Emma Stone opens up about anxiety battle as she shows off ‘monster’ drawing

Emma Stone has opened up about her battle with anxiety, crediting acting for helping her to overcome the disorder.

The 28-year-old actress revealed she started therapy aged seven to help her cope with panic attacks during an appearance on the The Late Show to promote her new film Battle of the Sexes.

Host Stephen Colbert presented Stone with a drawing that she did, aged nine, while in therapy which featured Stone standing next to a small green monster underneath the words ‘I’m bigger than my anxiety’.

Explaining the drawing, she joked that the monster resembled a uterus: “This is me I guess. This is anxiety, it’s a little green monster who looks like a uterus with ovaries. I didn’t mean for it to be hormonal.

“I was nine and I was in therapy. I was a very, very, very anxious child and I had a lot of panic attacks and I benefited in a big way from therapy. I started at 7.

“[Acting] and improv helped me so much. I still have anxiety to this day.”

It is not the first time the Oscar-winning actress has opened up about her battle with anxiety.

Earlier this year she revealed there was a time when she feared she would never be able to leave her native Arizona.

Speaking candidly in a clip for Child Mind Institute’s Speak Up For Kids campaign she said: “I truly, as a kid, did not think I would be able to ever move away from home or to be away from people that I had separation anxiety with.

“I've been able to manage that with great therapists and great cognitive behavioural tools - meditation and lots of things.”

She continued: “Life goes in stages, and it has always been something that I've lived with and that flares up in big ways at different times in my life.

“But sometimes when it's happening, when I'm in a phase of real turmoil or the anxiety is very strong, it feels like the anxiety is never going to end, and it does.”