With her new album being all about emotional struggles and vulnerability, Selena Gomez is talking mental health more than ever before.
It’s not rare for Selena Gomez to be an open book.
Whether she’s dealing with a lupus flair-up or one of her public breakups (that Justin Bieber one was a doozy), Selena tells it like it is.
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The “Lose You To Love Me” singer has also always been extremely open about her mental health issues.
In a new interview for WSJ. Magazine’s annual Talents and Legends issue , Gomez got candid on the subject once again.
She began by sharing how she used to have low self-esteem issues.
It’s something that she has to “work on” continuously she said.
Her early 20s were a difficult time since she experienced some pretty hard lows.
“My highs were really high, and my lows would take me out for weeks at a time,” she said.
Getting proper treatment for her mental health called for a mixture of things.
In addition to working with therapists for more than six years and being “in and out of treatment facilities,” she found relief in simply discovering that she does suffer from mental health issues.
“I realized that there was a way to get help and to find people that you trust,” she said.
Selena also credits medication for getting her mental health on the right path.
“I got on the right medication, and my life has been completely changed.”
In addition to these mental health issues, Selena had been dealing with some serious health problems at the time.
This all stems from her being diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus in 2013.
She’s had many ups and downs over the years, but things all came to a head when she had to have a kidney transplant in 2017.
She recalled to the magazine how terrifying these trialing times have been for her.
“The lupus was a huge thing that happened to me, then the kidney thing happened, and that was the scariest because, yeah, you could actually die.”
Sadly, that’s exactly what almost happened.
“The moment I came out I remember starting to shake and my mom screaming and then being put back under,” she recalled.
These complications caused the surgery to last another seven hours.
Selena’s revealing interview comes just months after she shared how body-shaming has really messed her up.
She made these candid comments while on the “Giving Back Generation” podcast.
“I experienced body image [issues] with my weight fluctuation for the first time,” Selena said.
“I have Lupus and deal with kidney issues and high blood pressure, so I deal with a lot of health issues. For me that’s when I really started noticing more of the body image stuff.”
When she gained weight as a side effect from the medications she was taking, she felt “attacked” by people’s mean comments.
Especially since it was something that was so out of her control.
“It depends on the month, to be honest. I really noticed when people started attacking me for that.”
She continued:
“In reality, that’s just my truth. I fluctuate. It depends what’s happening in my life, it’s out of my control and that got to me big time. I think for me, that really messed me up for a bit.”
She also made it clear that this is medication that she has to take for the rest of her life.
And if it helps her with her mental health issues as well, then more power to her!
For more of Selena, her album “Rare” has now dropped!
You can also read her full interview with WSJ here .
