--- title: Emma Stone Talks About Anxiety With Stephen Colbert description: Emma Stone has opened up about her lifelong struggle with anxiety, which started in early on in her childhood. canonical: https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/ author: Cady Lang article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-20T15:00:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:47:24.942Z og:title: Emma Stone Opens Up About Her Lifelong Struggle with Anxiety og:description: "I was a very, very, very anxious child and I had a lot of panic attacks" og:url: https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Emma Stone Opens Up About Her Lifelong Struggle with Anxiety twitter:description: "I was a very, very, very anxious child and I had a lot of panic attacks" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Emma Stone Had a Heart to Heart With Stephen Colbert About Her Lifelong Struggle with Anxiety  by [Cady Lang](https://time.com/author/cady-lang/)  ## Cady Lang Sep 20, 2017 3:00 PM UTC  by [Cady Lang](https://time.com/author/cady-lang/)  ## Cady Lang Sep 20, 2017 3:00 PM UTC [Emma Stone](https://time.com/collection/2017-time-100/4736213/emma-stone/) has been vocal about [the challenges she’s experienced because of her anxiety in the past](http://time.com/4611066/emma-stone-on-anxiety/) and she’s continuing to bolster the conversation about mental health by opening up about how it affected her during her childhood. During an appearance on [_The Late Show with Stephen Colbert_](http://time.com/4928848/stephen-colbert-donald-trump-president-daca/), the [_Battle of the Sexes_ ](http://time.com/4938913/battle-of-the-sexes-1973-report/)star shared that therapy helped her handle her anxiety as a child. “I was a very, very, very anxious child and I had a lot of panic attacks,” Stone said. “I benefitted in a big way from therapy.” Stone even shared a drawing that she made while she was in therapy as a kid that depicts her in relation to what she thought her anxiety looked like. “This is me, I guess. It’s really great artistry with my shoes and then this is anxiety here,” she said. “It’s a little green monster that looks a little bit, as someone backstage said, a uterus with some ovaries. But I didn’t mean for it to be hormonally related in any way. Like I said, I was 9.” While Stone still has anxiety, she told Colbert that acting has helped her manage it effectively. “It has always been something that I’ve lived with and it flares up in big ways at different times in my life,” she said. “Sometimes while it’s happening, like while I’m in a phase of big turmoil, it feels like it’s never gonna end — but it does. \[Acting\] helped me so much, improv helped me so much,” she told Colbert. “I mean, I still have anxiety to this day, not panic attacks — knock on wood.” Watch the full interview below. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/"},"headline":"Emma Stone Had a Heart to Heart With Stephen Colbert About Her Lifelong Struggle with Anxiety","datePublished":"2017-09-20T15:00:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:47:24.942Z","description":"\"I was a very, very, very anxious child and I had a lot of panic attacks\"","url":"https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Mental Health","celebrities","viral","Emma Stone","Late Night Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Cady Lang","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/cady-lang/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4949552/emma-stone-anxiety-on-colbert/","name":"Emma Stone Had a Heart to Heart With Stephen Colbert About Her Lifelong Struggle with Anxiety"}}]}] ```