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Fresh off
Hilary Swank's divorce confessional to Vanity Fair,
Ashley Judd
has bared her A-list soul to Glamour, telling the women's mag
that she underwent a 47-day stint in a Texas treatment center in
February to overcome a host of emotional problems.
"I needed
help," she says in the magazine's August issue and excerpted by USA
Today. "I was in so much pain."
Judd says she completed
nearly two months of treatment to come to terms with her history of
depression, isolation and codependent relationships.
"Supposedly, my sister was the 'messed-up' one, and I was the 'perfect'
one," she said.
It was during a family visit to sister
Wynonna, who was then battling a food addiction at a Texas treatment
facility, that Ashley Judd realized she had problems of her own to work
out.
The De-Lovely star said she was approached by
counselors at the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas,
who encouraged her to seek help after various emotional problems began
to surface during family sessions.
"They said, 'No one ever
does an intervention on people like you. You look too good. You're too
smart and together. But you [and Wynonna] come from the same family, so
you come from the same wound.' No one had validated my pain before," the
youngest Judd said.
Judd told Glamour that she honed
her cheery and well-maintained exterior during her "chaotic" and
"dysfunctional" childhood, using the façade of perfection to protect
herself from the chaos.
The 38-year-old continues, saying
that she became a "hyper-vigilant" child to compensate for the years of
moving around: She attended 13 schools in 12 years and logged time under
the guardianship of mother
Naomi Judd, father Michael Ciminella (her
parents had split when Judd was four) and her grandparents.
Ashley Judd also revealed in the interview that she had frequently used
sleep to deal--or rather, not deal--with depression, and fought
compulsive tendencies throughout her adult life, detailing her habitual
behavior of cleaning, needing to constantly wipe down plastic surfaces
on planes and in hotel rooms.
"Now I try to remind myself
that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself," she said.
While Judd has no qualms about speaking out on her decision to
get emotional help, she says one thing she never battled was an eating
disorder.
Judd says that while she was never treated for nor
diagnosed with such, she did take time out to investigate her
relationship with food, saying, "I did take a look at my eating. Why
wouldn't I? I looked at everything else in my life under a microscope."
And, according to the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood star, her life is the better for it.
She
credits the experience with improving all the relationships in her life,
including her four-and-a-half year marriage to race-car driver Dario
Franchitti.
"I was unhappy, now I'm happy," she said. "Now,
even when I'm having a rough day, it's better than my best day before
treatment."
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