Shannon Purser

I think people find it so easy to write off teenagers and millennials as just being like these shallow, self-centered people who don't have anything real going on and who are always just on their cell phones. But being a teenager is really hard.

At some point, I stumbled across an article about OCD. As I read, I was blown away by how identical the writer's description was to what I was experiencing. It was overwhelmingly comforting to finally realize that I wasn't alone and that nothing was wrong with me. It was a treatable disorder.

I don't know why, but I'm more intimidated by sharing my singing than just performing as an actress.

Such a big part of acting is getting your face out there and getting recognized.

I totally am dorky and weird, and that's fine with me.

I was definitely always the bigger girl and kind of weird. I didn't make friends very easily and I was a big reader, so I was very antisocial, and I knew that people were judging me.

I was diagnosed with OCD and depression, and that was a huge relief, because now my struggles had a name and could be reckoned with. With a combination of therapy and medication, I got better. I learned to love life again. My problems didn't go away, but they became much easier to face.

It's very important to me that people know that depression doesn't discriminate. A lot of people look at people who have depression and think that it's not legitimate because they're wealthy or it looks like everything seems to be doing fine. But it doesn't pick and choose. It can affect anybody in the brain, no matter how perfect your life seems.

I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety several years ago, so it's something I've been battling most of my life.

It's incredible, but I will sing the praises of therapy. I think everybody should be in therapy. It helps so much to have somebody educated you can talk to.

Specifically, my time in therapy has changed my life. It was such a relief to have a trained professional listen to my thoughts and help me positively restructure my thinking.

I think there were so many times that I just felt so overwhelmed by school and by my relationships with my friends and I felt like I was going to be stuck in high school forever and I was never going to achieve my dreams.