“90210” actress AnnaLynne McCord says she started “seizing” and “convulsing” when EMDR therapy brought back memories of years of abuse in her childhood.
In 2018 — four years after she revealed she was raped by a male friend at 18 years old — McCord went to psychotherapy and underwent Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a process that is meant to help people recall traumatic memories.
“It was this frozen image in my mind,” she told Us Weekly in a new interview, adding that when she was finally able to decipher the image she said, “My clothes are down, it’s not good.” She then realized it was a memory of sexual abuse.
“It went on for years,” McCord, 32, told the mag. “Up until I was 11. And then I have a memory, just a singled-out incident, that felt like I was a little bit older than 11.”
She continued, “I had this burning, painful, horrible sensation in my groin area. My whole body started seizing, convulsing. I just laid there, and tears streamed down my face. I just kept saying, ‘No, no,’ because this it not my life.”
The actress also said that before the therapy she had attempted suicide.
“I probably would have gone through with it if I’d remembered this before I did,” she said.
McCord first revealed she was sexually assaulted in a 2014 Cosmopolitan essay. In 2018, she wrote about the childhood assault in an Instagram post.
According to Us Weekly, the actress has been writing essays as a form of therapy and gearing up to go on a mediation tour aimed at helping people “heal from violent energy.”