Lainey Wilson has opened up with striking honesty about the darker side of her meteoric rise to fame, revealing she once felt she was “spiralling out of control” as anxiety and depression took hold at the height of her success.
The Yellowstone star, who has become one of country music’s brightest breakout names in recent years, shared her deeply personal experience in her new Netflix documentary Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool, and her words are as raw as they are relatable.
“A couple of years ago it was wild,” she admitted. “Everything I’d ever dreamed about kinda happened all at once.”
For Lainey, the whirlwind of opportunity, something she had spent years chasing, quickly became overwhelming.
“When opportunities come at you, and you didn’t have any for so long, you wanna just take ’em all,” she explained, candidly acknowledging that fear played a role in her decision to say yes to everything. “I guess a little bit of that was probably fear that they weren’t always gonna be there.”
But behind the sold-out shows and career-defining moments, something far more difficult was unfolding.”I think I was not feeling like myself for a couple of years,” she revealed. “I had reached a point where I was just like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.’”
© Getty ImagesWhat followed was a cycle many will recognise but few speak about so openly. “I was extremely anxious, and the anxiousness caused depression,” she said. “And the depression caused more anxiousness, because I was like, ‘Why in the world am I depressed during this time of my life? This is everything I’ve ever wanted.’”
The emotional toll became impossible to ignore. “I had several breakdowns, I guess you could say,” Lainey continued. “I thought I was not gonna come back from that either.”
© Getty ImagesPerhaps most shocking was her revelation that she continued performing through it all. “It was a solid panic attack for, like, multiple days. I had played shows and everything while I was having the panic attack. It was terrifying.”
Describing the experience as a “chemical imbalance,” she added: “I was spiralling out of control. And then it’s the fear of thinking that you’re always gonna be stuck in that mindset. It causes more anxiety. It’s just, like, a vicious cycle.”
In the midst of that struggle, Lainey turned to someone she deeply admires, Reba McEntire, for guidance.
© Stagecoach“I said, ‘This is a loaded question, but what do you do when you feel like you can’t go any further?’” she recalled.
Reba’s response proved transformative. “She said, ‘I do it for somebody else.’ And that right there has put so much in perspective for me.”
That simple shift in mindset has helped Lainey reconnect with her purpose. Now, when she steps on stage, it’s no longer just about the pressure to succeed, it’s about the people in front of her. “I get on that stage and I do it for other people,” she said.
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