Millie Bobby Brown is opening up about how she overcame an anxiety attack that lasted for three months.
The Stranger Things actress revealed on the Monday, July 13, episode of the “On Purpose With Jay Shetty” podcast how she was left feeling traumatized after being “chased by these people” for 20 minutes while out in public.
“It was a really traumatizing 20 minutes. It was very intense, very scary. I feel like I shut down, and I shut down for three months. In that moment, something switched in my mind,” Brown, 22, explained.
Amid her heightened state of anxiety, Brown said she and husband Jake Bongiovi took a planned trip to Japan around his birthday, which ended up being essential to her healing process.
“I went to Japan, not thinking it would be some spiritual journey,” she said. “When I got there, I still really felt anxious. Sometimes we’d go to a restaurant and I’d say to my husband, ‘I can’t go in. We need to go back.”
“I never had to explain myself to him — he knew, he got it,” she added of Bongiovi, 24.
During a visit to a retreat inhabited by monks in Kyoto, Brown said, “I met this one amazing Japanese gentleman, who was just so calm and almost felt like he saw me. I was in the height of my anxiety at this point. He knew that I was kind of broken.”
“He was like, ‘We need to meditate,’ and I was like, ‘OK,’” she added.
The experience proved transformative for the Enola Holmes 3 star.
“We meditated in this garden for five minutes. I meditated with 50 people. It was not just us; it was a bunch of tourists like us,” Brown explained. “And it was amazing, and I will never forget the feeling.”
She continued, “It was my husband’s birthday. I remember being like, ‘I feel like it’s my birthday. I just got given like the biggest gift of all. Finally, peace in my heart.’ And my husband literally said, ‘You radiated this light after.’ It was exactly what I needed.”
“I’m a believer in divine intervention, and I think that was a moment where God was like, ‘You need to take a break and sit there and figure out what’s going on in your head,’” the actress added. “I think that healed me in a lot of ways.”
Brown said she and Bongiovi have made plans to return to the retreat with their family in the future. The pair share a baby daughter, whom they adopted in 2025.
“This summer, we welcomed our sweet baby girl through adoption,” Brown and Bongiovi shared via Instagram in August 2025. “We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy. And then there were 3. Love, Millie and Jake Bongiovi.”
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