Lana Condor may be one of Hollywood’s in-demand actresses, but she’s still human.
The Boo, Bitch star, 25, recently opened up in an interview published in the Wondermind newsletter about her mental health practices and how it’s been a daily struggle to not judge her physical appearance.
When asked which aspect of her mental health is currently a work in process, the actress replied, “I think right now positive self-image and self-talk is probably one that I’m working on the most. And that’s a practice that you kind of have to do every day.
“Some of the things that you say to your image, you would never ever say to your best friend or your little sister,” she continued. “So, I try to remind myself of that ’cause I can be pretty hard on my physical appearance. That’s just something that I’ve struggled with all my life.”
Condor said body dysmorphia “is heightened in the entertainment industry,” explaining, “I see myself all day long on cameras and monitors and super close up and far behind, and you can’t really escape yourself — and nor do I want to. But if negative self-talk is alive and well in my brain and I can’t escape myself, then I’m miserable.”
That’s why, in recent years, Condor said she’s placed serious boundaries for herself when it comes to relationships.
“I’m very much a people pleaser,” she said, noting what she refers to as her own “comedown” routine after a long day’s work.
“The easiest thing that I do to help me unwind after a kind of stressful day is definitely a bath. It forces you to relax,” she said. “I do like journaling. I read at night. I do a lot of essential oils. Sometimes I’ll go outside and sit with my crystals. And [I] listen to sound baths in the morning and in the night.”
“The comedown is real, and [this] kind of grounds me back into my body, makes me feel like a human being again,” she explained. “Usually, when I come back from work, I’ll cook a dinner. And I might be up two hours longer than I should have [been], but just the act of doing something like an everyday thing, like making yourself dinner, cleaning the dishes — all of that stuff grounds me and reminds me I’m still a human that has a life, and my life isn’t just my job.”
Mantras are also an important aspect of her day.
“‘You are stronger than you know.’ And I write that all the time,” she said. “I start my day with that mantra; I go to bed with that mantra because, well, I just genuinely believe that. And I think everyone has their self-doubts, their fears. Everyone has something that they might have to go through during that day that they might not really want to, but they have to do it anyway. So I find that kind of mantra, that ‘you’re stronger than you know,’ is a reminder that you are, and we’ve been through a lot of stuff and we’re still here, and that is due to our resilience as humans.”
Like all things in life, Condor said she’s learning as she goes. When asked about the advice she’d give to her younger self, she said, “Share your feelings with someone who feels safe for you. Don’t bottle it up.”
“I bottled it up a lot when I was younger about things that I was going through — and I’m still in it,” she explained. “It took so much time and practice to even 1. identify it, and then 2. to unlearn. I think that if I had felt more safe in terms of sharing whatever was going on with me at that time, I think that it would’ve saved me a lot of time. Of course, it’s always just a journey. It’s an everyday journey, and that’s good. That’s what a practice is.”
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