While Jenelle Evans is no longer filming Teen Mom 2, the reality star and mother-of-three wants the world to know how she copes with her mental health due to online criticism.
“Oh, yeah,” she said on the Dumb Blonde podcast when asked if hate from Twitter has caused her to suffer from anxiety or depression. “Definitely.”
“And a lot lately, because since I’ve been off TV, it seems like everyone is wanting to know about my life 10 times harder,” she said. “I’m just sitting here like, doing what I want to do and trying to lay low. And it’s not working out, because everyone is trying to dig.”
“Sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it gets to you really bad,” she continued. “You’ve just got to ignore all of it and you literally just have to put down your phone and focus on something else.”
Last May, Evans, 28, was fired from Teen Mom 2 after husband David Eason shot and killed their family dog for biting their 3-year-old daughter Ensley in the face. MTV had fired Eason, 31, in 2018 over an alleged homophobic rant on Twitter.
On the podcast, Evans looked back at what life has been like minus the cameras that followed her around for the last decade.
“It’s been nice,” she said. “I mean, I’ve been basically doing what I want, and for once making my own schedule and picking and choosing if I want to do something or if I don’t. I’m not forced into anything or forced to talk about anything I don’t want to talk about.”
Evans’ MTV contract is set to officially expire this April but she admits she has not ruled out a return to the network. But not without conditions.
“I will do MTV stuff, but I don’t want to do it under the Teen Mom name anymore. I want to be my own person, do my own thing. I want to be known as Jenelle Eason, not Jenelle Eason from Teen Mom,” she said. “I’ve grown up, I’m 28 — I’m almost 30!”
She believes her experience with the franchise overall, was both a plus and a negative.
“I think it’s always back and forth,” she said. “Because you can get opportunities from it or you can get denied opportunities. It all depends on their opinion of you.”