Bella Hadid was made to feel “disposable” during her battle with Lyme disease.
Bella Hadid has opened up about her struggles with Lyme disease
The 29-year-old supermodel has opened up on the mental struggle of having to turn down jobs “for almost a year” while she was going through treatments for the disease in 2025.
Speaking to her sister Gigi in an interview for Vogue Italy, she said: “I was emotional because you feel disposable.”
Bella discussed the issue with her therapist as she tried to separate the idea that her “successes” were linked to who she is “as a person”.
She added: “How good I am doesn’t have to do with the jobs that I say yes to. For so long, saying no to a job was, like, who was I to say no to anything?”
She explained that she has hit a point now where she isn’t obliged to take on jobs for the sake of keeping up appearances.
Bella said: “I had to kind of release it and be like, ‘I think people know my heart and my personality and who I am enough now that I can release that and really do the jobs that are with and for the people that I love and trust and support and respect.’ “
Bella – who was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2013 when she was 16 years old – reflected on the new career opportunities she has been able to embrace, including landing an acting role in Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty.
She said: “When Ryan talks, you listen and I think that’s really important in a person.
“He made me go really outside of my comfort zone which made me have to release that control again, the control to look good or to do things perfectly.
“He just said: ‘I need you to freak out…'”
Bella admitted she was “in a lot of pain both emotionally and physically” during filming because the series was filmed for around six months, with half of that coming amid her treatment.
She continued: “And I was just dealing with some things in my personal life, so emotionally it was a lot and I was able to really manifest that in my body and put it into the art and to the work.
“And that for me was really fulfilling, I think, to be able to express myself in that way.”
