Sandra Bullock is still processing the trauma attached to the night a stalker broke into her home in 2014.
The Bird Box actor opened up about the traumatising experience during an appearance on Red Table Talk with with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“My house was broken into while I was in it,” Bullock said, adding that after all crime TV she’d watched, she was “in the closet going, ‘This doesn’t end well.’”
Luckily for Bullock, the break-in happened to take place the night her son was staying with his nanny at her home.
“It was the one night that our nanny goes, ‘Let me just take him to my apartment, which is up the street, because you’re gonna be out late,’” the actor explained.
“Had he been home, I would’ve run to the closet, which is now my official closet, but it was his bedroom ... and it would have changed our destiny forever.”
It did disrupt her future though, as Bullock said the invasion was a “violation” that changed everything from that day forward.
“I wasn’t the same after that. I was unraveling,” she said, later adding. “I haven’t been alone since the day it happened.”
The intruder, Joshua James Corbett, eventually pleaded no contest to felony stalking and burglary charges.
In the 2014 hearing, Bullock could be heard in a terrifying 911 call telling the dispatcher, “I’m in my closet. I have a safe door. I’m locked in the closet right now.”
Corbett later died by suicide during an altercation with a SWAT team in 2018.
After the incident, Bullock sought out treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which she didn’t immediately realise she had.
“I didn’t realise what PTSD was. I would look left, out of a car, not right. I would look left and I would start sobbing,” she said.
“And I thought to myself, I’m a single parent and this child is going to absorb nothing but fear and trauma and shame from me in the most pivotal times of his life. And I was like, I don’t want to drop that load of baggage onto my beautiful child.”
She eventually began eye movement desensitisation reprocessing therapy (EMDRT), a treatment option for PTSD that Prince Harry has also undergone and spoken about.
Bullock spoke about talking with her therapist and reliving the moments where she heard the intruder banging on the door.
To listen to more of Bullock’s experience with EMDRT ― and what she learned about herself from the treatment ― watch the video above, starting at minute 17.