Reese Witherspoon opens up about abusive ex who forced her to ‘rewire her brain’

Reese Witherspoon has opened up about her abusive ex, who left her ‘spirit diminished.’

The Morning Show actress, 49, revealed in a recent interview that she had to learn to rewire her brain after a troubling relationship when she was very young.

‘I wasn’t emotionally mature when I was young, and you get into relationships that don’t work for you, and sometimes you don’t even see the dynamics that are happening,’ she said.

She continued on the New York Times ‘The Interview’ podcast: ‘When I got out of that, it took me a while to reconstitute myself. My spirit had been diminished because I thought all those awful things that person said about me were true, and I had to rewire my brain.

‘But I was really insecure. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been in abusive relationships, and they can’t see it. And I couldn’t see it.

‘It took me a long time to be the woman that I am now.’

She then added that being a celebrity made things all the more difficult.

‘It’s very hard to be a public figure. I have a lot of compassion for people who live public lives and maintain privacy.’

Reese added that having children with her ex, Ryan Phillippe, made things only more difficult when it came to maintaining privacy.

‘It’s nearly impossible at this point, with everybody dehumanising you, taking pictures of you like you’re an animal in the zoo instead of a person with their children. It was really hard, and being a mom and wanting to protect young people is hard too.’

This isn’t the first time that Reese has opened up about this relationship, first speaking about it in 2018 in an interview with Oprah Winfrey’s publication, O Magazine.

‘A line got drawn in the sand and it got crossed, and my brain just switched.

‘I knew it was going to be very difficult, but I just couldn’t go any further. It was profound and I was young, really young,’ she said at the time.

‘I could never be the person I am today. I was a different person too. It changed who I was on a cellular level. The fact that I stood up for myself.

‘I’m a different person now, and it’s part of the reason I can stand up and say, “Yes, I’m ambitious.” Because someone tried to take that from me.’

In the interview, she went on to explain that her experience helped inform her decision to produce and act in Big Little Lies, the HBO series which deals with domestic abuse as a key storyline.

‘There wasn’t a woman there that hadn’t been affected by abuse,’ she said.

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