Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez Says She Spent Years Contemplating Suicide

In a candid new interview, Selena Gomez shared insight into her depression and the moments she thought about harming herself: "I thought the world would be better if I wasn’t there."

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Selena Gomez is turning her pain into purpose. 

As the singer prepares to give fans an honest look at her mental health journey in Apple TV+ documentary 'Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me', the 30-year-old is sharing new details about how dark her life became in her 20s.   

"It would start with depression, then it would go into isolation," Selena told "Rolling Stone." "Then it just was me not being able to move from my bed. I didn't want anyone to talk to me." 

Her friends would bring food, but none of them knew what was truly going on. "Sometimes it was weeks I'd be in bed," Selena explained, "to where even walking downstairs would get me out of breath."

And while the "Only Murders in the Building" actress did not attempt suicide, she said she spent years contemplating it. As she shared, "I thought the world would be better if I wasn't there." 

PHOTOS: Selena Gomez's Openhearted Quotes About Mental Health

In her new interview, Selena also shared her struggles to shed her Disney image and live up to the reality she envisioned for herself. When she turned 25, the "My Mind and Me" singer was upset to be nowhere close to being married.

"It was so stupid, but I really thought my world was over," she said. "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. I felt the presence of everyone around me living full lives. I had this position, and 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."

Today, Selena is proud of the work she has done to make her mental health a priority. After entering four different treatment facilities and receiving a bipolar diagnosis, she is ready to share her story in hopes of helping others.

"I know it has a big message, but am I the right person to bring it to light?" Selena asked herself. "I don't know. I wanted someone to say, ‘Selena, this is too intense.' But everyone was like, ‘I'm really moved.'"

Keep scrolling to see more revelations from Selena's documentary streaming on Apple TV+ starting Nov. 4.

The Revival Tour Drained Her

'Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me' begins back in 2016, with a frustrated Selena Gomez prepping the stage show for her tour in support of her second studio album. 

"It just sucks, all of it," Selena cried after one rehearsal. "It looks so bad. I have no idea what the f--k I'm doing." She went on to acknowledge that she had a voice in her heard telling her, "'You missed this, that sucked, that sucked,' and 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." 

Selena is then seen apologizing to  John Janick, the Chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, telling him, "I don't want you to regret signing me." Concerned that the show felt "too young," the former Disney Channel star said, "I want nothing more than to not be my past and it comes back."

After 55 performances, including one that saw her admit, "sometimes I wake up and I feel like I don't have it in me," the Revival tour was canceled.

"Tours are a really lonely place for me," Gomez told "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. 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."

Her Friends Feared For Her Life

Following the cancellation of the world tour, Selena entered a Tennessee psychiatric facility for treatment for anxiety, panic attacks and depression stemming from her 2014 lupus diagnosis. One of the more alarming symptoms, her assistant reveals in the documentary, was suicidal ideations.

"At one point she's like, 'I don't want to be alive right now, I don't want to live,'" Selena's former assistant Theresa Marie Mingus recalled. "And I'm like, 'Wait, what?' It's one of those moments where you look in her eyes and there's nothing there. It was just pitch-black and it's so scary."

Added Selena's close friend Raquelle Stevens, "I just remember it being chaotic and she was hearing all of these voices. [They] just kept getting louder and louder [and] that triggered some kind of psychotic break. If anyone saw what I saw and the state she was in at the mental hospital, they wouldn't have recognized her at all."

Her Bipolar Disorder

Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage via Getty Images
teve Martin, Selena Gomez, and Martin Short speak onstage during the 74th Primetime Emmys at Microsoft Theater on September 12, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

The "Only Murders in the Building" actress opened up about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder while she was in treatment.

"I'll be honest, I didn't want to go to a mental hospital," she admitted, "but I didn't want to be trapped in myself, in my mind anymore. I thought my life was over. I thought this is how I'm going to be forever."

Reflecting on her diagnosis in footage from 2019, Selena said, "I'm in a better place, but I don't know. I guess sometimes I can't explain it for sure. I needed to keep learning about it, I needed to take it day by day."

She publicly revealed her bipolar diagnosis in 2020 during an appearance on Miley Cyrus' "Bright Minded" Instagram Live series.

Her Mom Didn’t Know She Sought Treatment

Selena's mother Mandy Teefey reveals that she learned her daughter had suffered a mental breakdown in 2016 through TMZ .

"They called me and wanted to know what my daughter was doing in the hospital," an emotional Mandy explained. "She didn't want anything to do with me and I was scared she was going to die."

Their relationship strained at the moment, she continued, "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 just go to bed and hope that they wake up the next day. It's a miracle she got out but there's always that fear that it's going to happen again."

Lashing Out at Family and Friends

Prior to receiving her bipolar diagnosis, Selena recalled being "so mean" to the people close to her, especially her mother and stepdad, Brian Teefey. 

