Sandra Bullock Opened Up About Her PTSD From a 2014 Home Invasion

On an episode of Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Sandra Bullock opened up about her 2014 home invasion and the PTSD she’s experienced as a result. 

In 2014 the Oscar winner’s home was invaded while she was there. The burglar, Joshua Corbett, was reportedly in Bullock’s home for over an hour while she slept.

Red Table Talk cohost Willow Smith mentioned the home invasion during her interview with Bullock. Last year Willow’s home was invaded by a stalker and convicted sex offender when she was away for Christmas. Willow describes how difficult it was, especially because the invasion happened in her first house, which she had recently purchased. Bullock asked her if she still feels the ramifications of the invasion, and Wllow said, “Oh, 100%. I had a whole moment. It was rough.” 

“My house was broken into. I was in it,” Bullock said. Based on the episodes of 48 Hours and Dateline she’d seen, she said, “I’m in the closet going, ‘This doesn’t end well.’” 

It was, however, the one night that her son, Louis, was not home. “It was the one night that our nanny goes, ‘Let me just take him to my apartment which is up the street because you’re gonna be out late,’” Bullock said. “Had he been home, I would’ve run to the closet, and it would have changed our destiny forever.”

Bullock said that the invasion changed her: “The violation of that…I wasn’t the same after that. I was unraveling.” She added that she hasn’t been alone since: “I haven’t been alone since the day it happened.”

When Bullock was asked if the invader was caught, she said yes. She also said that the system failed him. “There was an altercation with SWAT and he killed himself,” she said. 

Bullock said there are “some layers” to her healing process. “I didn’t realize what PTSD was. I would look left, out of a car, not right. I would look left, and I would start sobbing. And I thought to myself, I’m a single parent, and this child is going to absorb nothing but fear and trauma and shame from me in the most pivotal times of his life,” she said. “And I was like, I don’t want to drop that load of baggage onto my beautiful child.” 

Bullock then explained that she discovered the PTSD treatment EMDR, which is Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy. “It was the most healing. I was so scared to do it,” she said. Although the therapy was designed to help her process the invasion, Bullock said it also took her back to moments from past relationships and moments from her childhood when she felt unsafe. “When I got out of it, I realized I have surrounded myself often with unsafe people and situations and put myself there,” she said. “I have no one else to blame but myself because that was the most familiar feeling I had.”

You can watch the full episode of Sandra Bullock’s Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch. The discussion about the home invasion starts around the 17-minute mark.