To be the child of a celebrity is a spotlight of its own, but to be the daughter of “King of Pop” comes with a blinding media gaze that feels inescapable. In an upcoming episode of the Red Table Talk, Paris Jackson, 23, sits down with fellow celebrity child Willow Smith and opens up about the trauma she’s experienced from the invasive culture of paparazzi.
“I experience auditory hallucinations sometimes with camera clicks and severe paranoia and have been going to therapy for a lot of things but that included,” Jackson told Smith, according to The Associated Press. “I’ll hear a trash bag rustling and flinch in panic.” She added: “I think it’s standard PTSD.” Ahead of his passing in 2009, Michael Jackson would conceal the face of his children with veils to allow them to experience childhood distanced from press surveillance. In her Facebook docuseries Unfiltered, with then-boyfriend Gabriel Glenn, Jackson shared that she was grateful for her father’s protective measures. Explaining her decision to let the world have a glimpse into her reality, she said, “You see a kid grow up in the public eye, you forget that I am a human. I was against letting the world in because it wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t ready then. I feel like I’m ready now.”
Jackson has also been vocal about suffering from PTSD and anxiety in the past. Last year, when Paris Hilton came forward with allegations of emotional and mental abuse at the hands of her Utah boarding school, Jackson revealed that she too suffered from a similar experience of her own. In a post to her Instagram story, she wrote, “As a girl who also went to a behavior modification ‘boarding school’ for almost two years as a teenager, and has since been diagnosed with PTSD because of it, and continue to have nightmares and trust issues, I stand with @ParisHilton and the other survivors.”
