Sandra Bullock said she developed PTSD after a stalker broke into her home while she was inside.- "I wasn't the same after that," Bullock said, adding that she hasn't been alone since then.
Sandra Bullock said that she developed PTSD and "wasn't the same" after a stalker broke into her home in 2014 while she was inside.
"I was literally in the closet going, 'This doesn't end well. I'm in the closet. Not gonna help,'" Bullock recalled during an appearance on the latest episode of "Red Table Talk" on Facebook Watch, released on Wednesday.
The actress said that at the time, her son Louis wasn't with her. She described the break-in as a "violation" and said that it completely altered her.
"I wasn't the same after that. I was unraveling," Bullock said.
"I haven't been alone since the day it happened," she added.
The star's Bel-Air home was invaded by Joshua James Corbett on the morning of June 8, 2014. Corbett jumped the fence and entered the home unarmed. The audio of Bullock's 911 call was made public at a preliminary hearing for Corbett in 2015.
During the call, the actress said: "I'm locked in my closet. I have a safe door in my bedroom, and I've locked it."
LAPD officer Jose Bermudez said that when Corbett was arrested, he had a notebook containing a two-page letter to Bullock and magazine photos of her. In May 2017, Corbett pleaded no contest to one felony count each of stalking and first-degree residential burglary.
Corbett was sentenced to probation, a 10-year protective order was issued against him, and he was ordered to seek treatment at a mental health facility.
In 2018, Corbett barricaded himself in his LA county home and committed suicide after an hours-long standoff with the LAPD.
During her "RTT" appearance, Bullock said that she developed PTSD following the terrifying incident.
"I would look left out of a car, not right," she said. "I would look left, and I would start sobbing, and I thought to myself, 'I'm a single parent, and this child is going to absorb nothing but fear and trauma and shame from me in the most pivotal times of his life.' And I was like, 'I don't want to drop that load of baggage onto my beautiful child.'"
Bullock turned to eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), which is used to help people with trauma and PTSD.
By the end of a two-hour EMDR session, the actress said that she realized, "I have surrounded myself often with unsafe people and situations and put myself there. I have no one else to blame but myself, because that was the most familiar feeling I had."
Bullock said that EMDR enabled her to "take ownership of everything that I brought into my world because it felt comfortable and realize it no longer had a place."
The actress also noticed the toll that her stress was taking on her body and told herself that she had to pull it together or else she'd die.
Bullock credited her adopted kids, Louis and Laila, with motivating her to recover.
"It was my children who showed me that unless I pull it together right now, I'm not going to be around to have the moments that I want to have," she said.
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