Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host, is unfortunately, one of the many people who suffer from panic disorder. Negative childhood experiences all added up and resulted in panic attacks and major anxiety for her. It was things like sexual abuse at a young age and teen pregnancy with the baby dying shortly after birth all contributed to the development of her anxiety disorder. However, she was luckily able to learn to cope with her anxiety and grow stronger to then carefully make major life decisions, including creating her own television show. She was eventually able to conquer panic attacks and help others to do the same. Oprah is incredibly inspirational to many people because of this.
In 2013, Oprah had a panic attack that was caused by a chaotic time period at work. Lee Daniels "The Butler" was in the making and she also had many celebrity interviews to attend to and the stress got the better of her. “In the beginning, it was just sort of speeding and a kind of numbness and going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing," She told Access Hollywood. "I will tell you when I realized that I thought, ‘All right, if I don’t calm down I’m gonna be in serious trouble.’ I was in the middle of doing voiceovers, you know? And I remember closing my eyes in between each page because looking at the page and the words at the same time was too much stimulation for my brain.
EMMA STONE
Emma has struggled with panic disorder from quite a young age and through her career in acting, she has been able to overcome it for the most part. “The first time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my friend’s house, and I thought the house was burning down. I called my Mom and she brought me home, and for the next three years it just would not stop. I would go to the nurse at lunch most days and just wring my hands. I would ask my Mom to tell me exactly how the day was going to be, then ask again 30 seconds later. I just needed to know that no one was going to die and nothing was going to change. It was really bad,” she said.
It was when she was only 14 years old, that she made a huge decision that would change her life drastically and for the better. She suddenly had an epiphany during class in 9th grade to move to L.A. to become an actress. She managed to get her parents on board by researching what she would do to get herself there and pitching the idea to them with a powerpoint. She believes her parents were easily persuaded because they had seen how happy she became when acting at her local theatre and how much it helped her through her anxiety. So by following through with this epiphany, she was able to become very successful and happy in life and actually win the battle against panic disorder.