Selena Gomez Reflects on Mental Health Struggles: “I Didn’t Want to Be Trapped in My Mind Anymore”

The pop star’s documentary premieres on Apple TV+ on Nov. 4.

Selena Gomez on the red carpet.Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

Selena Gomez has always been open about her ongoing battle with Lupus, her 2017 kidney transplant and her bipolar disorder diagnosis, but in her latest documentary she shows herself to be more vulnerable than ever. The Apple TV+ film, My Mind & Me, premieres on Nov. 4 and promises to “only tell you (her) darkest secrets.”

The documentary details her rise to stardom and the fall, a psychotic break in 2016 after which Gomez was hospitalized. She largely disappeared from the industry for three years and, in parallel, there is no footage from that time period. The cameras turn on again in 2019 with the making of “Rare” and her return to the public eye.

“I am grateful to be alive,” she said in the trailer. “How do I learn how to breathe my own breath again?”

“Tours are a really lonely place for me,“ Gomez said to Vogue in 2017. “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.” She completed 55 shows on her “Revival” tour in 2016 before canceling it and being admitted to the hospital in Tennessee for anxiety, depression and panic attack treatment. 

“Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable,” she added. “I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it—which, I think, was a complete distortion.”

Gomez’s friend Raquelle Stevens recalls that time in the 30-year-old’s life. “If anyone saw what I saw and the state she was in at the mental hospital, they wouldn’t have recognized her at all,” says Stevens.

The Rare Beauty founder explains that she didn’t want to go to a mental hospital in 2019 for bipolar disorder. “But I didn’t want to be trapped in myself, in my mind anymore. I thought my life was over,” Gomez shares. “I thought, this is how I’m going to be forever.” She revealed her diagnosis to the world in 2020 and now, two years later, she has found “strength” in being able to talk about it. 

“I’m happier and I’m in control of my emotions and thoughts more than I have ever been,” she adds. “Everything that I have gone through, It’s gonna be there. I’m just making it my friend now”

Her passion lies in helping people and in those moments when she feels like she isn’t good enough, she reminds herself of her platform and power to have a positive impact.

“My whole life since I was a kid I’ve been working,” she said between tears in the trailer. “I don’t want to be like super famous but I do know that if I’m here I have to use that for good.”

On Nov. 3, the Only Murders in the Building star released a new song, “My Mind & Me,” in conjunction with the film, and the lyrics represent what the documentary is all about.

My mind and me, we don’t get along sometimes / and it gets hard to breathe but I wouldn’t change my life.