Millie Bobby Brown says 'traumatising' incident left her mentally paralysed

Millie Bobby Brown has revealed she "shut down" for three months after a "very intense" chase incident.

The 'Stranger Things' actress has revealed that she was once locked in a three-month anxiety spiral after being chased by people, and she finally found "peace" after spending time with Buddhist monks in Japan.

"One of my longest cycles (of anxiety) must have been three months. I got chased by somebody in a place, and it sent me in a three-month-long anxiety panic attack," she shared on Monday's episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

"I got chased by these people, and it was a really traumatising, I would say, 20 minutes. It was very, very intense and very scary. After the 20 minutes, I got into an elevator, I faced the corner of the wall, and I was just like... I actually feel like I shut down and shut down for three months. In that moment, something switched off in my mind."

The 22-year-old explained that her anxiety gives her physical symptoms, and she became really ill during a busy time in her life, including a party to celebrate her 2023 engagement to now-husband Jake Bongiovi.

"I had a bunch of stuff and I started getting really ill. I had pneumonia, all of these problems," she shared. "I probably had three or four things, then I got strep (a type of infection), and I had strep for like three weeks or something, and it went undiagnosed and therefore untreated."

Millie noted that her anxiety comes in cycles and can last for around two months, and she has to "do something" to break the cycle.

To end that particular cycle, she and Jake went to Kyoto, Japan and met with monks. During their visit to the temple, they meditated in a garden with 50 people and sat for an hour listening to somebody play singing bowls.

The 'Enola Holmes' star went to Japan "kind of broken" and felt the experience gave her the "biggest gift"; by the time she left, she finally had "peace in (her) heart".

"I'm a big believer in divine intervention. I think that was a moment where God was like, 'You need to take a break, and you need to sit there and figure out what's going on in your head,'" she shared. "I didn't figure it out necessarily, but I did figure out that I needed to sit in silence for a bit. I think that healed me in a lot of ways. It healed a lot of me."

Millie added that she and Jake, whom she married in 2024, intend to return to the temple one day with their daughter. They announced they had adopted a girl last August.