In an emotional new interview with People, Nashville star Hayden Panettiere opens up about the devastating toll her brother Jansen’s death took on her, both emotionally and physically.

Jansen, an actor best known for his roles in Even Stevens and Blues Clues, died in early 2023. His cause of death was ruled as “cardiomegaly (an enlarged heart) coupled with aortic valve complications,” according to a statement the family issued to ABC News.

The two siblings were close — they even acted together in a couple of movies — and after his death, a source reportedly told Entertainment Tonight that Panettiere supported her brother through mental health issues and encouraged his artistic pursuits.

In her recent conversation with People, Panettiere acknowledged the deep grief she felt over the loss of her younger sibling, saying, “It was my job to protect him, and when I lost him, I felt like I lost half of my soul.”

She also says that her grief had physical manifestations.

“When my little brother passed away, my body did something I’ve never really seen it do before,” Panettiere explains, “which was, within days, I basically just, like, ballooned. Ballooned out. And I know that, like, stress and cortisol run through your body, you know, can do that.”

The experience of her body suddenly changing, coupled with the loss of her brother, left Panettiere feeling lost and uncomfortable. Her self-confidence plummeted, especially after she saw “horrific” paparazzi photos of herself taken leaving Jansen’s funeral.

“I didn’t even recognize myself,” she adds.

Panettiere was eating healthy and working out, but she still didn’t feel like she could shed the weight, and the emotional toll of feeling out of control in her body began to affect her day-to-day life.

“It was bringing out the agoraphobia in me as well. Which is something I’ve always struggled with,” she says, adding that she wore baggy clothes and began to spiral into “a really bad, destructive hamster wheel” that impeded her ability to work.

“I didn’t wanna go to fittings and look at myself in the mirror and hate everything that I saw in myself,” she says.

Eventually, Panettiere says her publicist connected her to a personal trainer who approached exercise in a positive way, as opposed to the kind of “boot camp” style workouts the actor had experienced in the past. “She became a friend. She became a life coach,” Panettiere says.

“It’s not easy for someone in my position to trust people, especially people I haven’t known for a very long time,” she adds. “But she earned my trust, and I told her I would confide in her, confess everything. And she knew how to make you feel, just, empowered.”

Elsewhere in her People interview, Panettiere discussed her 9-year-old daughter, who lives in Ukraine with the actor’s ex-husband Wladimire Klitschko.