Selena Gomez reveals why she went to rehab
"My self-esteem was shot - I was depressed and anxious."
"My self-esteem was shot - I was depressed and anxious."
Selena Gomez has made her debut on the cover of Vogue, and spoke intimately about her struggle with depression, low self-esteem and the loneliness of her career.
The 24-year-old singer famously canceled her Revival tour last summer to enter rehab for undisclosed reasons, and admitted it was the "hardest" but "best" thing she's ever done.
“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."
The former Disney star also appeared to mention ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber when she spoke about finding it hard to say no to selfies with young fans - which she happily did on numerous occasions during her interview with the fashion magazine.
“Somebody I used to hang out with would always get very frustrated with me, but I have a hard time saying no to children”, she disclosed.
Selena also admitted that she became "addicted" to social media when she became the most followed person on Instagram, but no longer has the app on her phone.
“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 recalled.
And on her 90 days receiving therapy, she reflected: “You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls, real people who [didn't care] 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.”
Selena appears in the April edition of Vogue magazine.