Selena Gomez is sharing her mental health journey in her new Apple TV+ documentary “Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me.”
The film, which premiered on the streaming service on Nov. 4, follows Gomez over the course of six years as she continues her career after Disney Channel stardom and faces several health struggles, including a bipolar diagnosis and her ongoing journey with lupus.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gomez described her early 20s as a time "when (she) started to feel like (she) was not in control of what (she) was feeling, whether that was really great or really bad.”
The documentary is full of unvarnished revelations from the 30-year-old and her loved ones. Read on for what we learned.
She felt 'pressure' during her Revival World Tour
In 2016, Gomez canceled her Revival World Tour after 55 performances. Behind the scenes, the singer said she was experiencing anxiety, panic attacks and depression.
“It just sucks, all of it,” Selena cries after one rehearsal. “It looks so bad. I have no idea what the f--k I’m doing.”
She says she heard a voice inside her saying, "You missed this, that sucked, that sucked.'"
"It sucks the life out of me and I don’t want to perform. The pressure is just overwhelming because I want to do the best I can," she continues.
She was hospitalized in 2016, and her friends describe a 'scary' period in her life
After canceling the tour about 30 stops early, Gomez entered a mental health treatment facility.
“At one point, she’s like, ‘I don’t want to be alive right now. I don’t want to live. And I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’” Gomez's former assistant Theresa Marie Mingus describes in one scene. “It was one of the moments where you look in her eyes and there was nothing there. It was so scary.”
Gomez's friend Raquelle Stevens describes the period of time as "very chaotic" and says Gomez began hearing voices. “They just kept getting louder and louder again. That triggered some sort of psychotic break,” Stevens says.
Gomez's mom found out she was hospitalized through TMZ
In 2018, Gomez entered a mental health care facility following her kidney transplant, related to her lupus.
The star's mother, Mandy Teefey, first learned that her daughter had been hospitalized through the press. "We heard about her mental breakdown through TMZ. They called me. They wanted to know what my daughter was doing in the hospital with a nervous breakdown," Teefy said. "I was scared she was gonna die."
Both Teefey and Gomez’s friend Raquelle Stevens were worried about how long the episode might last. "I was devastated," Steven says.
“You hang on as tight as you can and try to help them with their treatment and that’s the hardest thing to do to then just go to bed and hope that they wake up the next day," Teefey says.
Gomez said she 'didn't know how she'd cope' with her bipolar diagnosis
Gomez publicly revealed her diagnosis with bipolar disorder in 2020 during an appearance on Miley Cyrus’s Instagram chat show, “Bright Minded.” At the time, she said she "wasn't scared"
Gomez learned of her diagnosis while checked into a mental health care facility. "I didn't now how I'd cope with my diagnosis. What if it happened again? What if the next time, I didn't come back? I needed to keep learning about it. I needed to take it day by day," she says in the documentary.
While looking back on her mental health journey, Gomez gets emotional as she thinks about the various ways her bipolar disorder has affected her family.
"I shouldn’t have treated (my mom and stepdad Brian) the way that I did sometimes,” she says. “When I wake up the next day, they tell me what happened. They explain to me, they’re like, ‘Look, we know that that’s not you talking and we’re really concerned. Just know that we love you."
The star says she's grateful that her parents never gave up on her even though she thinks "they should have" at times.
She has struggled with body image over the years
Gomez, who has opened up on several occasions about her struggles with body image, addresses the topic again in the documentary.
While trying on costumes for her 2016 Revival Tour, the star gets emotional while examining the way her body looks.
“I want have the body to wear it proudly and I want the booty that I don’t have,” she says. “My body’s very young. (I want to) look like a woman and not like a 12-year-old boy.”
Gomez, who rose to fame as a Disney star, also shares her fears that she won't be able to be taken seriously as an adult star. She grows even more emotional while recounting a conversation she had with Interscope Records CEO John Janick.
“I don’t want him to think he signed some f--ing Disney kid,” she says.
Her lupus worsened in 2020, causing pain 'everywhere'
In 2014, Gomez was diagnosed with lupus, a disease that can affect any part of the body, especially joints, skin, lungs and kidneys. In 2017, she revealed that she had undergone a kidney transplant while battling the disease.
While she went into remission for a period of time, Gomez experienced a flare-up in 2020 during the pandemic. She chronicles the pain she felt in the documentary.
“I was so young. I haven’t felt it since I was younger,” she says while crying. “Now it just hurts in the morning. When I wake up, I immediately start crying because it hurts — like everything.”
During this conversation, Gomez admits that her physical pain has been affecting her mental health.
“I’ve been having really bad dreams about my past and stuff,” she says. “I think my past and my mistakes — that’s what drives me into depression."
She's reached a point where she's 'really happy'
While reflecting on her bipolar journey at the end of the documentary, Gomez says she's learned to accept her life path.
"It’s something that I’m not ashamed of. I had to learn things that completely fell out of my mind. It was like, 'Hey, you're not a bad person. You're not a gross person. You're not crazy. You're not any of this. But you're gonna have to deal with this. I know it's a lot but this is the reality,'" she says.
Instead of dwelling on her struggles, Gomez has decided to make bipolar disorder her "friend."
"I think that I needed to go through that to be who I am and I'm gonna keep going through it but I'm really happy," she says.