Jessica Alba regrets not starting therapy earlier in life: 'I just had so much angst when I was 20 years old'

Jessica Alba has certainly seen it all.

After her breakthrough role in Dark Angel made her a bonafide star, the actress and entrepreneur branched out into the business world, launching the Honest Company, a nontoxic-household goods company, currently worth around $550 million.

Now, at 40, Alba looks back on her life with a matured sense of compassion.

“In entertainment, in particular, there’s no amount of success that ever gives you a real foundation or a real place in this industry,” Alba told CNBC. “I put a lot of pressure on myself over the years. It kept me in this state, almost like a hamster wheel. I [could] never really break through until I understood the core of why I felt that way, and where [it was] coming from.”

The actress, who has previously spoken about the benefits of therapy, wished she would have started it earlier in life.

“I probably would have worked on myself earlier,” she said. “But it's almost like you need to go through [those struggles] to understand that it's not the thing to worry about. [As you get older], you definitely care less about what people think.”

“Once you understand yourself, and why you do what you do, and how you operate in the world, it unlocks your potential,” she added of therapy. “You may not even know you’re doing certain things that keep you from happiness, self-worth or your goals.”

“I just had so much angst when I was 20 years old,” she continued. “It was so hard. It's so hard for young people because you don't have the tools. You don't have the life experience to know that time heals, and you'll figure it out. Once you understand that you can break through, there are so many possibilities of how you can exist or live or walk through the world. It feels so much better now.”

Alba is also aware of the importance of carving paths for others — something she said she didn’t have growing up in a “very modest and pretty traditional Mexican-American family,” where a “male-dominated” universe kept her from dreaming bigger.

“It just felt so wrong to me,” she explained of the time. “In a way, there were no expectations for me to be successful at anything. But then, that left so much potential. Anything’s better than nothing, right? You can’t really fail if you try something. There’s this innate kind of fearlessness that comes with starting from the bottom.”

That kind of passion inspired her to not just build a company from the ground up, but to do it well.

“Naysayers or haters would energize me, in a way,” she said. “Oh, you think I can’t do it? Watch this. It gave me that fire to really keep going. But now, it doesn’t really get to me the same way. It rolls off differently now.”

“Whatever people are going through in life — their life experiences and their trauma — they’re projecting it onto other people,” she continued. “They’re going to spew negativity, and that’s fine, because it does something for them. But I don’t need any of that. It has nothing to do with me. So, I let that live over there for them. I’m going to just keep on keeping on over here.”

Last year, she spoke with Yahoo Life about going to therapy with her eldest daughter Honor, 13, whom she shares with husband Cash Warren. The couple also share daughter Haven, 10, and son Hayes, 4.

"I think everyone's different and everyone processes information differently, and I simply wanted to show up to be the best mom for my kid, knowing she was going through [this phase]," she explained.

"For me, my most difficult time as a kid was transitioning from child to adult. And [dealing with] those pre-teen/teen times, because you feel like, 'Wait, I feel a little more independent. I feel like I can make my own choices, but then I'm also a kid still,'" she added. "This in-between time can be a little bit confusing."

When it comes to her parenting style, Alba loves a boundary.

"I definitely like to give my kids boundaries so that they can thrive," she said. "I give them rules and boundaries, and manners are very big in the house and outside of the house. I try to keep their minds open to learn about other cultures, different people, different households. I talk to them about how there's room for all of it and there isn't one right way to do anything. You just have to know what's right for your family, and appreciate that we're not all the same."

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