Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, has openly revealed how two brain haemorrhages left her doubting herself.
Emilia co-founded SameYou in 2019 to advocate and provide mental health support for people who have suffered brain injuries with her mother, Jenny Clarke.
Emilia Clarke advocates for mental health support after surviving brain injuries
Emilia has openly addressed the emotional aspect of brain injuries. She stresses that both her brain injuries happened at pivotal moments in her career, which made the impact much more brutal. She suffered from the first haemorrhage when she was 22, as she was filming the star-making role in Game of Thrones season 1. Her second brain injury happened when she was 24, when she was making her Broadway debut.
She said, “For a number of years, I felt that I had cheated death, and it was coming to get me.” She also talked about how a devastating brain injury can leave you feeling “convinced you’ll never be who you were again.” She felt that she had “cheated death,” and “it was coming to get me.”
The SameYou website describes the massive repercussions of brain injuries, saying that “1 in 3 people” will experience brain bleeds at some point in their lives, and “Despite the scale of the problem, health and social care services are inadequate to meet the demand.”
Speaking at Variety’s Power of Women London event on Wednesday, June 3, the Khaleesi also revealed that she hadn’t had the time to process the “trauma” of the brain episodes, and had developed a sort of impostor syndrome that led her to ignore physical and mental after-effects of her health scares.
By openly talking about mental health, Clarke aims to instill hope in sufferers who have lost their sense of self, saying, “recovery to yourself is possible”.
HOW DO YOU THINK EMILIA COPED WITH LIFE AFTER THE BRAIN HEMORRHAGES?
Originally reported by Sreemanti Sengupta for Reality Tea
