Lana Condor opens up about struggles with mental health and body dysmorphia

Lana Condor, in a conversation with SELF, spoke about her struggles with mental health and body dysmorphia. She expressed how being in Hollywood has contributed to the issues and how having a support system has been of great help to her.

Condor revealed how being a ballet dancer had a major effect on her body image while growing up. “When you see yourself in a mirror constantly, and you’re, like, wearing nothing, you can really just nitpick yourself to death, which is so unhealthy,” she said. “When I stopped doing ballet and classes, I felt like that was the beginning of where I could start working on the body dysmorphia…[that] was the beginning of, Okay, I definitely need to heal because the way that I thought about myself when I was dancing was not healthy.”

Although she isn’t dancing now, Condor still struggles with body dismorphia.

“I’m not in a place where I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s over.’ I have to work on it every single day.”

“Working out in a healthy way has helped a lot because it makes me feel good,” she said. “It makes me feel stronger. I used to work out constantly. Just go, go, go. And that was so unhealthy for me. So now I’m trying to do things that I just genuinely love and not in an overt, burnout way.”

Condor advises those who are going something similar and says, “You have to treat yourself like your best friend.” she said. “You would never tell your best friend the things that you say to yourself in your darkest times. You would never in a million years. I think that we have to talk to ourselves kindly and gently.”

Condor also revealed that she was struggling with mental health during the release of All The Boys back in 2018.