, who heaped praise on the actress for her openness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Thank you for sharing this. You will help so many with your honesty,” Real Housewives of Sydney star, Sally Obermeder, said.<\/p>\n
Melissa Hoyer also heaped praise on the star.<\/p>\n
“Just so extraordinary articulated Bec,” Hoyer wrote.<\/p>\n
“Your strength, honesty, vulnerability and authenticity shines right through, like everything you do in life.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actress Rebecca Gibney has bravely gone public with her mental health battle, admitting she was dealing with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[17242,64,63,480,137,514,515,10237,150004],"class_list":{"0":"post-305880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-actress","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-celebrity","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mentalhealth","15":"tag-panic-attacks","16":"tag-rebecca-gibney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}