Lena Dunham uses mediation to control her OCD

Lena Dunham has opened up about her struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, revealing meditating helps her cope with the condition.

The Girls star, 27, was diagnosed with OCD at the age of nine and praises her mum, photographer Laurie Simmons, for teaching her how to meditate instead of medicating her.

Speaking at the Women. Meditation. Stress. panel at the Paley Center in New York City on Tuesday (08Oct13), she explained, "I feel forever grateful that instead of assaulting me with a barrage of medications, my mother decided it was time for me to learn to meditate.

"Although when you're nine you have trouble articulating the sort of internal shifts you feel, I know that it made an incredible difference. It made it possible for me to understand what I was going through, and to process what I was going through and to calm down."

Dunham admitted she stopped meditating when she was teenager, but returned to it after she broke into the entertainment industry.

She continued, "When I started working in the incredible, challenging and often very stressful world of entertainment, my world was spinning really quickly and I knew that I needed to return to some sense of calm.

"My re-initiation into meditation has been even more powerful than my first experience, and it has made it possible for me to weather certain challenges and storms and public moments that I didn't ever imagine would be in my life... I feel so lucky that I found it."