Lili Reinhart Discusses How the Pandemic Impacted Her Mental Health

Lili Reinhart spoke out about her anxiety via Instagram Live with author Sylvester Mcnutt III and touched upon how the COVID-19 pandemic affected her mental health.

On Thursday, July 23, Lili took to Instagram Live and was candid with her fans about her journey with anxiety. Lili mentioned how she feels stressed out “all the time” and that the pandemic added to her pre-existing battle with anxiety. She later provided an example of a “simple task” that causes her uneasiness.

“Say, going to the post office. Like, I really don’t want to drive to the post office. It gives me anxiety because I don’t want to have to leave my dog; I don’t want to have to deal with going out in public; I don’t want to do the mask thing. I would, but like I don’t want to put myself in a stressful environment. And I get myself hyped up about very dumb things. And I do that all the time. I remind myself, ‘Why the hell are you stressing yourself out about going to the damn post office?,” Lili said on Instagram Live.

Dating back to eighth grade, Lili first experienced panic attacks as a result of her anxiety. She expressed it was often hard for her to “get through the day” without having an episode at school. She now notices that she let her anxiety “consume her,” which was difficult for her parents to understand at the time.

Lili wrapped up the discussion by mentioning some positives that came out of quarantine. She noted that she attends weekly online therapy sessions, reads books on self-help, and is now looking into solo wellness retreats.

“It’s been a very important time for me—the past four months—to just process things. I’ve very much been…just trying to take full advantage of this very rare time, where I don’t have much to do and deal with my own little box of trauma in the back of my head that I wouldn’t normally ever want to sift through, you know? And I’m fortunate enough that I can have therapy every week; and I can, you know, outsource for, you know, certain methods of healing, like Reiki or something like that, maybe a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to do,” said Lili.

While Lili has been using her platform to open up about mental health, she has also spoken about topics in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Several different black activists joined Lili on Instagram live to share their stories.

Thank you, Lili, for being a mental health advocate, and for your transparency.