Sophia Bush Gets Real About Trauma, Activism, and Advocacy

Actress, activist, producer, and director Sophia Bush spoke candidly on "The Conversation" podcast with host Amanda de Cadenet about her life and work.

In it, she speaks about her work as an activist and her journey towards healing: "Practicing being touched, without freaking out, is a really big deal...because I spent four years in a place where my body was weaponized against me."

Sophia has been particularly active during this political era.

Sophia Bush isn't afraid to speak her mind about political issues, advocacy, and her own history of surviving alleged assault and abuse. In a revealing podcast interview with Amanda de Cadenet, she dived into her own path towards self-acceptance and what she's hoping to see out of all the work she and other activists are doing.

"Practicing being touched, without freaking out, is a really big deal...because I spent four years in a place where my body was weaponized against me. And, it takes repetitive, safe experience to take that out," she explained, about dating while overcoming trauma. She also spoke candidly about assault in a more general way from an understanding of the male perspective:

We talk about how culture, for generations, has told women to be smaller, to be nice, sweet, cute, those sorts of adjectives but we’re not talking about the culture of this hyper-masculinity, this toxic machismo, is the thing I think we need to look at. And we’ve raised generations of men who we’ve told, 'You can’t have feelings, you can’t cry, it makes you weak, don’t be weak be strong, be this, be that.' And so men have only been approved with anger as an emotional outlet.

Regarding advocacy, she says she's starting to look at it in a new way. "The pendulum has been so far in the other direction that I’m ok with an overcorrection, but what I’d like to see be the symptom of that overcorrection is the way that we talk to our boys about their feelings and about what it’s been like for women and girls."

Sophia says it feels freeing to finally be taking care of herself. "The tendency for me is to just keep going. My entire adult like has been just keep going, regardless of what’s happening, just keep going," she explained. "It isn’t backing down to take care of yourself."

"Finally I’m in a place where I feel like I am back to being a newer version of the best version of myself. And that’s a nice place to be," she added.

Sophia later shared parts of the interview on her Instagram Stories:

Sophia Bush/Amanda de CadenetInstagram

And the full podcast is available on Spotify.

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