Kendall Jenner got real about her anxiety and how KUWTK fame triggered it

Kendall Jenner comes from a very prominent and affluent family who are constantly in the media. Having grown up before our very eyes on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, it’s hard to remember a time when Kendall wasn’t famous and in the spotlight. Now she’s getting real about how this constant public scrutiny and visibility has left her with “clinically significant anxiety.”

Speaking with clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, Dr. Ramani Durvasula for Vogue’s new series "Open-Minded," Kendall gets frank about feeling the symptoms of anxiety from an incredibly young age. 

“I remember being really young – I’d say eight, nine, ten – and having shortness of breath and going to my mom and telling her that,” Kendall explained, hinting that the rigorous and constant filming of KUWTK might have set her anxiety off to the races.

“I think being overworked and being in the situation that I’m in now is kind of what set it out of control in a way,” she said.

Describing herself as “real hypochondriac,” she then noted all the ways her anxiety has manifested itself in her body, leading to very real and very serious physical ailments.

“I’ve had times where I feel like I need to be rushed to the hospital because I think my heart’s failing and I can’t breathe and I need someone to help me. Sometimes I think I’m dying.”

Before you go off and say that Kendall lives an incredibly privileged and sheltered life and is not subject to the same kind of life pressures that plague the rest of her peers, she wants you to know that she acknowledges her station in society, but it hasn’t helped ease her symptoms.

“I’ll never sit here and say that I’m not fortunate. I know I live a very privileged, amazing lifestyle. I’m a very blessed girl,” she says. “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”

“No matter what someone has or doesn’t have, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have real-life feelings and emotions.”

Kendall also speaks very frankly about how the pandemic has affected her condition, noting that at first being in self-isolation was just what she needed, but now that lockdown measures are lifting in California (where her father, Caitlyn Jenner, is running for governor), she is feeling the strain again.

“Before [the pandemic] I was really overwhelmed, really overworked,” she explained. “I was always around people and I kind of got really overwhelmed with all of that, to the point where I was like ‘I need to like be alone.’"

"Now, it's more like, okay, we've all been super isolated to the point where I'm almost like so used to that, that now that things are slowly opening up, if I go to a dinner or if I see a few more of my friends than I'm used to seeing throughout this last year, that gives me anxiety.”

Her conversation with Dr. Durvasula includes tips on how to ease her symptoms, and also how she can trick her body to calm her anxiety in social situations. 

BEFORE YOU GO: Courteney Cox says it was ‘emotional’ at the ‘Friends’ reunion 

[video_embed id='2196411']BEFORE YOU GO: Courteney Cox says it was ‘emotional’ at the ‘Friends’ reunion [/video_embed]