"I shouldn't have spoke to them the way that I did and I shouldn't have treated them the way that I did," she explained. "Sometimes I know I wasn't me. When I wake up the next day and they tell me what happened, but they explained to me, like, 'Look, we know that that's not you talking and we're really concerned. Just know that we love you. We don't see anything different from what was last night to now.'"

Still, Selena said she can "remember certain things that I did...and even to this day, I keep saying thank you and I'm sorry."

Her Ongoing Battle With Lupus

After initially being diagnosed with the autoimmune disease in 2014, Selena struggled with a lupus flare in 2020 just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning.

"I haven't felt it since I was younger," a crying Selena told a friend of the joint pain she is feeling. "In the morning when I wake up, I immediately starty crying because it just hurts, like, everything."

Selena shares that she has been having "bad dreams" about her past and mistakes she feels she's made. "It's what drives me into depression," she explained. "I just wanted to quit sometimes so I could just be happy and be normal like everybody else."

After undergoing tests, Selena's doctor informed her that she has "lupus myositis rheumatoid overlap," which causes inflammation in the joints and muscles. She then begins undergoing extensive infusion treatments that, Selena explained, are "really hard on your system."

How She Put Justin Bieber Behind Her

Photo by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images
Selena Gomez (L) and Justin Bieber attend a basketball game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center on April 17, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Photo by Noel Vasquez via Getty Images.

After delivering an emotional speech about her struggles with anxiety and depression while accepting the 2019 McLean Award at the hospital's Annual Dinner, Selena reveals that "being honest that night helped." And it ultimately led her to write "Lose You to Love Me," which she completed in just 45 minutes alongside songwriters Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. 

"It's about more than just a lost love," Selena explains of the hit song. "It's me learning to choose myself, to choose life. But also hoping that people can find grace and peace in that too. The song is about knowing that you completely lost every part of who you are, just to rediscover yourself again."

After years of being asked about her relationship with Justin Bieber because "everything was so public," Selena, who never acknowledges the "Sorry" singer by name, admits, "I felt haunted by a past relationship that no one wanted to let go of. But then I just moved past it. I wasn't afraid anymore."

And she was finally ready to move on. 

"I feel like I had to go through the worst possible heartbreak ever and then just forgetting everything at the drop of a hand, it was really confusing," Selena says. "But I just think that needed to happen and ultimately, it was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Her Heart Is In Africa

"After I got out of the last treatment center, I knew what made me happy," Selena explains, "and it was connection." 

But, per her doctor's orders, Selena's planned philanthropic visit to Kenya to see the schools she helped raise money to build was delayed several years due to her 2017 kidney transplant. Once she's finally able to make the trip in 2019, she vowed to visit quarterly

"The truth is I've never felt good enough," Selena admitted. "Even when I'm on stage in front of a crowd, I'll always find the one person who doesn't like me and I believe them, I want to believe in myself. The people I've met here in Kenya are so giving, I just want to feel like I deserve to be here with them."

During her time in Maasai Mara, Selena bonds with the students, talking about love, ambition and, in a particularly emotional conversation with one woman, suicidal ideation.

After her time in Kenya, Selena travels directly to London and Paris to promote her music, but she struggles to adjust to her life as a celebrity. "It just seems like such a waste of time," she said. "What am I doing right now?"

Later acknowledging that "part of my heart is still in Kenya," Selena admitted, "I felt guilty being there sometimes. I hate that, I feel like I went and filmed and I experienced, but it's just so hard because I feel so selfish. Do I feel great? Yes, and do I feel like I left an impact? Yes, but do I feel like I've done enough? No."

"Talking to someone about mental health in Kenya, that's beautiful," she continued. "I don't know if I felt like, 'Oh, I did it and I'm such a great person.' No, it's just the beginning for me."

Her True Passion Revealed

During her trip to Kenya, Selena shares her ambition to find a way to pass a bill that would add a mental health curriculum into U.S. schools. 

"My ultimate dream is that I am able to save people's lives through something, whether it's a song, music or it's just me speaking about the troubles, trials and tribulations I have been through," she later shared. "I could be a voice for others who maybe don't know what's going on or what they are feeling."

In 2020, Selena created the Rare Impact Fund to raise $100 million to provide free mental health resources for young people. And in May 2022, Selena met with President Joe Biden to discuss the creation of a mental health syllabus in the nation's education system after hosting the first-ever Youth Action Forum on Mental Health in coordination with the White House.

"When you're struggling with your mental health, the essential part is knowing what to do and recognizing that," Selena explained. "It's something that I'm not ashamed of."

Her Disney Channel Crushes Revealed

In one of the documentary's lighter moments, Selena visits her childhood home in Grand Prairie, Texas, and checks to see if the evidence of her teenage crush is still on her bedroom wall.

"I had a crush on Cole and Dylan Sprouse, so I'd come in my closet and I would write things down," Selena admitted of her costars from 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody'. Though she and Dylan shared their first-ever onscreen kiss in 2006, it's Cole's name she finds encircled with a heart. Joked Selena, "I'm sorry, Cole, if you ever see this!"

If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

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