Watch Kendall Jenner Talk About Her Anxiety With a Therapist
Kendall Jenner Talked Anxiety With a Psychologist, and It Felt Like My Own 11-Minute Therapy Session
Kendall Jenner doesn't want your sympathy; she wants to help you feel less alone. The 25-year-old supermodel and reality TV star recently sat down with Ramani Durvasula, PhD, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, for a video where they broke down Jenner's experience with anxiety. And to be honest, it felt like an 11-minute therapy session of my own. In the Open Minded video for Vogue, the two discuss the reality of the post-lockdown world we're currently living in, and how we can't just go from zero to 100 with our social interactions. Dr. Durvasula compared it to scuba diving.
"When you scuba dive, if you come up too fast, you could actually get really sick, and that's called the bends. Psychology is similar," she said. "From this pandemic, if we go too quickly from being locked in to throwing ourselves right back out there, especially for people with anxiety, they're going to kind of get the psychological bends and they're really going to get rattled. You have to ease yourself into it."
The metaphors that Dr. Durvasula uses to explain anxiety deserve to be printed out in size 100 font and plastered over every wall in my apartment. Her profound comparisons can actually really help someone struggling with anxiety express what they're going through. "People who are anxious are always monitoring their bodies. It's like a Roomba, you're always sort of wandering around and vacuuming all these thoughts in your body," Dr. Durvasula shared. When Jenner opened up about the physical toll her anxieties have on her body and mind, it all clicked.
"Anxiety is like a magnifying glass and it magnifies only the bad things."
"Anxiety is like a magnifying glass and it magnifies only the bad things. In essence, what we're trying to do is take that magnifying glass and put it to being a regular lens, especially physical sensations, because anxiety is such a physical disorder," Dr. Durvasula said. Being on a reality TV show starting at age 11 does not make opening up about these issues any easier. For Jenner, the cameras have been rolling almost all her life, but she's still a human being who struggles.
Watch the video above and see how Dr. Durvasula and Jenner talk through anxiety relief. Whether you've struggled with anxiety for as long as you can remember or you have only first started experiencing it, the video is undeniably useful in helping viewers understand that they are not alone in feeling this way.
