Ryan Reynolds Details How Anxiety Helps Him as a Dad to His and Blake Lively’s Kids

Ryan Reynolds sees his anxiety as a parenting tool. 

After all, The Proposal actor, who has been open on his struggles with mental health in the past, recently shared how his worrying actually helps him as a parent to his and Blake Lively's four kids. 

"I think it makes it better," the 47-year-old explained to People in an interview published May 29, "because your focus is less on yourself and more on your kids."

Ryan, who is father to James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and a 15-month-old whose name has not yet been shared, even admitted that fatherhood helped him accept his mental health strife. 

"Now I love that I have anxiety, I love that I've had anxiety," he added. "Because when I see my kids experiencing some of that, which is probably genetic, I know how to address it in a way that is compassionate, that actually allows them to feel seen."

He continued, "I know that I can't just fix it—I can communicate all that stuff to them and with them. I'm always grateful for it."

In addition to helping him with his little ones, Ryan even believes that his anxiety helps him in his career. 

"My job benefits greatly," he gushed. "People who have anxiety are constantly thinking into the future. You're constantly, 'What if this happens? What if that happens?' You're always telling yourself stories."

He even related it to his and longtime friend Hugh Jackman's new movie Deadpool vs. Wolverine. 

"When we're shooting, I'm not just shooting the movie, I'm also sitting in the audience as a cautious critic going, 'I don't like that. I don't buy that.'" Ryan noted. "So anxiety creates that ecosystem of awareness."

As for how parenthood has changed his wife of 11 years, Blake has said becoming a mother lit a fire under her emotions. 

"I know I'm a skin-covered nervous system because that's the anatomy of a human, but my nervous system feels electrified since having a child," she admitted on Amber Tamblyn's Much Ado show in February. "I have experienced every single emotion in the human spectrum of emotions and then some. The greatest highs, the greatest fears, the lows, all of it. So what I feel in my body is everything."

Keep reading for more of Ryan and Blake's quotes on parenthood. 

"I have seen Frozen with my daughters so, so many times and people don't know this, but if you play Frozen backwards, it's actually a shot for shot remake of The Exorcist," Reynolds joked on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2018.

On Dec. 15, 2016, Reynolds and Lively debuted their daughters James and Inez for the first time, at the actor's Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony (a common setting for notoriously private celebrities to introduce the world to their kids). During his speech, Reynolds said to his wife, "You make everything better—absolutely everything in my life better. You've given us two of the most incredible children that I could ever hope to have. You've made me the father of my dreams when I thought I only had fun uncle potential."

In August 2016, before the birth of the couple's second daughter, Reynolds told E! News, "There's nothing on earth more grounding than having a baby. It's the best thing that could ever happen to someone."

"It's tough when you get pooped on and barfed on, but having a baby is wonderful," the proud mama told NW Magazine in 2016. "Even when it's tough and I'm exhausted, I think, 'I am so fortunate.'"

During a visit to the Late Show with David Letterman in 2015, Reynolds gushed about his marriage and his daughter, but made sure viewers knew who was more important. "'I would take a bullet for you. I could never love anything as much as I love you.' I would say that to my wife. And the second I looked in that baby's eyes, I knew in that exact moment that if we were ever under attack, I would use my wife as a human shield to protect that baby."

In tradition with his dark sense of humor, Reynolds shared this little parenting joke with his Twitter followers in 2016: "Being a father is the single greatest feeling on earth. Not including those wonderful years I spent without a child, of course."

"I always do the dirty work," Reynolds said on NBC's Today show in 2016. "I'm happy to do the dirty work. So does she, but I'm always, I love getting up in the middle of the night, I'm fine with that, you know, all that stuff."

Fatherhood, he said, has been "amazing."

"I had one of those mornings, rare mornings, where my daughter just didn't want me to leave—and it was only because my wife was asleep," Reynolds said in 2016. "But it was like, you didn't want to go. You just like, it kills you."

"You know, what was really weird was, we were watching the Super Bowl and my daughter saw it and she totally recognized me. There was like 12 of me, which is just like, to her, was like 24 useless boobs," Reynolds said in 2016. "She was so not impressed. She was like, 'Eh, whatever.'"

"Damn it's hard letting your infant daughter go somewhere alone for the first time, I was a total mess dropping her off at Burning Man," Ryan joked to his Twitter followers in 2016.

"She's great, man. She's great," the proud papa gushed in 2015 before revealing whether the couple's then-only child James has started speaking. "We're getting a lot of sounds, nothing that sounds like discernible English at this point," he quipped, adding, "I'm mocking her a lot."

"@vancityreynolds Since the day our baby was born, I've felt so strongly in my heart that you were most likely the father," Lively wrote on Instagram in 2015. "#ILoveYouSoMuchItsSilly."

"Having a baby is just living in the constant unexpected," Lively said in 2016. "You never know when you're gonna get crapped on or when you're gonna get a big smile or when that smile immediately turns into hysterics. It might be like living with a drug addict. But you have a baby and you think, 'I can't imagine ever not having a baby,' because they grow up so quickly. I'd be an 80-year-old woman with a baby if I could."

 "It's the best," Lively said in 2015. "It's the thing that binds us all—family. We have very unique jobs for a living, but we all are a part of someone's family. It's a nice thing."

"On Father's Day, my daughter smiled at me," Reynolds tweeted in 2015. "It was all the gift I needed as I packed a bag and left for 6 years to write a book on parenting."

"There have been times where I woke up, literally had no idea I had been walking for five minutes," he told E! News while promoting his movie Woman in Gold in 2015.

"But you love it. You wake up in the middle of the night, you got a big stupid smile on your face. I was telling someone else that. Anything else that woke you up every 45 minutes, you'd kill it. But when it's a baby, it's the best thing that ever happened to you."

"One of the most common things in the world is making out, having a couple of drinks, and then doing it, and then having a baby. I was perfectly sober for this one though. I gotta say," Reynolds joked in 2016.

"It's amazing. I just always marvel how common it is and yet how profound it is. And I always laugh because you know celebrities you always cringe when they talk about their kids. Like 'my child is the only one that has ever exited a womb out, ever.'"

"Well, a lot of people have done this, so you always want to temper it with a little of self-effacement. But I love it," Reynolds said in 2015 about then-only child James. "I truly worship that kid. It's terrible. She has me so far wrapped around her finger it's dumb. She says 'Dada' and I will walk through a cement wall to get to her."

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