Actress Lili Reinhart of Riverdale suffers with lockdown anxiety

Lili Reinhart has been suffering with anxiety throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

The Riverdale actress has been open about her battle with her mental health in the past, and has now said the global health crisis has exacerbated her struggles, because she ‘stresses out all the time’ about simple tasks such as going to the post office.

‘I stress myself out all the time. Going to the post office … I really don’t want to drive to the post office. It gives me anxiety because I don’t want to leave my dog, I don’t want to have to deal with going out in public,’ she said.

Lili also spoke about needing to wear a mask when entering shops, as although she’s happy to wear one, she finds it ‘stressful’.

She added: ‘I don’t want to deal with the mask thing, I would [wear a mask], but I don’t want to put myself in a stressful environment. I get myself hyped up about very dumb things.’

The 23-year-old actress has been struggling with anxiety since she was in school, and has been getting panic attacks from the age of 13.

Speaking to self-help author Sylvester McNutt on Instagram, she said: ‘I really struggled during school. Obviously, I couldn’t escape that situation, I didn’t have a choice. I started getting panic attacks when I was in 8th grade so I think I was thirteen and every day in my 8th grade year I would cry in the morning.’

During the chat, Sylvester suggested Lili should listen to a happy playlist while carrying out stressful tasks to distract her from her fears, and said over time it could help ‘retrain’ her brain into feeling calm during stressful situations.

Meanwhile, Lili previously said she has been affected by depression in ‘so many ways’, and credited therapy trips with helping to tackle her problems head on.

She said: ‘Depression has affected me in so many ways. It’s something that never goes away. I’ve experienced depression and anxiety. Not constantly, but I’m still experiencing it. I have spells of time where I feel completely unmotivated, I don’t want to do anything and I question myself. I don’t know how to handle stress very well.

‘Seeing the therapist allowed me to be understood. The goal for me has been to always leave therapy feeling a couple of inches taller. Feeling like I’ve alleviated myself of a problem by learning how to solve it. Not everything has a straight answer – it’s not just going to take one session – but I start to think, ‘I’ve grown, I’ve done this, I’ve figured this out, now can I go off into the world and try to put what I’ve learned into action.’ That’s how I look at therapy. I am not crazy, and I am not problematic. I am just a human who’s feeling something in a different way than some other people would.’