'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams struggled with self-hatred, low self-esteem
"Game of Thrones" star Maisie Williams confessed that she struggled with low self-esteem and a lot of self-loathing for years when she started on the HBO hit series, much of which was triggered by social media trolls.
Williams, 22, said that the "constant feed" in her back pocket harmed her psyche, but she couldn't stop reading comments, no matter how negative.
"It's something I'm really trying to break free from at the moment," the actress admitted on Fearne Cotton's "Happy Place" podcast. "I went through a huge period of my life where I'd tell myself every day that I hated myself."
She continued, "It got to a point where I'd be in a conversation with my friends and my mind would be running and running, and I'd be thinking about all the stupid things I've said in my life and it would just race and race."
"When I started digging in and figuring out why I said those things, actually, it was nothing to do with myself," she said. "So many of these problems are really linked to things in your past, as soon as you start digging and start asking yourself bigger questions than 'Why do I hate myself?' It's more, 'Why do you make yourself feel this way?' The answers to all of these questions really are within you."
Williams isn't totally out of the woods in terms of her self-image, but she says she's working on letting her feelings be validated without taking over her life.
She explained, "There was a period of time that I was really sad and then I sort of came out of that. It's now really terrifying that you’re ever gonna slip back into it, and I think that's something that I'm really working on."