It’s never easy growing up with an anxiety disorder, but it’s even harder to do so in the spotlight. Corinne Foxx is opening up about being diagnosed with anxiety in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month and hopes to encourage others to prioritize their mental health above all else.
The 27-year-old daughter of Jamie Foxx spoke with ET’s Melicia Johnson about being diagnosed with anxiety and how growing up with a famous father led to her developing an “intense perfectionism” at an early age.
“I felt like people were always looking at me, were always expecting me to turn out a certain way. Because of that, I went the opposite realm,” Corinne shares. “I became very focused on perfection and always being in this very cookie cutter type of way, and that put a lot of pressure and anxiety on me to uphold this standard of never messing up. That definitely affected my mental health, and I’m still working through to unlearn those behaviors and those patterns and giving myself the grace to just be a human.”
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The actress noted that she’s lucky to have friends and family that she can rely on. She explained that having people who genuinely listened to her and understood what she was going through helped her immensely. She also shared that she’s been in therapy since she was 14 years old and has had the same therapist for over 10 years. As she’s gotten older, her challenges have evolved and with them, so have her coping methods.
“I think it’s tough with social media nowadays. A lot of people assume things about you, assume that you don’t have your own struggles, and of course I’ve been incredibly, incredibly privileged,” she adds. “I’m aware of that, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not a human being. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have my own past and things I’ve went through and then also just genetic predispositions to things that are out of my control.”
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Corinne said that despite how confident and put-together she seems on the outside, it takes a lot of “prep work” and “self-talk” to get her to that point. She explained that she’s created a “toolkit” on her phone titled “Corinne’s Guide to Wellness.” It’s a list of ways to combat her anxiety and narrow down the source and appropriate solution. She gets nervous often, especially with new projects like serving as executive producer for Netflix’s Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!
