Jessica Alba reveals she suffered from anxiety in her 20s and wish she had therapy back then

Besides fulfilling their dreams and earning millions of dollars, celebrities like Jessica Alba know that anxiety doesn’t care the amount of money you have in your bank account, how amazing your body looks, or how many awards you have on a shelf.

At least once in their lifetime, humans experience anxiety due to an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. We can all agree that living in concern will not make things better or help us live a healthier and happier life; however, when our uneasiness is uncontrollable, seeking guidance from licensed mental health professionals is an option that we should consider.

© Jessica Alba

Living in different circumstances and reflecting on the past, Alba knows that not focusing on her mental health when she was younger was a mistake. “In entertainment, in particular, there’s no amount of success that ever gives you a real foundation or a real place in this industry,” Alba told CNBC. “I put a lot of pressure on myself over the years. It kept me in this state, almost like a hamster wheel. I [could] never really breakthrough until I understood the core of why I felt that way, and where [it was] coming from.”

The 40-year-old California native understands the benefits of therapy; however, she didn’t implement them 20 years ago. “I probably would have worked on myself earlier,” she said. “But it’s almost like you need to go through [those struggles] to understand that it’s not the thing to worry about. [As you get older], you definitely care less about what people think.”

According to the actress and businesswoman, therapy helped her to understand what she was made of and all the great things she could accomplish in life. “Once you understand yourself, and why you do what you do, and how you operate in the world, it unlocks your potential,” she added. “You may not even know you’re doing certain things that keep you from happiness, self-worth, or your goals.”

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The star revealed that she struggled when she was younger and inexperienced. “I just had so much angst when I was 20 years old,” she continued. “It was so hard. It’s so hard for young people because you don’t have the tools. You don’t have the life experience to know that time heals, and you’ll figure it out. Once you understand that you can breakthrough, there are so many possibilities of how you can exist or live or walk through the world. It feels so much better now.”

Unfortunately, Jessica Alba didn’t have someone that introduced her to a therapist or informed her about how life-changing it could be to seek guidance from an expert. Also, growing up in a “very modest and pretty traditional Mexican-American family” with a “male-dominated” environment made it hard to dream big or think out of the box.

“It just felt so wrong to me,” she told the media outlet. “In a way, there were no expectations for me to be successful at anything. But then, that left so much potential. Anything’s better than nothing, right? You can’t really fail if you try something. There’s this innate kind of fearlessness that comes with starting from the bottom.”

“Naysayers or haters would energize me, in a way,” she said. “Oh, you think I can’t do it? Watch this. It gave me that fire to really keep going. But now, it doesn’t really get to me the same way. It rolls off differently now.”

“Whatever people are going through in life — their life experiences and their trauma — they’re projecting it onto other people,” she continued. “They’re going to spew negativity, and that’s fine because it does something for them. But I don’t need any of that. It has nothing to do with me. So, I let that live over there for them. I’m going to just keep on keeping on over here.”