'Stranger Things' star Millie Bobby Brown went to therapy over online bullying
- "Stranger Things" star Millie Bobby Brown has been in the spotlight since she was 10 years old.
- In an interview with Allure, Brown says she went to therapy after dealing with online harassment.
Young Hollywood superstar Millie Bobby Brown was thrust into the spotlight when she was barely 11 years old and has spent the last several years figuring out how to withstand online criticism and harassment.
"It's really hard to be hated on when you don't know who you are yet," Brown said in a newly published profile with Allure magazine. "So it's like, 'What do they hate about me? 'Cause I don't know who I am.'"
In the profile, Allure revealed that Brown has gone to therapy to "handle the constant bullying she has faced online." She no longer has social media on her phone, and has somebody else managing her Instagram and Facebook pages now.
The young star has openly dealt with being sexualized as a teenager (including a "blip" of a relationship that led to her feeling "publicly humiliated" in 2021). On her 16th birthday, Brown addressed the internal pain that resulted from being a young girl in the spotlight.
"The last few years haven't been easy, I'll admit that," she wrote on Instagram in 2020. "There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization, and unnecessary insults that ultimately have resulted in pain and insecurity for me."
Then, earlier this year, she was a guest on "The Guilty Feminist" podcast and spoke about her experience in Hollywood feeling like "a good representation of what's going on in the world and how young girls are sexualized."
Brown told Allure that at first she tried doing different things in response to the criticism, thinking maybe she could quiet the hate.
"Then you just start shutting down because you're like, 'Who am I meant to be? Who do they need me to be for them?'" she said. "Then I started to grow more, and my family and friends really helped. It helped to be able to understand that I don't need to be anything they said that I need to be. I just have to develop within myself. That's what I did."
You can read the full Allure profile about Brown's "year of healing" here.