Bella Hadid spoke frankly about the toll Lyme disease, the pandemic and the unpredictable schedule of a model have taken on her mental health.

The supermodel explained to the WSJ. Magazine that it’s taken two years of this societal slow down for her to “realize now that my body is a temple and the routine that we have in the morning, especially Monday mornings, is…almost the most important thing because if you don’t start your week on a good note, it’s not going to be good for you.” Because of her Lyme disease diagnosis, Hadid adds that she suffers from bouts with anxiety and depression. In fact, her mental health has even affected her personal style. “I haven’t had a stylist in a long time, maybe two years now. I was in such a weird place mentally that it was really complicated for me to get out of the house and put an outfit together, especially with the anxiety of [paparazzi] being outside and all that,” she revealed. “In the last year, it was really important for me to learn that even if people talk about my style or if they like it or if they don’t, it doesn’t matter, because it’s my style. When I leave the house in the morning, what I think about is: Does this make me happy? Do I feel good in this and do I feel comfortable?”

The cover girl has also recently started sharing photos of herself crying on her Instagram account as a way to use her large following to let people know they aren’t alone in their mental health struggles. “I would have really depressive episodes and my mom or my doctor would ask how I was and instead of having to respond in text, I would just send them a photo. It was the easiest thing for me to do at the time because I was never able to explain how I was feeling. I would just be in excruciating and debilitating mental and physical pain, and I didn’t know why. That was over the past three years,” she explained.

She continued, “[When I posted them] it was to make sure that anybody that was feeling that way knew it was OK to feel that way. Even though on Instagram things look so beautiful, at the end of the day, we are all cut from the same cloth. I felt like it was just good for me to be able to speak my truth and at some point I wasn’t able to post nice pretty pictures anymore. I was over it.” Hadid concluded, “I don’t know if that’s not what people want on Instagram, and that’s fine. I don’t have to be on Instagram forever. I feel like real is the new real, and that’s what’s important to me.”

But it’s not all tears and tough times. The model points out, “I do have good days. Today is a good day. My brain fog is feeling better, I don’t feel depressed. I don’t have as much anxiety as I usually do. But tomorrow I could wake up and [be] the complete opposite. That’s why I get so overwhelmed. But that post made me less lonely because I had a lot of people that have reached out saying, ‘I feel that way too.’ Walking outside, being able to remember there are so many people going through things and have similar patterns to me, it makes me feel better.”

— Camilla: The Controversial Figure Who May Become Queen
— Ghislaine Maxwell’s Guilty Verdict Comes Into Question
— Caitríona Balfe’s Celtic Conquest, From Outlander to Belfast
— Can a New Perfume Rekindle Eroticism?
— The Queen Is Mourning Two of Her Ladies-in-Waiting
— 21 Wardrobe Winners Inspired by And Just Like That…
— The Life and Death of Rosanne Boyland, a Capitol Rioter
— From the Archive: Princesses Behaving Badly
— Sign up for “The Buyline” to receive a curated list of fashion, books, and beauty buys in one weekly newsletter.