Howie Mandel just revealed he has been going through a difficult health battle. The comedian and TV personality, 65, has been struggling with an anxiety disorder throughout his life, as he recently shared with People.
Mandel said that he has anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, and first started exhibiting symptoms of the latter as a child.
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Mandel described his battle with OCD to People as "I'm living in a nightmare," though he also expressed his coping techniques.
"There isn't a waking moment of my life when 'we could die' doesn't come into my psyche," he described. "But the solace I would get would be the fact that everybody around me was okay. It's good to latch onto okay. But [during the pandemic] the whole world was not okay. And it was absolute hell."
Mandel was first diagnosed with his anxiety disorder when he was in his 40s.and he has been open about his condition for the past 15 years. He has now been open about the ways in which the pandemic has triggered anxieties, now discussing the ways in which he copes.
"I try to anchor myself. I have a beautiful family and I love what I do. But at the same time, I can fall into a dark depression I can't get out of," he told People.
"My coping skill is finding the funny," he says. "If I'm not laughing, then I'm crying. And I still haven't been that open about how dark and ugly it really gets."
