Debby Ryan said a previous brain injury changed the way she moves through everyday life, leaving her with migraines, heavy sensitivity to light and noise, and a need to close her eyes just to think clearly. The 33-year-old said the injury was severe enough that she was out of commission for six months, and even after treatment, some effects never fully returned.
She made the comments on the Sept. 15 episode of Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals, where she spoke about a long run of head trauma that includes five concussions over her life. Ryan said her fifth concussion came from sustained shaking over more than a minute, and that the aftermath was serious enough to send her into neurological rehab for six months. She described the care as a fringe science treatment that felt “really sci-fi and crazy,” saying it got her back online.
That recovery, though, was not a full reset. Ryan said there are things that simply did not come back, and she now divides her life into pre-incident Debby and post-incident Debby. She said the world is often too loud and too bright, and that the visual data she takes in can become so distracting that it makes her migraines worse. In her telling, the injury did not just interrupt her life for a season. It left a lasting map on how she sees, hears and thinks.
Ryan said she has an amazing team around her who reminded her who she is and held space for what could be a permanent change. She said she married Josh Dun in 2019 and shares an 8-month-old daughter, Felix, with him, but the details that matter most in this account are not family milestones. They are the ones she says still shape her body and mind today: the six months she lost, the rehab that helped, and the parts that never came back. What remains unclear is the exact injury she suffered and the treatment she underwent, but the long-term cost is not.
