[VIDEO] ‘Outlander’ Sam Heughan, Caitriona Balfe at the season 6 premiere

Warning: This post contains spoilers for stranger‘s season 6 premiere.

stranger‘s Claire has always been very good at shrugging off difficult times and doing whatever needed to be done. But as we saw in Sunday’s Season 6 premiere, even the time traveler sometimes known as herself has her limitations.

“I think this is Claire unraveling in a way we’ve never seen before,” the series star said Caitriona Balfe tells TVLine in the video above. “She’s always had the ability to compartmentalize…. We saw that over and over again, to the point where I was sometimes like, ‘Is she Teflon?’”

But the kidnapping and gang rape that happened to Claire at the end of season five understandably still bothers her deeply as the sixth season of the Starz series begins. “It really shook her to the core, and I don’t think those old coping mechanisms that she’s had until now are serving her,” the actress continues.

As viewers saw, Sunday’s premiere ended with Claire waking uneasily from a nightmare and then heading to her office, where she inhaled some of her self-made ether to find refuge from the memories of her brutal attack. (Read a full synopsis here.)

In the video above, we talk to Balfe about what self-medication is – a departure from Diana Gabaldon’s novel A touch of snow and ash – means Claire’s state of mind as the season progresses and then we’ll check in with the series star Sam Heughan about how much Jamie knows (and how he’ll probably feel when he realizes what’s going on).

“He expects her to come to him when she’s actually struggling or struggling,” he says, “rather than expecting her to be pretty bad, as we’ve learned.”

Press PLAY in the video above to see Balfe and Heughan talk about the premiere, then share your thoughts in the comments!