Tallulah Willis is talking about her autism diagnosis in public for the first time. On March 15, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’s youngest daughter shared a video from when she was a child going to an event with her dad on Instagram. In it, Bruce Willis held Tallulah while talking to people on the red carpet in. As she talked to him, she kept herself busy by rubbing his shaved head with her hand and playing with his ears.
Under the picture, she wrote, “Tell me you’re autistic without telling me you’re autistic.” She also added a crying-laughing emoji. People who commented on the post asked if she had been diagnosed with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) as a kid. She said, “Actually this is the first time I’ve ever publicly shared my diagnosis.” It changed my life when I found out this summer.
Autism: More Than Just Childhood
According to the National Insitute of Healt (NIH), autism is “A neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn, and behave.” The type and severity of symptoms vary a lot from person to person, which is why it’s called a “spectrum” illness.
A 2019 study said that women are more likely than men to be identified with autism later in life. The qualitative study looked at women who were adults and were labeled with autism. It found that these women often felt “wrong,” “broken,” and “bad,” but that getting a diagnosis helped them go from being “self-critical to self-compassionate.”
After the post, the comments were full of people who wanted to help her and praise her for being honest about her diagnosis. She used the chance to respond to a few other comments on the post, including one from her sister Scout LaRue Willis, who said, “She’s stimming.” Tallulah Willis replied, “Dude, your ears curl.” I wish the sound was better.”
The Cleveland Clinic says that stimming, which is also called self-stimulatory behavior, is when someone makes the same sounds and movements over and over again to help them control their feelings. It’s sometimes linked to autism spectrum disease, but not always.
“What a great memory of you and your dad,” wrote one person. People with autism make the world a better place. Along with the word “neurospicy,” Tallulah Willis responded with a heart-eyes emoji and tagged her sister Rumer Willis.
Another commenter praised Bruce Willis for being calm about his daughter’s deeds, writing, “I love how unfazed your Dad is here.“ “He understood the assignment,” she answered. In the past few years, Tallulah Willis has been open about her health problems, such as her battles with an eating disorder and her diagnoses of ADHD and borderline personality disorder.
Eating Disorder Masked Her Grief
The author, Tallulah Willis, wrote an emotional piece for Vogue in May 2023 about how her own problems made it harder for her to deal with her father’s illness after he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia that same year.
“I admit that I have dealt with Bruce’s decline in recent years in a way that I’m not proud of,” she wrote at the time. “The truth is I was too sick to deal with it.” A woman named Tallulah Willis said she had anorexia nervosa for four years but was “reluctant” to talk about it. She said that when she was 25, she went to a treatment center for sadness and later found out she had ADHD.
Then, in June 2022, Tallulah Willis broke up with her fiancé and her family sent her to a rehab center. While she was there, she was told she had borderline personality disorder, a mental illness that changes how people feel about themselves and others (Mayo Clinic).
She told Vogue, “By the time I left Texas in October, I felt a lot better.” “I realized that I wanted harmony with my family more than harmony with my body. I wanted to stop worrying my sisters and parents and make them laugh.”
In February, she wrote on Instagram about her struggles with an eating problem and shared some pictures of herself as a child. In part of the description for one of the pictures, she wrote, “This little raggymuffin is so special, and it’s strange to know that and want to give her plenty and life!“
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