In a rather personal conversation, Ellie Goulding, the well-known pop singer who introduced the modern world to songs like ‘love me like you do’ and “how long will I love you’, talked about how she felt during her first-ever panic attack.
While in a conversation with Frankie Bridge on the Open Mind Podcast, she explained in perfect detail what led to her first panic attack. She said that she was on a train going to her friend’s dad’s funeral when she felt something inside her crash. She explained that since she was traveling around somewhere that she had grown up, all the memories came back rushing.
Panic Attack Onset
Goulding goes on to explain that she felt like she was unable to keep up with the new person that she is becoming in order to create a place for herself in the music industry. The feeling of not being able to catch up and make peace with the person that she is becoming caused her heart to beat faster, elaborated the talented singer.
In what sounded like a horrible experience, her breathing became labored, and she began having palpitations. She went on to say that she assumed she was dying and that this was what dying felt like.
During Goulding’s explanation, she pointed out that she was not sleeping, wasn’t eating, and was doing too much exercise, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that she was exhausted. However, she did seem taken back with the way her body responded to what she later called pressure and early fame.
The Line Between Young And Old
The 34-year-old talented singer noted that it can be unsettling to realize that she is a whole new person compared to the younger version of herself, and the concept of growing older seems a little bit too much sometimes. She said that as she is growing older, she seems to be having more of these panic events and that they were nowhere in sight when she was younger.
However, she did seem to realize that maybe at a delicately young age, people often fail to realize what they are experiencing or if it may turn into something problematic or terrifying later in life.
Abandoned Her Younger Self
The ‘Rain’ singer mentioned that one of the reasons why the attack felt like it was going to get her was because of how quickly everything happened when she set afoot in the music industry.
“It all happened so bloody quickly that I could not catch up with what’s going on. My brain couldn’t catch up with my body or the other way round,” said Hereford’s talented artist while explaining her struggles of dealing with early fame.
On what seemed like a heart-wrenching expression, she said that she abandoned her younger self a little too soon to establish a name for herself in the music world.
Fame At A Young Age
Goulding became popular at the fragile age of 24, right after she finished college. She said the rapid pace and the factors from her childhood including her parent’s divorce made her look at things more maturely.
Goulding explained that what she previously believed would be a simple, flowery path proved to be difficult and exhausting at the outset. She said that while she was only focusing on being a musician, she undermined all the essential values, relationships and experiences that your 20s have to offer.
She felt like she missed out on self-exploration and finding more about how she wanted to tread along in her music career to a point where she wanted to be all alone and was in fact, alone.