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Image: Selena Gomez via Instagram
Last year Selena Gomez cancelled more than 30 dates on her Revival World Tour and headed to a US rehab facility, where she spent three months without her phone undergoing treatment for symptoms of mental and physical exhaustion.
After alluding to the reasons for her abrupt break in her American Music Awards speech last year, the star has now given an in-depth interview to US Vogue.
The It Ain’t Me singer explained that she experienced a sudden loss of confidence when she realised her fans had grown up with her, and she was no longer performing for kids and tweens.
“Tours are a really lonely place for me,” the 24-year-old explained. “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.
“I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it … I was so used to performing for kids. Suddenly I have [people] 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. I couldn’t say, ‘Everybody, let’s pinky-promise that you’re beautiful!’ It doesn’t work that way, and I know it because I’m dealing with the same s–t they’re dealing with.”
Image: Selena Gomez via Instagram
Gomez said she needed to go away and “figure [her] own stuff out”, which led her to a treatment facility in Tennessee where she tried equine treatment (therapy through working with horses) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, which is based on the theory that some people are more likely to have extreme ways of thinking and out-of-proportion emotional responses to everyday situations than others. Through DBT, patients learn coping strategies for handling emotionally stressful situations.
“DBT has completely changed my life,” Gomez says. “I wish more people would talk about therapy. We girls, we’re taught to be almost too resilient, to be strong and sexy and cool and laid-back, the girl who’s down. We also need to feel allowed to fall apart.”
Selena in Kuala Lumpur shortly before she pulled the plug on her tour (Instagram)
Since completing the three-month treatment stint, Selena revealed part of her mental health strategy includes not using Instagram (her account is updated by her team) and keeping her inner-circle tight.
“I think 17 people have my phone number right now … maybe two are famous.”
We’re willing to bet at least one of the two is The Weeknd.
