Former Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner recently opened up about her mental health struggles in an interview with Elle UK, and her vulnerability is an inspiration to us all.
The 26-year-old admits to taking a step back from social media, saying, “I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I wish I’d never got myself involved with it in the first place. I look at the comments on Instagram and think, ‘Oh, f*ck. Everyone thinks this about me.’ It would completely consume me.”
Her relationship with social media had such a negative effect on her body image, Turner hired a companion. “I don’t know if you know what a companion is? It’s a live-in therapist, who would ensure I wasn’t doing anything unhealthy with my eating habits,” she says. “One night, I was playing over and over in my mind a comment I’d seen on Instagram. I was like, ‘I’m so fat, I’m so undesirable,’ and spinning out. She said to me, ‘You know, no one actually cares. I know you think this, but nobody else is thinking it. You’re not that important’…That was the best thing anyone could have told me.”
She has since deleted Instagram from her phone, which she says has been helpful. “Now, if I do have to go on it, it’s for a few minutes once or twice a week, rather than hours every day. It’s made such a difference. Live real life—it’s much more fun.”
While she no longer has a live-in therapist, she still has sessions every week to assist with her anxiety and depression. “I know what’s good for me and what’s not good for me,” she tells Elle UK. “I know what I have to do to get myself in a good headspace. It’s not debilitating—I know how to get myself out of it.”
With baby number two on the way, Turner has a beautiful family of her own with husband Joe Jonas here in America. But, she says the UK is calling her name. “The people, the attitude, everything. I’m slowly dragging my husband back. I really love living in America but, for my mental health, I have to be around my friends and my family.”
