Reese Witherspoon Gets Candid About Struggling With Postpartum Depression

Reese Witherspoon is opening up.

The 44-year-old Big Little Lies actress made an appearance on Jameela Jamil‘s I Weigh podcast on Friday (April 17).

During her appearance, Reese shared that she began therapy at 16.

“I definitely had anxiety, my anxiety manifests as depression so I would get really depressed. My brain is like a hamster on a wheel and it won’t come off. I’ve been managing it my entire life,” she said.

“I’ve had three kids. After each child I had a different experience. One kid I had kind of mild postpartum, and one kid I had severe postpartum where I had to take pretty heavy medication because I just wasn’t thinking straight at all. And then I had one kid where I had no postpartum at all,” she revealed.

“We don’t understand the kind of hormonal roller coaster that you go on when you stop nursing. No one explained that to me. I was 23 years old when I had my first baby and nobody explained to me that when you wean a baby, your hormones go into the toilet. I felt more depressed than I’d ever felt in my whole life. It was scary,” she admitted.

She also revealed that she wasn’t able to be with her mother, who was a nurse for years.

“I didn’t have the right kind of guidance or help, I just white-knuckled back…there wasn’t the type of communication we have now.”

“I think hormones are so understudied and not understood. I kept reaching out to my doctors for answers, there just isn’t enough research about what happens to women’s bodies and the hormonal shifts that we have aren’t taken as seriously as I think they should be.”

Click here to listen.

Reese also has projects in the works. She recently gave an update on the progress of Legally Blonde 3. See what she said!