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Gisele Says She's Suffered Panic Attacks and Contemplated Suicide

Brady Gisele Inst

Source - She’s one of the highest-paid supermodels in the world, married to one of the highest-paid athletes. She can breastfeed one-handed while getting ready for a lingerie photoshoot, she meditates every day at 5 a.m., and her family is so health-conscious that her children don’t even want Halloween candy.

But Gisele Bündchen is ready to blow up the perception that her life is as perfect as it looks.

In a new memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, the famously private Bündchen, 38, reveals that she once battled panic attacks and suicidal thoughts.

“Things can be looking perfect on the outside, but you have no idea what’s really going on,” she says in a revealing interview in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. …

After having her first panic attack during a bumpy flight on a small plane in 2003, she developed a fear of tunnels, elevators and other enclosed spaces. “I had a wonderful position in my career, I was very close to my family, and I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up. Like, ‘Why should I be feeling this?’ I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,” she says.  …

“I actually had the feeling of, ‘If I just jump off my balcony, this is going to end, and I never have to worry about this feeling of my world closing in.’ ”

Every once in a while in this business you come across a topic that looks like you could have fun with it, until you read through it and it gets all too real. This is one such moment.

Sure, it’d be easy to say “Look at the poor billionaire supermodel with the perfect life feeling all sorry for herself,” but not me. For this one, I’m laying the snark down on the ground, slowly backing away and leaving the area. Because what she’s talking about it very, very real.

It’s a tragic part of the human psyche that makes it so no life is so good that it’s not susceptible to thoughts of suicide. If you and I sat down over beers to come up with a Fantasy draft of the people whose lives we’d most like to Quantum Leap into, Gisele might be my No. 1 overall pick. (I know what you’re thinking. And yes. Yes, I would.)

What’s not to envy about her life? She’s a self-made bazillionaire. A fashion icon. She’s a self-branded, one-word-name celebrity, recognized the world over. At the Rio Olympics they cleared the deck so that she could walk solo across the field using the runway modeling techniques she herself pioneered while the whole world looked on in rapt silence. She’s got the house in Brookline on a course that’s about to host a U.S. Open. A house in the paradise that is Costa Rica. The perfect family with genetically perfect kids. The world should be sitting in the palm of her magnificently flawless hand-model-quality hands.

But she’s living proof that even when you’re rich, famous, universally admired and have exquisite features to go with your zero percent body fat and ideal height/weight ratio, no one is above feeling bad about themselves. Or thinking the darkest possible thoughts.

What I don’t know about panic attacks or suicidal thoughts could fill a library. I’ve got friends with family members who’ve gone through it. And what they’ll say is that no matter how much everyone around you supports you, says they love you and wants to help you get better, there’s a voice inside your head telling you they’d all be better off without you. The lucky ones get effective treatment or work beyond the thoughts on their own. The unlucky ones act on them and then it’s too late.

If that isn’t you, consider yourself fortunate to have your mental health. You might be a rapidly aging, out of shape unattractive slob with greying hair who bangs a word soup into a keyboard all day long. But personal happiness isn’t necessarily tied to looks or success. I just hope Gisele worked through all her issues and that her book helps someone who needs it.