Jennifer Lopez has been more than grateful for the two children that came into her life. Apart from just experiencing the joys of parenting, Lopez’s kids helped make the actor’s life easier in a variety of ways.

Jennifer Lopez experienced a mental breakdown during the movie ‘Enough’

Jennifer Lopez | Toni Anne Barson/WireImage

The film Enough was a 2002 thriller that starred Lopez, whose character was in a dangerous relationship with a wealthy contractor. Before Enough, Lopez was already a movie star with several years’ worth of filmmaking experience under her belt.

But making Enough was much different for Lopez than performing in her other films. In a 2008 interview Lopez did with The Daily Beast, she opened up about the unexpected panic she had on set. The sudden emotion was a response to the culmination of work and stress that was building up in her life at that time.

“There was a time when I was very overworked and I was doing music and movies and so many things. I was suffering from a lack of sleep,” she said. “And I did have a kind of nervous breakdown. I froze up on a set. Well, not on a set, but in my trailer. I was like, ‘I don’t want to move. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to do anything.’ It was on that movie Enough [in 2002]. Yeah. I did. I had a nervous breakdown.”

Her breakdown had eventually gotten to the point where she had to see a specialist to help her through the ordeal. Lopez was told that rest might be the solution to her problems.

“‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong,’ Lopez recalled the doctor saying. “‘You’re sleep deprived. You’re overworked. Go home and go to bed.’ He told me to go back to work on Monday after a weekend of sleeping because if I waited longer that I would only get more panicked about working. So that’s what I did. I’ve still never been to a shrink. I’m not a shrinky person.”

Jennifer Lopez’s kids helped save her from her mental breakdown

Lopez was still going through a bit of a breakdown in the following years after 2002. This changed, however, after experiencing motherhood. On February 22, 2008, Lopez and her then-husband Marc Anthony gave birth to twins.

Their children, Emme Maribel and Maximilian David Muniz, would have a profound and positive influence on Lopez’s life. That influence included healing Lopez even more from her breakdown.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to do anything,’” she once said in an interview with InTouch (via Contact Music). “My kids saved me.”

Jennifer Lopez’s children helped her reevaluate her relationship choices

In addition to her mental health, Lopez has also credited her children for helping her make more careful relationship decisions. In a resurfaced interview with Today (via Yahoo), Lopez confided that she didn’t make the best choices when finding a partner.

“I feel like, when we’re kids, you’re sold into this fairy-tale idea of what love is — that Prince Charming is gonna come along and save you, and you’re gonna live happily ever after,” Lopez said. “[He’s] gonna rescue me from the Bronx, and we’re gonna go off and live in a castle somewhere and it’s gonna be awesome. He’s gonna love me forever, and I’m gonna love him forever, and it’s gonna be real easy. And it’s so different than that.”

Lopez’s issues with self-esteem also had her jumping into relationships a bit too quickly.

“The first person who shows up and gives me a little comfort and we have a little chemistry, boom, we’re in,” she said.

But her children helped her change this approach to dating.

“They save me,” she said. “Their love and loving them and them coming into my life really made me reevaluate what I was doing with my life, and the relationships and the choices I was making in relationships sometimes.”