“Some days it feels like I’m sinking, stuck in a fight-or-flight state I can’t escape,” the 19-year-old wrote in a vulnerable TikTok post, while also sharing her “scary” symptoms.
Alabama Barker is opening up about her mental health.
In a recent TikTok video, the 19-year-old — who is the daughter of Travis Barker and ex Shanna Moakler — detailed her struggles with “severe” health anxiety, including the “real and scary” symptoms she experiences.
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“I’ve been struggling with severe health anxiety, and it’s something I don’t talk about enough,”Alabama wrote in the post’s caption. “It’s more than just worrying it’s a constant fight with my own mind. Some days it feels like I’m sinking, stuck in a fight-or-flight state I can’t escape.”
“My symptoms are real and scary: dizziness, head pressure, eye floaters, light sensitivity, derealization, and extreme fatigue,” she continued. “I have low iron, I can’t drive, I avoid cars, and I miss out on normal things people don’t even think twice about. Even when doctors say I’m okay, I don’t feel okay.”
Alabama went on to explain why she decided to open up to her fans about her struggles.
“I’m sharing this because health anxiety is invisible,” she said, “but very real and no one should feel alone in it, this is something I felt was important to share we are all in this together!
Alabama’s video featured photos and clips of herself in the hospital, including footage of her checking her vitals on pulse oximeters. Her post was set to a TikTok audio of a poem about anxiety written by user Josie Balka.
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“Anxiety and I do everything together. That sounds better than saying I do everything with anxiety, but I do everything,” the poem reads in part. “We wake up and go to sleep together. We think everyone hates us together. I hate us together. Anxiety and I do everything together. We’re roommates. We live together. Although some days it doesn’t feel much like living. It feels more like unease and discomfort, and struggling through conversations, and wondering if you said too much or too little or the wrong thing. It doesn’t feel like living, it feels like floating except heavily and hunger with no appetite and butterflies, but bad ones, it feels like I’m dying, and anxiety agrees.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, health anxiety impacts 5 to 7% of adults, and presents itself in two disorders: somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder.
Per the Cleveland Clinic, somatic symptom disorder (SSD) is “a mental health condition in which a person feels significantly distressed about physical symptoms and has abnormal thoughts, feelings and behaviors in response to them.” Meanwhile, those with illness anxiety disorder (IAD), also known as hypochondria or hypochondriasis, “fear that they have a serious medical condition or that they’re at high risk of becoming ill.”
Alabama has opened up about her health in the past.
In August 2023, the rapper shared a TikTok, in which she slammed body-shaming trolls, taking specific aim at a slate of unflattering paparazzi images released at the time. Alabama then addressed her weight gain, saying she’d been diagnosed with a “thyroid problem and an autoimmune disease.”
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
