PTSD—or posttraumatic stress syndrome—can happen to anyone after a stressful experience. Although Full House star Candace Cameron Bure comes off as a happy, bubbly actress most of the time, there was one blip in her career that took her a while to get over: Her time co-hosting daytime talk show “The View.”
Bure shared her experience on a new episode of The View’s special podcast series, Behind the Table.
“The stress and the anxiety—I actually have a pit in my stomach right now,” Candace said of seasons 19 and 20 she co-hosted that aired in 2015 and 2016. “There was only one type of stress that I’ve ever felt in my life, that came from that show. And I [have] PTSD, like, I can feel it. It was so difficult, and to manage that emotional stress was very, very hard.”
Part of the reason for her stress was the “enormous pressure” she felt to represent conservatives on the larger scale of national television, even if that wasn’t something she felt strongly about. “[I was] just trying to understand and have a general grasp of topics that I didn’t want to talk about or didn’t care about,” she said.
“When I felt like I was going into a show that I didn’t have a clear opinion about or it was something that I was legitimately nervous to talk about because I did have an opinion about it,” Bure said. “But I knew I was the only one at the table that had my opinion, I would just get sick to my stomach. I hated that feeling. And then I’m like, ‘I don’t know who’s going to come at me.”
Additionally, because she’s been in the limelight so long, she always feels like she needs to be pleasing everyone and gets anxious about the potential of upsetting someone.
“I’m also a people pleaser, and I think that’s a part of growing up in the entertainment industry,” she explained. “You’ve been trained to do what’s right and please people, so it becomes difficult to be able, at least for me, to stand on your own and take it and allow people to be mad at you.”
Though her short experience on the show wasn’t the greatest (she left in 2016), she doesn’t regret it either, and that she still gained a lot from being there.
“I don’t know that I regret anything, honestly,” she said. “I feel like there were so many wonderful takeaways from the show that as difficult as that job was, I’m very, very grateful for it. My opinion, it’s my opinion. And maybe sometimes I said things better or worse one day or another, but I don’t regret anything.”
One of the best things that happened to her from being on the show? A new found confidence. “I felt like after walking away, if I can do that, I can do anything.”