Maisie Williams went through a dark period in her life where she hated herself.
The Game of Thrones star sat down for a chat with British TV presenter Fearne Cotton for her Happy Place podcast, and revealed she was trying to “break free” from the negativity and feelings of self-doubt that she had been battling for a long time.
“I went through a huge period of my life where I’d tell myself every day that I hated myself,” Maisie revealed. “It got to a point where I’d be in a conversation with my friends and my mind would running and running, and I’d be thinking about all the stupid things I’ve said in my life and it would just race and race… We’d be talking and I’d be like ‘I hate myself’.
“When I starting digging in and figuring out why I said those things, actually it was nothing to do with myself. So many of these problems are really linked to things in your past, as soon as you start digging and start asking yourself bigger questions than: Why do I hate myself? It’s more: Why do you make yourself feel this way?”
The 22-year-old admitted that she has come out of the dark period now but is scared about slipping back into that mindset, so she is currently working on letting “sadness wash over her without it consuming her”.
The British actress, who plays Arya Stark in the hit HBO series, also revealed that social media didn’t help, as she found it difficult to ignore the negative comments people were making about her.
“It got to me a lot because there’s just a constant feed in your back pocket of what people think of you,” she continued. “It’s impossible to turn a blind eye.”
“When I do feel myself going down a rabbit hole, it gets to a point where you’re almost craving something negative so you can sit in a hole of sadness. It’s really bizarre the way that it starts to consume you.”
