Kate Beckinsale has taken a drastic move on social media.
In the early hours of Sunday, September 20, the “Underworld” star deleted all the posts on her Instagram account.
Only two posts remained, which have since been deleted.
‘Congratulations, You Win’
In a since-deleted post shared via Instagram Stories, she shared a photo of a rainbow above a city street.
In the caption, she shared a cryptic message that had fans concerned, writing, “congratulations you won i give up.”
She then issued a post — which she also subsequently deleted — reading simply, “Bye.”
The comments on that post had been turned off before it disappeared.
Meanwhile, for a brief time her bio linked to an article about online harassment.
Page Six reached out to Beckinsale’s rep for comment, but did not receive a response.
At the time of writing, Beckinsale’s Instagram feed contains no posts; she has yet to comment publicly about the meaning of her final messages, and why she deleted every one of her Instagram posts.
PTSD Struggles
Just two weeks earlier, Beckinsale issued a vulnerable Instagram post about cruel comments she’d been receiving on social media about her appearance after she went public about her health struggles.
She previously revealed she’d been diagnosed with mast cell activiation syndrome (MCAS), a condition in which cells release an excess of chemicals that create allergy-like symptoms and intense digestive issues that had led to weight loss.
As People reported at the time, Beckinsale — who had recently lost her mother to cancer — discussed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“There are men and women and children who have seen such absolute horror or experienced such absolute horror that their nervous system is permanently altered as a result. And a lot of those people become incredibly good at masking it,” she said in the video. “And it’s sad because they become so good that they get no grace whatsoever.”
She added, “They get up, they go to work, they look after their kids, they provide for their family, they have a laugh, they’re the fun person, but they don’t sleep for more than an hour because when they do, it’s full of nightmares. Anything — smells, sounds, thoughts, feelings — can trigger them into a place that is actually like hell.”
She Urged Kindness
She continued by encouraging people to approach strangers with kindness, since it’s impossible to know what somebody might be going through.
“Given the fact that it’s invisible and you can’t know, maybe err on the side of being gentler with people, being kinder. It really is true that when you haven’t walked a mile in someone’s shoes — however fancy you think the shoes are — you have absolutely no idea what they might be carrying, masking, dealing with day and night,” she shared.
“Someone with PTSD is on their own with it, by definition … so those are the loneliest people,” Beckinsale added. “They’re alone with a level of horror that’s incompatible with life and yet, a lot of times those people continue to try and put one foot in front of the other.”
Not the First Time
As Us Weekly reported, Beckinsale previously wiped her Instagram feed following the passing of her mother.
When she subsequently returned to Instagram, she issued a comment referencing the body-shaming comments she continued receiving.
“You take a break from Instagram for several months following the death of your mother, delete all of your posts and explain in some considerable detail about what you may have lost weight including the fact that weight loss is one of the very first physical signs of bereavement,” she wrote. “I think people might be broken.”
She added, “At the age of 5, I watched my 31-year-old father die of a huge heart attack and then I watched my stepfather die, and then I watched my mother degenerate and die in such an incredible amount of suffering, and I will say, it doesn’t make you feel very hungry. And I don’t know if there’s some kind of survivor guilt because it started after my stepdad died, and it’s not like anorexia where you’re starving and it’s a kind of willpower thing.”
