After cancelling her Revival tour last year to enter rehab, Selena Gomez has kept her battles with depression, low self esteem and anxiety close to her chest. Now, in an interview with American Vogue, she opened up about that difficult period of time.
"Tours are a really lonely place for me," she told the publication. "My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage.
"Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn't capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it - which, I think, was a complete distortion. I was so used to performing for kids.
"At concerts I used to make the entire crowd raise up their pinkies and make a pinky promise never to allow anybody to make them feel that they weren’t good enough. Suddenly I have kids smoking and drinking at my shows, people in their 20s, 30s, and I’m looking into their eyes, and I don’t know what to say.
"What I wanted to say is that life is so stressful, and I get the desire to just escape it. But I wasn’t figuring my own stuff out, so I felt I had no wisdom to share. And so maybe I thought everybody out there was thinking, This is a waste of time."
Selena also added that she'd become addicted to Instagram, after becoming the most followed Instagram account. Which, as you can imagine, would have some sort of effect on you. Turns out, for Selena, it was negative.
"As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out. It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict," she said.
And about her therapy, she said: "You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls, real people who couldn’t give two shits about who I was, who were fighting for their lives.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done."
We're glad she's doing better!