Chrissy Teigen reveals her battle with postpartum depression and anxiety

When you think of supermodel Chrissy Teigen, a few adjectives pop into your head: funny, outgoing, extroverted and "the life of the party."  But, Teigen is now opening up about another side of herself that took her a long time to come to terms with.

Teigen was selected as the April cover model for Glamour and was instructed to write an essay as the cover story.  Calling herself a " chronic oversharer," she decided to come forward with a personal struggle in a touching essay, that was published Monday on Glamour's website.  In the piece, she revealed that she has postpartum depression and anxiety.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, postpartum depression is defined as "a mood disorder that can affect women after childbirth" and makes them "experience feelings of extreme sadness, anxiety and exhaustion that may make it difficult for them to complete daily care activities for themselves or for others."

In her personal piece, Teigen comes clean with her December 2016 diagnosis and describes the symptoms she experienced, which include pain in her wrists, shoulders and back and a sense of sadness and detachment.  The model even recalls a moment on the set of her show Lip Sync Battle where she would burst into tears for no good reason and would have to pull it together before she went on stage.

Teigen also explains why she kept her postpartum battle a secret, since experiencing symptoms back in April 2016, after her daughter, Luna (with husband John Legend), was born.

"I just didn’t think it could happen to me. I have a great life. I have all the help I could need: John, my mother (who lives with us), a nanny. But postpartum does not discriminate. I couldn’t control it. And that’s part of the reason it took me so long to speak up: I felt selfish, icky, and weird saying aloud that I’m struggling. Sometimes I still do."

Teigen is taking anti-depressants now and is feeling better, but still has days where she struggles. However, having a strong support system at home (including Legend, whom she dedicates an entire paragraph describing how "incredible" he has been).  And her diagnosis is not holding her back in planning for the future.

"I love John and Luna more than I can imagine loving anything and John and I still hope to give Luna a few siblings. Postpartum hasn’t changed that."

Teigen tweeted out her gratitude to those supporting her as her battle went live on the Internet today.  But she also issued a notice to everyone who is learning about her postpartum battle in a series of very "Chrissy-like" tweets.

To read Chrissy's full letter click here.

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