Awkwafina had "difficulty believing" in herself as a child.
The 30-year-old actress and rapper has said she struggled with anxiety when she was younger and as a result, found it hard to be "confident", as she said she had to "really find" her self confidence.
She said: "Anxiety was one of the first emotions that I learned. A feeling of not being secure. When I was young I often had difficulty believing in myself and feeling confident in certain things. And I think that I had to really find it. I remember feeling that, always, as a young kid."
The ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ star – whose real name is Nora Lum – also battled with depression, and says that whilst there are "still aspects" of it in her daily life, she had a worse time with her mental health when she was younger.
She added: "When I was a teenager I battled a lot with depression for sure. I had a lot of issues with self esteem, I had a lot of issues with just feeling normal. Maybe there are still aspects of that, but I think it was heightened then."
And Awkwafina partly blames social media for her mental heath battle.
The beauty said: "Social media definitely gives me anxiety. Especially when I was first coming up. The comments I really couldn’t deal with. Everyone around me was just like ‘Dude don’t listen to them’, but that’s like very generic advice. That’s like when you break up with your boyfriend and they’re like ‘Dude forget him, it’s fine.’ Being so vulnerable to so many people that they’re commenting on everything from your nose to your teeth to your hands, you can’t help but feel hurt."
When asked how she deals with her anxiety, the ‘Ocean’s 8’ star said "letting out" her "sadness" was "really helpful".
Speaking in a new YouTube web series called ‘Hi Anxiety’, she said: "The way I dealt with anxiety was not holding that sadness in, which I think was my instinctual response. Letting it out was really helpful, like actually talking to people about it. And I actually did develop humour I think as some sort of defence mechanism. It made me appreciate making people feel joy."
Awkwafina struggled with self confidence
