Dumb question about Britney Spears

[Harnee]

I just watched a TikTok where Britney was asked where she saw herself in 20 years and she is vivacious, funny and charismatic. No hint of any psychological issues. It’s a stark contrast to the videos we see of her now. It’s very sad.

But my question is would she have always ended up with some sort of mental health/psychological issues. Or was it literally the trauma and stress that led to her problems? If so how does that actually work? Her brain wiring was impacted?

Sorry if this post comes across as insensitive. I’m not very educated and just very curious.

Same with Amanda Bynes, it’s so sad watching old interviews it’s like she’s a completely different person.

I think the constant scrutiny and harassment she faced in her teenage years would have broken anyone's mental health.

She was a child with people asking her about her sex life on national television.

Some mental health conditions do not develop until late teens/20s.

Not a dumb question at all The brain is still developing up to mid twenties. But external stress can still mess up your mental health after your brain has stopped developing too. I haven’t paid much attention to her over the years (nothing against her, I just don’t follow celebrities), but it’s impossible to avoid some of the media coverage of her and I’m not at all surprised she’s ended up with problems. Being famous seems to mess people up pretty badly.

Yes this could well be a factor - some psychiatric conditions tend to have an onset in the early to mid twenties, particularly in women. And she had children, too, didn’t she? So poor postpartum mental health may also have been a factor.

Having reread your post I think you wanted more of a scientific reply. I’m half asleep but your comment about changing the brains wiring is roughly true. The way the brain retains information is by linking it all together. You can’t remember a list of 100 random words, but you can remember song lyrics. It’s all about making connections.

The brain can use all the stuff you’ve remembered without you necessarily needing to think about it. When you’re learning to drive you have to think about every single action little action, but when you’re experienced you just drive, you don’t have to think about putting the indicator on and slowing down and turning the steering wheel by the right about all while checking your mirrors, you just turn left.

The brain can also trigger all sorts of emotions and even physical responses based on certain stimuli. This is where you start talking about conditioned responses (Pavlov’s dogs come in here).

The trouble is your brain can get trained into very non helpful paths. A bad experience on a boat can lead to a phobia of water for example. Even though you know rationally that the boat you’re about to get on is perfectly safe, your brain has made the connection that it’s not and will send you into a panic.

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this. The brain is extremely complicated. Basically bad experiences can create memories in the brain, often held in the subconscious so you don’t know they’re there, that will make you anxious about these things in the future. Anyone who has been criticised very publicly, especially in the years where there brain is still developing, will have a lot of the feelings from that stored in their brain.