Shailene Woodley recalls a past “toxic” situation in which she “lost” herself.

The actress rarely commented on her split from her ex-fiancée Aaron Rodgers in a wide-ranging interview Outside Magazine: “I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because she always makes me cry. It wasn’t right. But it was beautiful,” she said.

Woodley, 33, didn’t elaborate on the 41-year-old NFL quarterback, but elsewhere mentioned a time when her empathy for “someone else” left her in a “toxic situation.”

“Empathy kind of kept me in the loop of feeling everything for everyone,” she said.

The Big little lies Alum admitted that she can be empathetic “to a certain extent” and recalled how she had to endure a “really horrible, traumatic thing” in her life in “early 2022.” It was around this time that she and Rodgers called off their engagement in February 2022.

“I felt like I had lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she said of the “traumatic” event, without specifically linking it to the breakup. “I truly understood depression, anxiety, and complete soul detachment.”

Woodley added: “I knew I was depressed when I looked at a tree and didn’t feel anything. That was the lowest point of my life.”

In a September interview with Virgin Atlantic Vera Woodley said she uses her creative side and acting roles to channel and process her emotions.

“I make art to heal my own wounds and understand myself better. But also so I can find out why my mother did that when I was young or why my ex-boyfriend said that,” she said. “And that’s the beauty of art. It opens doors and helps me untangle my own entanglements, and it inspires me to see the world differently, through different lenses.”

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Elsewhere in this interview is Woodley, who is making her Broadway debut in the new play cult of loveShe said she loved life and shared her passion for optimism.

“It is very easy to live in a state of victimhood. I’ve certainly done that at different stages of my life,” she said. “But it is much more rewarding to live in a place of awe and wonder. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”