Raven Gates Shares How Baking Helps Calm Her Anxiety: ‘It Can Be Really Debilitating’

Opening up.

Bachelor Nation fans got to know and love Raven Gates Gottschalk on Season 21 of “The Bachelor” and on Season 4 of “Bachelor in Paradise,” where she met her husband, Adam Gottschalk.

The two welcomed their son Gates in January 2022 and their second baby boy, Max, in July 2023.

Raven loves keeping fans updated with her life on social media and took to Instagram this week to open up more about navigating her anxiety.

In a new video of her baking a cake, she shared, “Instead of having a mental breakdown today, I baked something. And I wish I was kidding but I’m actually not. I struggle a lot with anxiety and racing thoughts. It’s like a hum that I can’t turn off. It’s always going and I can’t even turn the volume down sometimes.”

Raven continued and got candid about the different ways anxiety can debilitate her. 

She said, “I overthink, I ruminate, I think about all the bad things I’ve done in my life, I think about things that I should’ve done or could’ve done differently and it can become really debilitating.” 

Raven then shared how baking has helped calm her anxiety and why she finds it to be such a useful tool. 

“It really sounds so silly when I say it out loud. But I realized that when I start baking, all of it slows down, quiets my mind, there’s just something about the smells, the texture, the sound of the cracking eggs that anchors my senses and pulls me out of that mental overload. And when my mind is feeling chaotic, it clears the static. It gives me something to complete and finish,” she shared. 

Raven ended her video by revealing that baking has also become a form of self-care.

She said, “It’s also a great way for me to show people that I care about them by feeding them and also showing that I care about myself by baking. The funny thing is, baking doesn’t really fix anything, but it does help. And somehow makes me feel like everything is okay.”