Gillian Anderson, the actress, has told how she has battled mental health problems during her career but was helped to overcome her self-doubt by compiling daily lists of things to be grateful for. The X-Files star opened up about how she has been receiving therapy since she was 14 and how at times felt so low she would not leave home. The 48-year-old actress also fears she might be dyslexic as she struggles to remember things, and has worried about looking into it in case her fears were confirmed.
Anderson, who plays Lady Mountbatten in Viceroy’s House, a sumptuous period drama set during the last days of the Raj, said the thought of forgetting her lines was “terrifying”. Her memory has proved hazy enough in the past that she has forgotten the plots to some of her favourite novels.
Earlier in her career she went as far as hiring a history tutor to help fill in gaps on topics she didn’t know much about, but described it as a “disaster”.
She told Weekend magazine: “I took notes, blah, blah, blah, but couldn’t remember a thing he taught me. Nothing. I’m not even sure, if you’d asked me the next day, I could have told you what I’d learnt. “You know, even my favourite books, I couldn’t tell you what they were about. It’s always been that way.”
She vowed to get tested for dyslexia, adding: “I’d always been afraid to look into it, because I was afraid that if I found something out, I would think that I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do.”
The Chicago-born mother-of-three prescribes techniques such as meditation and writing messages to oneself on Post-it notes to stick about the house as ways of defeating inner worries. She has now co-written a self-help book with close friend and journalist Jennifer Nadel called We: A Manifesto For Women Everywhere, which draws on her own experience of low self-esteem. “There were times when it was really bad. There have been times in my life where I haven’t wanted to leave the house,” she said.
Anderson writes a gratitude list every night, which helps control her intolerance of herself and others and settles her down. And instead of focusing on things she doesn’t like about herself, including any doubts over her body, she tries to concentrate on remembering good things — which is where meditation comes in.
She adds: “All I know is that when I meditate, one goes beyond the physical, and it is possible to tap into a sense of absolute contentment and joy in that place.”
Gesturing to her body, she added: “So if that’s where you’re starting, then actually none of this means anything, really.”
Meanwhile, Marian Keyes, the author, has spoken about her own mental health battle, comparing her recovery from depression to “coming up from the bottom of the ocean”.
The Irish writer of novels including Watermelon, Sushi For Beginners and Rachel’s Holiday, has said she faced suicidal urges up to 40 times a day in the depths of mental illness. She battled the depression for 18 months and tried every possible remedy, including medication, cognitive behaviour therapy, meditation and mass, and said nothing worked but the passage of time.
She told Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “I stopped being able to sleep and eat, I couldn’t have conversations and it accelerated and I ended up going into a psychiatric hospital. It’s an illness and it ran its course. Three years ago, at the start of 2014, it was like coming up from the bottom of the ocean. It was really speedy.” Keyes, 53, who has been sober for 23 years, also detailed her recovery from alcoholism in her youth, telling Young that starting to write was her “rope across the abyss” as she penned her first short story months before entering a recovery programme.
