“First of all, I had anxiety before it was cool, OK? I had anxiety on TV before it was a thing,” said Vinny, who memorably suffered a severe panic attack on camera in 2012 during Season 5 of MTV’s original iteration of “Jersey Shore.”

“I used to scream out that I was having anxiety and everyone kind of looked at me funny, like, ‘What’s wrong with this kid?’” he continued. “But now there’s a lot more awareness behind it and a lot more people are talking about it.”

Vinny said that his anxiety became too much to bear amid the grueling — and, as he explained, isolating — filming schedule for “Jersey Shore.”

“I have a brain where I’m an over-thinker and I’ve had it since I was a little kid. And, as you guys know, being on a reality show is someone with anxiety’s worst nightmare because you are locked up,” he told Tayshia, Natasha, and Joe, empathizing with their experiences as public figures.

“You can’t read a book, you can’t turn on the TV. Back in the day, we were totally guerrilla-style. We were closed off from the whole world,” Vinny said. “For the most part, I did pretty good at it. But at that particular time where we were filming, we had just filmed for three months straight. And my body and my brain just couldn’t take it anymore.”

As fans may recall, Vinny took a brief hiatus from filming “Jersey Shore.” He returned to the show once he discovered the right tools to manage his mental health. To this day, he says consistent exercise and an adequate sleep schedule help quell his anxiety.

“People actually go back and they watch that season where I came out and spoke about having anxiety. People are like, ‘Oh, s--t. I get it now,’” Vinny said, reflecting on the impact of that particular storyline. “Someone tweeted the other day, ‘I totally watched that differently when I was a teenager’ — when you’re watching ‘Jersey Shore’ for the partying aspect of it — to watching it now as an adult when they’re going through some stuff.”

The TV personality — who in 2013 penned a self-help book titled “Control the Crazy: My Plan to Stop Stressing, Avoid Drama, and Maintain Inner Cool” — later offered advice to anyone currently living with anxiety.

“Never seek perfection with it. Never seek to be ‘cured’ of it, because you’re never going to be perfect,” he said. “It’s really just about managing the stresses that come to you on a day-to-day basis, handling them, and getting through to the next day.”

Listen to Vinny's entire "Click Bait with Bachelor Nation" interview below.