Florence Pugh Opens Up About Unhealthy Past Relationship: “My Body Was in Full Panic Mode”
With raw honesty and resilience, Florence Pugh reflects on love, pain, and healing — revealing how she transformed heartbreak into self-awareness and strength.
In a deeply honest reflection, Florence Pugh shares how she learned to recognize emotional pain, set boundaries, and rebuild herself after an unhealthy relationship — emerging stronger, wiser, and more self-aware.
In an intimate and powerful conversation on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Florence Pugh peeled back the curtain on her personal journey through an unhealthy past relationship — and the emotional awakening that followed. The 29-year-old Thunderbolts star spoke candidly about the painful lessons she learned about love, boundaries, and listening to her body when something felt wrong.
“I have done a fair bit of growing, a fair bit of working on myself,” Pugh shared. “The further and further away you get from a relationship that was causing you pain, the love reduces — and you realize just how much pain you were in.”
Without naming her former partner, Pugh described how she once mistook emotional turmoil for affection. “For a while, I really thought that the amount that it was hurting was the same amount of love that there was in the relationship,” she admitted. “‘This hurts so much because we care, it hurts so much because we love each other so much.’ That’s just not how love should be treated.”
The actress went on to explain how subtle patterns of emotional manipulation and “micro-aggressions” slowly became normalized, leading her further away from what healthy love should look like. “You find yourself at the end going, ‘Oh, a lot of weird stuff is happening — and I’ve normalized this,’” she recalled.
Her breaking point came in the form of a physical and emotional collapse. “I had a breakdown,” she told Theroux. “When you are hurting your body — when you’re not sleeping or you’re drinking too much or you’ve got the shakes because you’re so anxious — that’s your body screaming at you. I would injure myself. I’d be chopping and chop huge chunks out of my hands. I’ve just never done that since. My body was just in full panic mode.”
Pugh described how these physical symptoms were her body’s way of crying out for help — “a funny thing of my body asking for help,” she reflected. “It became increasingly obvious that something wasn’t right.”
After stepping away from the relationship, Pugh says she now feels happier, healthier, and more grounded. Her openness about the experience underscores the importance of self-awareness and emotional healing — especially in an industry where scrutiny and pressure often intensify personal struggles.
Yet, the actress also acknowledged that her romantic life remains under a harsh public microscope. Reflecting on her past relationship with Scrubs actor Zach Braff, she recalled the “toxic” fan behavior and online bullying they faced over their 21-year age gap.
“With relationships and with romance in this world, it doesn’t matter how much you speak on it or how little you speak on it — people don’t care,” she said. “They want a story. They sort of want a reality show.”
When Pugh was just 24, she famously called out the online abuse in a 2020 Instagram video after receiving harsh comments for wishing Braff a happy birthday. “I do not need you to tell me who I should and should not love,” she said at the time. “It’s not your place, and it has nothing to do with you.”
Today, she stands by that stance. “I’ll always defend people that I love,” Pugh told Theroux. “I’ll always stand up for them.”
Though Pugh and Braff quietly ended their relationship in 2022, the pair have remained on good terms, even collaborating on the 2023 film A Good Person, which Braff directed and Pugh starred in.
Through heartbreak, healing, and hard-won self-knowledge, Florence Pugh has emerged not just as one of Hollywood’s brightest talents — but as a voice of strength, empathy, and emotional truth in an industry that often demands silence.
