Hailey Bieber 'struggled with a little bit of PTSD' after suffering a ministroke

Hailey Bieber says she's finally moving forward from her 2022 health scare, eight months after suffering a "ministroke," formally known as transient ischemic attack, or a TIA.

The 26-year-old model said that it was "definitely the scariest thing I've ever gone through" when recounting the stroke-like symptoms that she experienced back in March. Just 25 years old at the time, she was worried that she'd never get past the trauma.

"To experience something that I had zero control over happening in my body was very scary and very jarring. I also didn't want it to turn me into the type of person that was going to be afraid all the time of something bad happening because I struggle with that anxiety, just in general already," she said on The Run-Through with Vogue podcast. "I struggled with a little bit of PTSD of just like the fear of maybe it was gonna happen again. And it was just a feeling that I was like I never want to experience that ever again. I mean, it was so terrifying, so jarring, so discombobulating in every single way that you could imagine."

Bieber herself spoke about the incident in a video posted to social media just over one month after it happened, sharing her doctor's explanation that a blood clot had traveled through a hole in her heart up to her brain. She also shared that she had undergone a procedure to have that hole closed. Although people praised her for speaking out about the experience, she told the podcast's co-hosts that it's been difficult to re-live.

"It was really hard for me to talk about it for a little while, even the video that I had made for my YouTube channel. It's hard for me to talk about that stuff, it brings back the feelings for me of going through that experience," she said.

And while recording the podcast episode from Palm Springs, where she was at the time of the health scare, she admitted it had been scary to go back.

"I was actually in Palm Springs at the same place that I'm at right now and even the first couple times coming back here after was like a little bit of a strange, triggering kind of feeling for me because it's like you just remember exactly how everything happened in that moment," she said. "I'm just now starting to come out of that kind of fight or flight feeling of being nervous about something bad happening again or having another ministroke or the hole in my heart not being closed."

Bieber was sure to highlight the "bright side" of the incident, being that doctors were able to find the cause of the TIA and ultimately perform a procedure that would keep it from happening again. She explained that she's been working to maintain a positive outlook on her body and her health in the time since.

"The biggest reset for me was like having to really digest and know that, yes this is something that happened to me, yes it was very scary, yes it was like a freak situation. But you're OK now and we did get to the bottom of it and you do have a healthy body, you are a healthy 26-year-old woman. At this point, after that happened I'm like, I have spent so much of my brain time thinking about this situation that I'm at the point where I'm like, I'd like to be able to continue to release it and just live my life and enjoy it because I felt so edgy about it for the last like almost year," she said. "I look back at it and it could've been so much worse. So many worse things could have happened in that moment and you know, I'm just grateful that I'm OK and that's kind of where I have to stay mentally."

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