During an appearance on the Brave New World podcast with Evgeny Lebedev, the British singer revealed that she has been suffering from “really bad anxiety” for a number of years.
“I have really bad anxiety, I think anyone in my industry has the anxiety, to be honest,” Rita, 33, told the podcast host. “It is, I think now really cool that it’s become a conversation and there’s days that are better than other days, just like anxiety is, just like having panic attacks.”
The Ritual hitmaker explained that she has “learnt to recognise” when she is about to have a panic attack, which allows her to manage the symptoms.
“I’ve really learnt now to recognise when it’s coming,” she said. “Before I would still feel like it was foreign, and I would do little things, like in my nervous system around for me is my stomach, I do a lot of acupuncture around there, and I just breathe and I just lie there for about 20 minutes.”
The former X Factor judge revealed she has found several ways to cope with her anxiety, including “Chinese medicine” and ice baths.
“I do love Chinese medicine, I try and incorporate a lot of different methods, I’m not just a one-person thing,” she stated.
Rita added that she uses the meditation and ice bathing methods of Wim Hof, also known as The Iceman.
“I actually asked him to come and surprise my husband (Taika Waititi) for his birthday, and my husband isn’t as obsessed as I am, and he didn’t know he was coming,” the performer said. “For him to fly in and do this for us was really special, so we woke up, it was his birthday and in he walked, my jaw dropped.”
In a 2016 interview with Cosmopolitan, Rita said she had been attending weekly therapy sessions to deal with her anxiety.
