Bella Hadid Opens Up About Being ‘Abused’ and Losing Boundaries in Past Relationships: I Never Felt ‘Heard’

31.01.2022 - 19:01 / usmagazine.com

Getting to the root. Bella Hadid opened up about being caught in a “cycle” of unhealthy relationships in both her professional and personal lives.

During a recent interview on Victoria’s Secret’s “VS Voices” podcast, the 25-year-old model confessed that she “felt like [her] voice was never heard growing up,” which led to “complications” in daily life.

“Now I’m able to open up and speak my mind, especially within my relationships and within my family,” Hadid continued. “I grew up around men — whether that was in relationships or family or whatever that was — where I was constantly told that my voice was less important than their voice.”

That dynamic continued to impact her personal relationships as she grew older. “Not having the boundaries of being able to stick up for myself and have my voice being heard affected me in my adult relationships very intensely,” she recalled. “My nervous system would crash. It was fight or flight. … That’s something I really had to work on, where I constantly went back to men – and also women – that had abused me, and that’s where the people-pleasing came in.”

Host Amanda de Cadenet called the need to “appease” others a “trauma response,” and Hadid agreed.

“I started not having boundaries — not only sexually, physically [and] emotionally, but then it went into my workspace,” the Parsons School of Design student continued. “I didn’t want to associate with any people. I didn’t want to have any friends, I didn’t want to have any family. So [in] my work, I became to be a people-pleaser with my job. It was everyone else’s opinion of me that mattered except for my own because I essentially was putting my worth into the hands of everyone else. … Even though I know that this is not good for me.”

Hadid