Actress-singer Nadine Lustre, who has been open about her battle with depression and anxiety over the years, shared that while she still has “a long way to go,” she has learned to cope better during more challenging days.

Lustre, 28, discussed her personal progress in the anniversary issue of lifestyle magazine Mega, which features her as one of two cover stars.

“I still have a long way to go for sure… it’s easier for me to understand things. But at the end of the day, I am still human. At the moment, when I get overwhelmed with just everything that’s going in my life, I still have those days. When I feel like I’m not 100%, it’s normal,” she said.

“I kind of already know how to catch myself when it comes… when I start getting those thoughts, I already know how to catch myself. Before I’m always just panicking, I’m like, oh no, oh s**t, I can feel it, it’s coming, it’s coming. Then I start getting my anxiety and panic attacks. But now, before it even happens, I’m able to catch it,” she explained.

Lustre first revealed struggling with depression in 2015. At the time, she described episodes being “constantly on the verge of breaking down.”

“I feel like my mind is going crazy, and if my mind is an ocean, my thoughts are a tsunami,” she wrote in an Instagram post in October 2015 which she later deleted. “I can’t sleep, I can’t concentrate, I can’t even think straight. I am a mess. I’m coming apart at the seams and it scares me.”

In contrast, Lustre today has a deeper awareness of her emotions, helping her grapple with episodes without being overwhelmed as she used to.

“Now every time I go through s**t, I know I’m going to be okay but I know I have to go through it. There’s a solution for this. I already know, not naman control, but to navigate through these things and how to handle myself. I used to be a worry wart. Worrying about anything that I could think of.

“I had to go through so much to learn how to calm my mind and accept that I can’t control everything. It was tough and it was a lot of work… I’m happy that I can flow with life with no fear,” she said.