Shailene Woodley Calls Aaron Rodgers Relationship A ‘Toxic Situation’ That Still Makes Her ‘Cry’ To Speak About

Shailene Woodley is getting candid about the “lowest low” of her life.

In a new interview with Outside published on Tuesday, the 33-year-old opened up about a “traumatic” thing that happened to her in early 2022:

“I had a really awful, traumatic thing happen in early 2022. I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy. I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment.”

She didn’t explicitly say what caused the trauma, but if you put two and two together it’s pretty simple. She and Aaron Rodgers called off their engagement in February of that year — which she’s been open in the past about being one of the “darkest, hardest” things she’s been through.

The Big Little Lies star told the outlet she’s empathetic “to a fault” and chose to stay in a “toxic situation.” Whoa! She says she only stayed because she was feeling bad for “someone else.” Oof. She said:

“[Empathy] kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.”

Well, considering how on-and-off they were after splitting, we got it… But when she finally did get out of the “toxic” loop, a wave of depression hit her like never before:

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

Luckily, though, her best friend Kris Zero was a MAJOR part of helping her overcome the low point. Shailene told the outlet:

“Sometimes I was so angry at her. But then we’d go surf, and for ten minutes that day I thought life could be OK again. Then the depression would come back and she’d go, ‘We’re volunteering at the horse ranch!’ And we’d find a random f**king horse ranch, and we’d clean up horse shit. We’d clean hooves and brush the horses, and for 20 minutes that day I thought life could be OK again. And then the depression came back and she’d wake me up the next morning and go, ‘Let’s go on a hike and bring trash bags and clean up trash!’”

What an absolutely amazing friend! Shailene said that after around six months of that, the depression began to subside.

Elsewhere in the interview, The Fault in Our Stars lead spoke more directly about Aaron — and why she tends to not speak much about their former relationship: