For many of the characters on “GLOW,” getting strong enough to throw another human around turned out to be good for the psyche as well as the bod. That was also the case for Alison Brie, who plays one of the ’80s-era TV wrestlers on the show. “It helped with my relationship to my body times a million,” she says in the new issue of Women’s Health. “Before, I always felt at odds with it; I wanted it to be something it wasn’t. But I didn’t have the tools to do that in a healthy way.” Since childhood, Alison has struggled with body dysmorphic disorder or BDD, an anxiety disorder in which people don’t see their bodies as they look to others. “I go back to red carpet photos where I thought I looked so horrible, and there are some where I now think, God, I looked beautiful,” she recalls. “And I’ll remember: An hour before that I was in tears; I thought I was so disgusting. I think it’s something I’ll probably be working through my whole life. And depression too.” For Alison, 37, depression “comes out of nowhere and really blindsides me.” When it’s really “serious,” she says she tries to drag herself to a yoga class, “… even if I don’t want to be around people, tears streaming down my face. But, Get in class, get out of your head, get blood flowing. It ends up helping eventually.” The actress also reveals her maternal grandmother suffered from schizophrenia and was sometimes homeless, a situation that she says caused “trickle-down effects of trauma” usually depression, among other family members. Ultimately, though, she says she gets through those times largely because of her husband. Dave Franco, telling the magazine: “I’m so lucky I’m married to a really wonderful, open person. We have great lines of communication, and I can talk often about my feelings.”
