Bridgerton actress Ruby Barker opens up about her own mental health, including a recent hospitalization, to help encourage others to consider their mental health more carefully and get support when they need it.
In a more than five-minute video shared on her Instagram account on Thursday, the actress shared that she was about to be released from a mental health facility and planned to take some time off.
“I have been in a very bad way for a long time, and I just wanted to be honest with everyone. I have been struggling,” she said. “So I’m in the hospital right now and I’m going to be released soon and hopefully I can get on with my life. I’m going to take a little break and want to cheer others up if they’re struggling please do yourself a favor. Take a break. Stop being so hard on yourself.”
During the video, the actress apologized to fans for walking away from the Lyric Hammersmith Theater and Talawa Theater Company world premiere of running with lions due to a combination of his mental health and a COVID-19 diagnosis. She’s also been juggling, she says, feeling for a while “full of rage, frustrated, angry,” a convergence of things that was ultimately why she “just couldn’t do it.”
“All this intergenerational trauma piled up inside of me and I was carrying the weight of a world on my back,” she explained. “I’m at a point now where I have a diagnosis and I’ll talk about that another time. But I have a diagnosis and I’m letting go. I’m forgiving myself and drawing a line in the sand. I can’t go on the way I’ve been doing it. I need to change. So that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“I was trying to hold my mental health together like this, just adding so much pressure. Like my brain was going to explode, and that’s basically what happened,” she added. “Sometimes you just have to take a break. You have to say, ‘I can’t do this right now. I need support.'”
Discussing her condition and treatment, Barker also pointed out how in mental health discourse, “catch phrases” and “buzzwords” can be used to encourage people to consider their own care, but that people facing mental health issues at the moment ultimately need more than that to address what is happening to them.
“People were always telling me not to be so hard on myself, and I never really knew what that meant. What does that really mean to stop being hard on yourself or to love yourself? she asked. “We really need to change the dialogue and think about our linguistics when we’re actually talking about mental health because people want to have these conversations, but we don’t really know. What even have a conversation.
the Bridgerton The star, who plays Marina Thompson in the first and second seasons of the Netflix series and Shondaland, also took a moment to thank the various people who helped her “have a job, to work, to have a purpose, to have a reason.” , you know, making me feel like I matter.” That included Sexton, the Australian-born singer, her best friends, her mentors and Shonda Rhimes.
“I need to thank Netflix, Shonda Rhimes and Shondaland for giving me a chance, for saving me,” he said.
The actress ended her video on a positive note, reiterating that she is “doing better” and “can’t wait to fulfill all my commitments and have a good career and a good life.”
“I don’t want my diagnosis to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to survive and I will survive and I will and so will you,” she said. “That’s the beauty of it. You too.
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