Christina Applegate reassures fans she’s okay after earlier concern

Christina Applegate assuaged her supporters’ fears while imparting an important message about living with chronic illness this week. Earlier this month, the Dead To Me actor had caused some concern when she got brutally honest on the MeSsy podcast, which she hosts with fellow MS survivor, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

On the podcast’s June 4 episode, Applegate shared that she was in a “real, fuck-it-all depression—like, a real depression, where it’s kind of scaring me too a little bit, because it feels really fatalistic, it feels really ‘end of.’” She continued (via Entertainment Weekly): “I don’t enjoy living. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy things anymore. You know, if someone can come over and lay in bed with me and talk, like you have… that’s enjoyable, I enjoy that. But if someone’s like, ‘Let’s get up and go for a walk’ or ‘Let’s go get a coffee,’ I don’t enjoy that process.”

In this week’s episode, however, Applegate reassured her listeners that she’s okay. “I was talking about some dark stuff that I was thinking and feeling,” she said. “I feel like when we hold things in we give them power. I also think that there’s so much shame a lot of people feel when they’re going through mental health issues … and when people holds those in, because they’re so afraid to say how they truly feel, we give it immense power.”

She also shared that she was “disturbed” by the “clickbait” headlines and outpouring of concern that resulted from her comments. “By making such a big deal about it, you’re making other people think, ‘Oh, shit, I can’t talk about this.’ And that is not okay with me,” she said. “It’s important to be able to say these things. And, no, I’m not sitting here on suicide watch, okay? I am not. Nor have I ever been.”

This wasn’t the first time Applegate has gotten honest about her experience. “I live kind of in hell. I’m not out a lot, so this is a little difficult, just for my system,” she shared in a March interview with Good Morning America. She also joked that the crowd was “totally shaming me with disability by standing up” in a scene-stealing appearance at the Emmys in January.

“I dare anyone to be diagnosed with MS or any kind of chronic illness that has taken who you were prior to that moment and go, ‘This is great.’ You know?” further explained on this week’s podcast episode. “No, you have moments of feeling, ‘This is tiring and I don’t want to do this.’ But you do it, and by having friends like you and my beautiful friends that I have, by saying this shit out loud, it releases the pressure in the balloon.”