Selena Gomez Always Keeps It Real: Relive Her Most Candid Revelations

After receiving the 2019 McLean Award at the hospital’s annual dinner, Selena shared her mental health struggle. “Last year, I was suffering mentally and emotionally and I wasn’t able to stay all kept up and together,” she said. “I wasn’t able to keep a smile or to keep things looking normal. It felt like all of my pain and my anxiety washed over me all at once and it was one of the scariest moments of my life.”

“I don’t want people to think it’s a sad thing that I went through this with Francia [Raisa], or with anything in my life, because at the end of the day, I think all the stuff I went through made me and defined everything that I am right now,” she shared in 2017. “I think it’s a really beautiful thing, and I have to remind myself of that. It’s not a negative experience.”

“I don’t really think that people know my heart,” she said on Coach’s Dream It Real podcast. “I think that sometimes people may think that I politically say the right thing or I’m safe or I’ve been trained to speak this way. I don’t know how to be trained, like how on earth would somebody be training me to speak things?”

After earning the title of the most followed person on Instagram (Ariana Grande dethroned her earlier this year), the actress opened up about it. ”I think it’s just become really unhealthy,” she said in June. “I think, personally, for young people, including myself, to spend all of their time fixating on all these comments and letting this stuff in. It was affecting me. It would make me depressed. It would make me feel not good about myself and look at my body differently and all kinds of stuff.”

“She lived with me during this interesting time when my kidneys were just done. That was it,” the actress said, tearfully. “I didn’t want to ask a single person in my life. The thought of asking somebody to do that was really difficult for me.” Gomez added, “Let alone somebody wanting to volunteer, it is incredibly difficult to find a match.”

The 27-year-old star penned a powerful essay in Time about the immigration crisis and shared her family history. ” In 1992, I was born a U.S. citizen thanks to their bravery and sacrifice,” she wrote. “Over the past four decades, members of my family have worked hard to gain United States citizenship. Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance.”

“Well, I know that I’m not the boss. I think for me, when we first started working on this, I told my mom that it was definitely harder [being a producer] because I was more defensive. I was like, ‘Why is this person saying this? How come they just got on this project now?’ I was very loyal to the project for seven years, and I think, if anything I was like [Laughs.] a little bully, and I was like, ‘Why do we have to listen to anybody else?'” she told reporters at the 13 Reasons Why premiere.

In 2018, she was all about keeping things low-key. “I think everything in my life is being majorly downsized, in a very good way,” she told Elle last year. “I’m going back to simplicity. That’s always who I’ve been. It’s not me saying, ‘I feel the best I’ve ever felt.’ It’s me saying, ‘I’m exactly where I am. And I’m so happy I’m in this place.'”

“I’d like to see the day when all young women can realize their dreams of life without a Lupus,” she said in 2017. “This is why I am committed to the Lupus Research Alliance. So that none of us are alone, especially the young women that I have grown up with and heard many, many stories.”

“Last year, I took a lot of time off,” Gomez shared on Coach’s Dream It Real podcast. “I think that I needed a moment to myself because I do feel like I was growing and changing.”

Speaking on The Tonight Show, she opened up about releasing new music. “I have to do, like, a few finishing things with it, but I’m just relieved,” she shared in June. “It took me four years now to even feel at a good place with this album, and it’s just because I had such huge moments that happened in my life personally that [it was like] how was I going to capture that and how was I actually going to feel good about what I was saying? So, I kept going and I’m relieved now.”

“Right now, I feel very sure of where I am. I don’t feel erratic or emotionally unstable,” she told Elle. “Or like I can’t handle my emotions, like I used to. It’s kind of understanding myself a little more. By all means I don’t have myself figured out. But it feels good.”