Selena Gomez Opened Up About Her Journey With Bipolar Disorder — "I Don’t Want That To Sound Dramatic, But I Almost Wasn’t Going To Put This Out"
Selena Gomez's new documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, premieres on Apple+ this week.
Much of the upcoming film explores her ongoing journey living with bipolar disorder, something she talked about freely when she sat down with Rolling Stone to chat about the documentary and her life over the last few years.
Here's what we learned from the extremely vulnerable interview:
"I’m going to be very open with everybody about this: I’ve been to four treatment centers," she said. "I think when I started hitting my early 20s is when it started to get really dark, when I started to feel like I was not in control of what I was feeling, whether that was really great or really bad."
She got into what that period of time was like for her, battling pressures both from within the industry and within herself.
“I never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities. My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift], so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong."
She had a thriving music and acting career, and she said, "I was really happy, but … was I? Do these materialistic things make me happy? I just didn’t like who I was, because I didn’t know who I was.”
And like all of us, she had visions of what her future was supposed to look like, but things didn't quite play out that way.
“I grew up thinking I would be married at 25. It wrecked me that I was nowhere near that — couldn’t be farther from it. It was so stupid, but I really thought my world was over.”
Selena described how all of these compounding incidents, combined with her bipolar diagnosis, began to manifest.
“It would start with depression, then it would go into isolation. Then it just was me not being able to move from my bed," she revealed.
"I didn’t want anyone to talk to me. My friends would bring me food because they love me, but none of us knew what it was. Sometimes it was weeks I’d be in bed, to where even walking downstairs would get me out of breath.”
Describing what she felt like when she first started taking medication, she said, "It was just that I was gone. There was no part of me that was there anymore.”
And anyone who has struggled with their mental health (myself included) knows that finding the right treatment, right doctors/therapists, and right medications is something that can take a frustrating amount of time.
Gomez finally found a psychiatrist who worked with her and helped her find the right mix of medications. “He really guided me. But I had to detox, essentially, from the medications I was on."
"I had to learn how to remember certain words. I would forget where I was when we were talking. It took a lot of hard work for me to a) accept that I was bipolar, but b) learn how to deal with it because it wasn’t going to go away.”
She hopes her new documentary will shed light on a mental health condition that is so often stigmatized, but it didn't come without some hesitation. “I know it has a big message," she said, "but am I the right person to bring it to light? I don’t know.”
"Because I have the platform I have, it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose. I don’t want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it."
Through the process of making the documentary, she said she "wanted someone to say, 'Selena, this is too intense.' But everyone was like, 'I’m really moved, but are you ready to do this? And are you comfortable?'"
"I was like, 'OK, if I can just do that for one person, imagine what it could do.' Eventually, I just kind of went for it. I just said, 'Yes.'"
And she explained that her goal was simple: "Saying that you understood what that feels like. That’s all I want. I know people who have felt those things that don’t know what to do. And I just want that to be normal."
You can read the full Rolling Stone article here and stream My Mind & Me on Apple TV+ starting Nov. 4.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.