Selena Gomez is one of the most outspoken celebrities about mental health. Growing up in the public eye, she faced a lot of pressure from work, high-profile relationships, physical health issues, and even from her fans. In a new interview with Fast Company, Selena, now 31, openly discusses some of her worst moments, including the backlash she experienced when paparazzi swimsuit photos made her the target of online bullying.
“When I was younger, I thought I could save the world,” Gomez says. Fast Company. “It breaks my heart when I hear a girl come up to me and say, ‘I was so close to killing myself, but when I saw your documentary, I couldn’t imagine it anymore.’ This is the coolest gift, but yeah, look at me…” she said, crying. “It’s crazy to take on that kind of responsibility.”
She struggled with her mental health and eventually canceled the final leg of her Revival tour in 2016. She got help and spent a 90-day stay at a treatment facility in Tennessee. Then the following year, after being diagnosed with lupus, she had a kidney transplant.
She didn’t discuss her mental health until 2020, talking about it in one-on-one conversations. conversation with Miley Cyrus on Instagram Live that she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “I went through a very difficult season. It was my ups and downs and I didn’t know what to do so I couldn’t control it. I wanted to cancel everything. It was just a painful feeling. why, when I found out about my diagnosis, I just said, “Oh, okay, I feel a little relieved, I understand a little more.” I got a second opinion. I went to the doctors. I’m lucky to have people who can help me get through every day.”
“I grew up being a people pleaser,” she continued. “I had a responsibility at a very young age—young people looked up to me. I didn’t know who I was. This responsibility would have me walking on eggshells often. I thought it might be harmful to tell people who I am. It became a threat that scared me. Well, if you’re wrong, then you can’t work.”
“I went through a very difficult season. It was my ups and downs and I didn’t know what to do so I couldn’t control it. I wanted to cancel everything. It was just a painful feeling. why, when I found out about my diagnosis, I just said, “Oh, okay, I feel a little relieved, I understand a little more.” I got a second opinion. I went to the doctors. I’m lucky to have people who can help me get through every day.”
Around the same time, she was trying to recover from her final breakup with on-again, off-again boyfriend Justin Bieber and found social media to be too toxic a space for her. She gave her password to her assistant and stood aside. “I just got my heart broken. I didn’t need to see what everyone was doing,” she says. “Then there were times when I didn’t feel positive about the way I looked because of what I saw on Instagram. Wow, I wish my body looked like this.”
In 2018, paparazzi spotted Gomez in a bikini while boating in Australia, and trolls came out to nab her. She used to “have the body of a teenager,” she says.
Now, “none of the sample sizes were appropriate, and that would have made me feel uneasy. Although how unrealistic is it to expect that a normal woman’s body will not change?”
She decided to take a break from her social media detox and hit back. She took aim at “the beauty myth—the obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless cycle of hopelessness, self-consciousness and self-loathing as she tries to live up to society’s impossible definition of flawless beauty.”