Hayley Sproull on living with PCOS and panic attacks: ‘Laughter is survival’

Comedian Hayley Sproull reveals why why she chose to open up about her struggles and how humour helps her cope. Photo / Dean Purcell

Kiwis pride themselves on their resilience, but how do we cope when the going gets tough? In new podcast series The Upside, Scotty Stevenson sits down with well-known New Zealanders across six episodes as they share their own personal mental health journeys and tips for getting back on the up.

Comedian and radio host Hayley Sproull is a household name in New Zealand, and has got candid about her experiences with PCOS - polycystic ovary syndrome - and anxiety in the name of comedy in recent years. Speaking to broadcaster and host of The Upside podcast Scotty Stevenson, she reveals why she chose to open up and how humour helps her cope.

Sproull recalls the signs of PCOS presenting in her body long before getting an official diagnosis, admitting that years on, it’s still hard to understand the disease.

“I’ve got all of it. I’ve got ovaries that look like lumpy oysters like covered in these black dots - they call them black pearls - and I was always hairy as, like, from 11 years old. And then, stubborn weight gain is something that is just the bane of my existence,” she says, adding she also experiences amenorrhea (missing periods), which she initially thought nothing of.

“I don’t want to make a bold blanket statement about how badly we diagnose PCOS, but a lot of the time it’s about infertility problems that you’re going to run into,” she tells Stevenson.

“And, ‘We’ll whack you on the pill to regulate some of the symptoms, and best of luck to you’. And that was definitely my experience when I got diagnosed.”

However, as she now knows, PCOS is “not a guarantee that you won’t have children”.

“You’re just gonna have to maybe work a bit harder. But I wasn’t told any of that information for many, many years after my diagnosis.”

Sproull recalls the intense “pressure” of having to think about having kids sooner than she expected. “Like, I actually don’t even know if that’s something that I want to do, let alone something that I’m going to have to try to do within the next three years.”

Now, she’s “happily child-free”, and reveals sharing her diagnosis through the lens of comedy has helped her come to terms with it.

“I don’t know how humourless people survive,” she admits. “I don’t mean funny people, but people that can’t receive humour or [don’t] like to laugh. For me, that’s survival, to be able to laugh at things and at ourselves.”

Making jokes about her experiences helped her to “lighten the load”, she tells Stevenson, as well as open up conversations around PCOS.

The comedian has also been open about battling anxiety and panic attacks, which she describes as “truly awful”.

Sproull remembers being the “outgoing, happy one” in her family growing up, while her brother suffered from anxiety. It wasn’t until she was working in her first TV gig that she began to “wake up in the morning and go to bed with a feeling of dread”, she says.

“I was like, ‘What am I dreading?’ I couldn’t put my finger on what that was, and it just never went away,” she recalls, adding she put off going to see someone about it until one email from her agent triggered her first panic attack.

“I was crying, couldn’t breathe and I was shaking, and I didn’t know what to do, and no one was in the house, and I was like, ‘Oh, I think that might be a panic attack’. And it sure was, and then from that moment, that anxiety and regular panic attacks just never went away.”

Now, she describes herself as a “high-functioning anxious person”.

“For me, anxiety sometimes translates to quite a positive energy. When I’m performing comedy, I’ve got so much energy to give.”

You won’t catch Sproull doing yoga or meditating to relax, as she jokes, “I’d rather work on mega-high cortisol levels of stress and entertaining people and taking on nine more jobs and burning out than do 20 minutes of breathing on a table.”

But while she tells Stevenson she tends to recharge via “being around people”, she also admits she does occasionally switch off. “I love to have time away from anyone and everyone.”

As a public figure, Sproull is all too aware of how comments on social media can have an impact on her mental health. “You have to learn, and it took years, literally years. People could say anything about me now, I reckon I’d be all right.

“I think if they really got into the art of something I created and why that was bad, I’d be like, ‘Ouch’. But they can talk about the way I look, the way I sound, how funny I am, all that kind of stuff, and it would not pierce the surface.”

Instead, looking back at her achievements, Sproull can confidently say, “I feel proud of it all.”

“The direct connection I get to make, particularly with women around New Zealand, definitely makes me feel very warm and very grateful to be given the platform and as much joy as I’m getting from it.”

All six episodes of The Upside are available on iHeartRadio now.