Jewel Admits She Suffers With Agoraphobia

Jewel, as many of you know, was homeless as a teenager, and spent much of that time locked inside her car. She recently admitted to the Huffington Post that this was because she was intensely agoraphobic.

"By the time I was homeless, I was crippled by agoraphobia, which is hard when you don’t have a home, but in my car." she says."I was afraid if I left my car, I would be stricken with illness." She continued, "I really realized I was going to succumb unless I learned how to control my fear and I really focused on how to do that, how to change my thoughts. And it started with daily learning how to change my fear into excitement and into enthusiasm. That’s how I started to work myself out of my car."

Jewel has managed to enjoy a lengthy career performing in front of thousands of people, and she says that writing helped her overcome her anxiety when she was living on the street. "I was writing about it," she explains. "Then I started singing in front of people and telling them my worst fears, and then my life changed because I started letting people — I felt less alone for the first time because I let myself be seen, really, for the first time — all my good, bad and ugly. And people accepted me because they felt seen, because we’re all the same."

While anxiety is a problem that never goes away, Jewel has managed to live a fruitful life by learning to deal with it in a productive way. Here's hoping she inspires other people to rise above it.