Actress/singer Selena Gomez opens up about her issues. Photo / Getty
Selena Gomez's "addiction" to Instagram made her feel awful.
The Heart Wants What It Wants hitmaker admits it was tough becoming the most followed person on the photo-sharing site and now she tries to avoid the app as much as possible because it made her feel "like s**t" in the past.
She said: "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, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn't want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn't want to care about. I always end up feeling like s**t when I look at Instagram. Which is why I'm kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit."
And the 24-year-old singer and actress admits she went through a stage where she felt so "anxious and depressed" because she was convinced she wasn't good enough.
She added: "Tours are a really lonely place for me. My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting on stage, 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. I couldn't say, 'Everybody, let's pinky-promise that you're beautiful!'
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"It doesn't work that way, and I know it because I'm dealing with the same s**t they're dealing with. 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.'"
However, Selena has seen a light at the end of the tunnel after undergoing Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, something which she swears by now and credits the practice for "changing her life".
She told the new issue of Vogue magazine: "Dialectical Behaviour Therapy has completely changed my life. 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 ..."
"Look, I love what I do, and I'm aware of how lucky I am, but -how can I say this without sounding weird? I just really can't wait for people to forget about me."
