Gisele: My heavy drinking and panic attacks
SHE’S is one of the most successful models of all time. But when Gisele Bundchen was starting out, she had some bad habits to cope with her crippling anxiety.
The 38-year-old Vogue favourite reveals in her memoir, Lessons: My Path To A Meaningful Life: ‘I had been smoking cigarettes, drinking a bottle of wine and three mocha frappucinos every day.’
The excerpts, which appeared in People magazine, reveal that she began to suffer panic attacks and developed a fear of enclosed spaces. Gisele, who started modelling at age 14, became a household name when she landed a $25million modelling contract with Victoria’s Secrets and started dating Leonardo DiCaprio in the early 2000s. But she suffered her first panic attack in 2003.
After that, the Brazilian model became frustrated at why she was experiencing panic attacks. ‘I had a wonderful position in my career, I was very close to my family, so I was really beating myself up. Like, “Why should be feeling this?” I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,’ she writes. ‘But I felt powerless.
‘I actually had the feeling of, “If I just jump off my balcony, I never have to worry about this feeling of my world closing in.”’
Gisele decided to overhaul her lifestyle, addressing diet issues, taking up yoga, and ending her relationship with DiCaprio.
Gisele, who is now married to American football star Tom Brady, with whom she has two children, now reflects on that time in her life as a period of growth and learning. ‘Everyone who crosses our path is a teacher, they come into our lives to show us something about ourselves,’ she says.