Valerie Bertinelli is healing past wounds after being "mercilessly mocked" about her weight by an ex.
The actor opened up about her past relationship Sunday in a candid Instagram Story while speaking about an old pair of pants that left her feeling triggered.
"I'm giggling because I had a small hidden bruise that was activated today," she said in reference to an endured trauma. The video was made available by Page Six.
"You can probably hear them 'cause my pants are rubbing together and it makes this particular sound," she continued.
"It's these particular pants. And I stopped wearing them because I was told, I was mercilessly mocked, you know, 'I'm too lazy to do anything about it, they wouldn't rub together if you …' Anyway, it doesn't matter now because it's in the past."
Bertinelli explained that hidden bruises were "something that emotional, verbal, mental abuse do to you that people can't see."
"But we kind of deal with, every day, when they're activated," she said of this specific moment.
"I'm so grateful that the work that I'm doing on healing is working," Bertinelli added. "So it's making me giggle now. I put these pants away forever, I even changed the way I walked in them. So now, I can wear them, hear that sound, and that's the sound of freedom, to me."
Last month, Bertinelli shared a similar story about the same ex who referred to her as "fat and lazy" in an emotional video.
Addressing her followers, the Daytime Emmy winner said that she was "long over the narcissist" and was trying to understand what allowed her to "tolerate the intolerable" for so long.
"I have moved on from the s–tty part," Bertinelli said. "I am going into the really, really hard part that has the most benefits to it."
It is unclear who the ex is but Bertinelli has been married twice. She finalized her divorce from Eddie Van Halen in 2007, and to financial planner Tom Vitale in 2022.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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