Shailene Woodley Says She ‘Lost My Soul’ in Past ‘Toxic Situation’ While Opening Up About Aaron Rodgers Split

Shailene Woodley is recalling a past “toxic” situation where she “lost” herself.

The actress offered rare comments about her breakup from ex-fiancée Aaron Rodgers in a wide-ranging interview for Outside magazine: “I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry. It was not right. But it was beautiful,” she said.

Woodley, 33, didn’t go into further specifics about the NFL quarterback, 41, but elsewhere she discussed a time she stayed in a “toxic situation” because of her empathy for “someone else.”

“Empathy kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone,” she said.

The Big Little Lies alum admitted she can be empathetic “to a fault” and recalled how she endured a “really awful, traumatic thing” in her life in “early 2022.” That’s around the time she and Rodgers called off their engagement in February 2022.

“I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she said about the “traumatic” event without specifically linking it to the breakup. “I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment.”

Woodley added, “I knew I was depressed when I looked at a tree and felt nothing. That was the lowest low of my life.”

In a September interview with Virgin Atlantic’s Vera magazine, Woodley said she uses her creative side and acting roles to channel and process her emotions.

“I make art to heal my own wounds and understand myself better. But also so that I can figure out why my mom did that thing when I was young, or why my ex-boyfriend said that one thing,” she said. “And that’s the beauty of art. It unlocks doors and helps me release my own entrapments, and it inspires me to see the world differently, through different lenses.”

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Elsewhere in that interview, Woodley, who is making her Broadway debut in the new play Cult of Love, said she loves life and shared her passion for optimism.

“It’s very easy to live from a state of victimhood. I have done so, for sure, throughout different chapters of my life,” she said. “But it’s so much more rewarding to live from a place of awe and wonder. And that’s what I try to do.”