Reese Witherspoon Says She Had to ‘Rewire My Brain’ After Abusive Relationship

Reese Witherspoon is opening up about her past abusive relationship. 

In the Sept. 20 episode of The Interview podcast, the actress, 49, said she underwent a journey to become the person she is now after the experience. 

“I was very good at being a professional and showing up, and doing the right thing. But I wasn’t emotionally mature when I was young, and you get into relationships that don’t work for you and sometimes you don’t even see the dynamics that are happening,” Witherspoon told host Lulu Garcia-Navarro during the conversation.

“When I got out of that, it took me a while to reconstitute myself,” she continued. “My spirit had been diminished because I thought all those awful things that person said about me were true.”

“I had to rewire my brain,” she added.

“I was really insecure because I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been in abusive relationships, and they can’t see it. You know? And I couldn’t see it. It took me a long time to be this woman that I am now,” she said. 

Witherspoon also spoke about going through her personal battle while being a public figure.

“I have a lot of compassion for people who live public lives and maintain privacy. It’s nearly impossible at this point with everybody dehumanizing you in a certain way, like taking pictures of you like you’re an animal in the zoo instead of a person with their children or having a private moment,” she said. 

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“It was hard. It was really hard,” the Morning Show star added. 

The actress previously told Oprah Winfrey in a 2018 interview for Oprah.com that she experienced “psychological” and “verbal” abuse in the relationship.

“I drew a line in the sand, and it got crossed, and my brain just switched. I couldn’t go any further. I was really young, and it was profound,” Witherspoon said at the time.

She added that the experience “changed who I was on a cellular level, the fact that I stood up for myself.”

“It’s part of the reason I can stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m ambitious.’ Because someone tried to take that from me,” the Legally Blonde star noted.