Chrissy Teigen Breaks Down While Revealing What She’s ‘Really Scared’ of Passing on to Kids

Chrissy Teigen hopes that her and husband John Legend’s children don’t follow in her footsteps when it comes to caring about what other people think.

After Mel Robbins told Teigen, 39, on the Thursday, February 27, episode of the “Self-Conscious With Chrissy Teigen” podcast that she is “never responsible for managing someone else’s emotions,” the Cravings author said she had an “epiphany.”

“That I’m not alone in this,” Teigen explained. “Sometimes it feels very isolating to feel this way, and the fact that other people feel imprisoned by this too, that helps a lot, because one of the worst parts about it is me feeling crazy or feeling that nobody else will understand this feeling. ‘Why am I like this?’ I’m really scared of passing this along to my kids.”

She continued, “I think that is the big realization for me, is, I can’t do this to my kids. I don’t ever want them to feel like they have to perform for everybody and be good all the time, but I know that sometimes I probably am that way.”

Teigen shared that she wants her and Legend’s children to be “the most polite” and doesn’t want people to think they are “celebrity asshole kids.” (Teigen and Legend, who tied the knot in 2013, share daughters Luna, 8, and Esti, 2, as well as sons Miles, 6, and Wren, 19 months.)

“So I might go harder in the other direction to make sure that they don’t come off that way,” she continued. “And I really need to break that because I’m OK — another reason I’m in therapy — I’m OK with me getting the s— end of the stick on anything, or living this life where I’m stressed and in pain, but I’m not OK with them [getting it].”

When Robbins, 56, pointed out that she could tell how much it “bothers” Teigen, she replied, “Yeah, because I see how much my interactions with adults as a child affected me from so many different layers, from whether it was sexual or the reason I became such a people pleaser, and that was through sleeping with people. It travels so far in my life. It’s not just that I wanted to smile and say my little Thai words for people.”

Teigen became emotional as she continued, apologizing to Robbins for breaking down. “I ended up believing that I was for everybody, and my body was for everybody, and it took a hold on every part of my life, and as you can see, it still has a hold on me now,” she said through tears. “I cannot imagine this for my kids, I hope that they don’t want to please everybody in life, and I hope that they know that their body is their own, their mind is their own, their actions are their own, and they can’t control other people. I cannot have them live this way that I live.”

While Teigen noted that it “always amazed” her that she was the “give no f—s girl,” she admitted, “I’m like, you guys have no idea how many f—s I give.”