Badass Advice From Taylor Swift & More on International Women’s Day

Emma Stone on Using Anxiety as a Tool

“I’ve told a lot of younger people that struggle with anxiety that, in many ways, I see it as kind of a superpower,” Emma Stone said on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2024, “because I think that…you have a lot of big feelings if you’re anxious.” 

And to be an anxious person, she continued, “I do think that it requires a certain level of intelligence about the world, you know, ’cause who looks at the state of the world and really is taking it in and really feels a lot of empathy and no anxiety comes with that?”

Ultimately, she added, “it just means we have these tools to manage. And if you can use it for productive things, if you can use all of those feelings and those synapses that are firing for something creative or something that you’re passionate about or something interesting, anxiety is like rocket fuel, ’cause you can’t help but get out of bed and do things, do things, do things. Because you’ve got all of this energy within you. And that’s really a gift.”