After Rebecca Gibney had a nervous breakdown, she was able to forgive her abusive father.

Australia fell in love with Rebecca Gibney thanks to her roles in popular Australian TV shows such as The Flying Doctors, Halifax f.p., Packed to the Rafters, Winter, and Wanted. 

 But behind-the-scenes of her incredible career, the actress was fighting a private battle. 

In 2022 Gibney was featured on This Is Your Life, and while the program featured sweet moments with visits from her co-stars, and a cameo from Hugh Jackman and Deborah Lee-Furness, Gibney also had some deeper learnings to share.

Now in her 50s, she has started to talk about the mental health battles she has faced throughout her life, especially a particularly dark time in her 30s, where she even contemplated taking her own life.

But long before that period, she endured struggles as a teenager as well, growing up with an abusive father.

Gibney began to open up publicly about her childhood in the late 2010s, writing about it on Instagram, and also speaking on Andrew Denton’s 2019 program, Interview.

“All through my teens growing up I really didn’t like my father, in fact I can probably say I hated him,” she told Denton.

“I blamed him for so much misery and not having a normal life. I could never bring friends home because he’d always be drunk. At that stage he wasn’t violent anymore, he was just a drunk, and he’d fall over,” she shared.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rebecca Gibney (@rebeccagibneyTaking to Instagram just two years prior, Gibney shared a childhood photo of herself and her sister, Stella.

“No one would know that we were being raised in a family of domestic violence,” she wrote.

“I grew up in a household where violence toward our mother was a common occurrence - I am appalled that anyone can accuse a woman of ‘asking’ to be beaten. Domestic violence is wrong - domestic violence in any form is wrong,” she continued.

“Please let us remember how difficult it is for anyone that has been in this situation to speak out,” she implored.

“And for anyone in a similar situation there is always someone who will listen. And you can get through it. My mother and my family [are] a testament to that.”

Gibney has also shared that it took a breakdown in her 30s for her to fully understand the impact of her childhood trauma.

“I started seeing a counsellor, and I was able to fully understand then how [my mother] was able to forgive him. I realised that… he’s gone, you hating them or being angry at them is doing nothing for them and everything to you, it’s ruining your life,” she told Denton.

“You’ve got to cry and get angry, but when you finally let that go, it’s quite an extraordinary experience. And I realised that’s what mum would have done, a lot.”

Speaking on This Is Your Life, Gibney shared details of that time, including the nervous breakdown that led her to seek therapy in order to address the abuse she had faced.

At the time, her marriage to musician Irwin Thomas was falling apart, just as her career was taking off. 

“It was pretty tough,” she revealed. “And that was the hard thing, you do put on a front. My career was going great guns."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Channel 7 (@channel7)

She went on to share that at her lowest point; she was having up to 15 panic attacks a day. 

“I had anxiety attack after anxiety attack. I was in such a hole, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to make it’,” she admitted.

“I was struggling, and I couldn’t verbalise what was wrong. I just knew there was a hole inside me and it was getting bigger and bigger, and I was tumbling into it." 

She shared more details about the difficult period in a 2014 interview with the Sun Herald.

“I contemplated hospitalisation, but I didn’t want people to find out. I felt like I was in the bottom of a pit. Every time I tried to claw my way out, I’d slip back down.”

Gibney now credits therapy with helping her overcome her anxiety and depression.

“It’s so important that now, people talk about their struggles. Because if you get the help, you can get through it,” she said on This Is Your Life.

“Now I know that if I start to slide into that pit, I know that there’s a way out of it." 

Rebecca Gibney in 1990. Image: Getty.

These days, Gibney is based in her native New Zealand, living in Dunedin with her husband of more than 20 years, Richard Bell, and her son, Zac, who is 20.

“He gets me utterly, and we’re each other’s biggest fans,” Gibney said of Bell in an interview with The New Zealand Women’s Weekly.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t have issues, but we always work through them because I can’t imagine growing old with anyone else. He’s my rock, and I think I’m his,” she shared. 

As for her son, Gibney has noticed similarities between Zac and her own father.

“There was a moment in hospital when we locked eyes, and I saw my father,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2016

“I still see him in him sometimes, and I am like ‘Oh my god, it’s my dad’,” she went on.

“Zachary is confident, strong and secure and knows we love him. I promised to give him the life my father never had.”

Speaking to Andrew Denton on the TV series Interview in 2019, Gibney spoke about her previous struggles with mental health, and how a nervous breakdown in her early 30s forced her to address this difficult upbringing in a family of domestic violence.

“I think it’s so important that we talk about it now,” she told Denton.

“Life is a struggle. If we don’t talk about it and don’t share it then there are going to be people out there struggling the way I did, and I know what it’s like to be in that pit. It’s a horrible place to be.”

In an interview with Yahoo in 2017,  she said she was stuck in a “constant battle with depression” in her 30s, letting it build up before it culminated in an emotional breakdown.

“I had a nervous breakdown and emotional collapse in my early 30s so I just let it build up and build up,” she said.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph in 2018, she revealed she had been haunted by suicidal thoughts.

“I suffered severe depression in my 30s and contemplated taking my life,” Gibney told the publication.

So now, how does she deal with the “little voice” that tells her she’s not good enough? It gets easier with age, she said.

“It used to crush me, but I don’t dwell on it anymore, I take a deep breath and go ‘I’m OK with me’,” she said.

And for those who can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel: “You just need to seek help, you need to talk about it because you can get through it. There is a path.”

At this year's TV Week Logie Awards, Gibney was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame, one of only four women who have received this honor.

In her acceptance speech, which followed an emotional speech from her son and former co-stars, Gibney referenced her past, commenting that her 16-year-old self would never believe it.

"I'm so overwhelmed, I'm sorry," she began. "My son, I was kind of OK until you came out. Thank you so much. If someone had told 16-year-old me who suffered crippling anxiety and severe body dysmorphia that one day I would be standing on the stage with this award, she wouldn't have believed it."

Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia.

Calling-on everyone aged 25 to 54! Take this short Mamamia survey now to go in the running to win a $50 gift voucher.

TAKE SURVEY ➤