July 15, 2026, 11:25 am | Read time: 4 minutes
At 22, Millie Bobby Brown is one of the biggest stars of her generation. With productions such as “Stranger Things,” “Enola Holmes,” and “Damsel,” the actress has achieved worldwide success. But behind the scenes, things were different for a long time: She struggled with anxiety for months until a monk unexpectedly helped her overcome it.
On July 13, 2026, Brown was a guest on the podcast “On Purpose with Jay Shetty.”1 In it, the actress revealed a vulnerable side behind her success—especially when she recounted a significant experience of being followed: “It was really traumatizing, I would say, 20 minutes. It was very, very intense and very scary. After the 20 minutes, I got into an elevator, stared at the corner of the wall […]. I feel like I just shut down, for three months. In that moment, something switched off in my head.”
When Anxiety Takes Over the Body
As reported by “People,” Brown had already revealed in her acceptance speech for the “Glamour Women of the Year Award” in 2023 how much social media and the press had affected her mental health: “My anxiety is still a big battle I have to fight.”2 Since she was 12, the actress has been in the spotlight due to her role as “Eleven” in “Stranger Things,” and for years she has struggled with recurring anxiety attacks.
On “On Purpose,” Brown shares that her anxiety comes in waves. If a significant event triggers an episode, it can last for weeks or even months. The anxiety is not just psychological but also manifests physically, leading to symptoms like fever or temporary vision problems. This was the case after the traumatic stalking incident: In the weeks following the event, her commitments piled up while her health deteriorated. She developed pneumonia and suffered for weeks from an initially undiagnosed strep infection.
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Healing with Japanese Monks
Three months after the traumatic event, Brown traveled to Japan with her husband—not as a spiritual retreat, but simply because she was looking forward to a good time. However, Brown tells Jay Shetty: “When I got there, I still felt really anxious.” Even restaurant visits could trigger panic attacks. Sometimes she would arrive at a restaurant and tell her husband, “I can’t go in, we have to go back.”
In Kyoto, Brown’s anxiety reached its peak. But when she entered a garden full of monks, one of them noticed her and instinctively sensed what she was going through. As she recounts, he knew “that I was somehow broken.” He simply invited her to meditate together. Brown now sees this shared meditation and the experience in the Japanese garden as a “divine intervention” that freed her from her three-month anxiety spiral and gave her a sense of “peace in her heart” after a long time.
How Brown Now Manages Her Anxiety
Over the years, Brown has developed a toolkit of methods she can rely on during an anxiety attack. Her husband and mother are her number-one go-to people. “I think you have to find people who understand you and know the vocabulary they need to use around you in those moments,” she says. And even if there’s no one to talk to at the moment, Brown tries to ground herself. She focuses on her immediate surroundings and concentrates on objects in the room. Tapping techniques and sound bowls also help her in such moments. Due to her chaotic schedule, journaling has taken a back seat, so she uses gratitude journals with targeted questions instead.
Perhaps the most beautiful method from her toolkit is singing. Even as a small child, she intuitively sang before stressful moments to calm herself. Because of her trip to Japan, she also learned all about humming and the vagus nerve and thought, “Wow, I sing every time I’m nervous. Basically, I’m vibrating my vagus nerve and calming myself without realizing it.”