The 50-year-old actress spoke with Oscar-winner Kim Basinger and her daughter Ireland Baldwin about overcoming their mental health concerns.

“It took me a long time to understand Willow. I mean, just her anxiety,” Smith said, according to People. “I had a really difficult time relating, because, two things — her lifestyle and how she was brought up are very different than mine — I don’t know what it’s like to be a child under hot lights. And then just, really not knowing how to comfort her, not knowing what help she needed, not understanding the behavior.”

Pinkett Smith said the more she delved into learning about Willow’s anxiety, the more she had to confront her own behaviors.

“I used to chew my fingernails down to the cuticles. But they didn’t say that that was anxiety. I was a nail biter, that’s it,” she said.

“In having to deal with and learn about her anxiety, I’ve had to look at some of my own behavior and behaviors of my mother and go, ‘Well, of course I probably would have some anxiety in regards to how I grew up,'” Pinkett Smith said, according to Hello Beautiful. “It was very difficult, even to this day, in just being there for her in the way that she needs.”

Willow added that she had to forgive her mother when she realized Pinkett Smith was also struggling.

“She had no idea. So, I kinda had to forgive her a little bit,” Willow said, Hello Beautiful reports.

“I feel like when I was growing up, she didn’t understand my anxiety because she, growing up, had seen her friends die. She had been through so much stuff that my issues to her kinda felt [smaller],” Willow said. “And that was very frustrating for me as a child, because I was like, ‘How can you not see my internal, emotional struggle?'”

Adrienne Banfield-Norris also added that she probably had anxiety too but was not equipped to recognize it in herself.

“I think in our world, I almost saw it as a weakness. We just couldn’t afford to be anxious,” Banfield-Norris said, according to People. “I escaped through my drug abuse. Which I think numbed me to whatever was going on with you. I just didn’t want to face it, deal with anything in my life.”

“I guess what I’m seeing is this cycle of generational anxiety,” Pinkett Smith added.