Selena Gomez And Camila Cabello Just Got So Real About Mental Health
Their honesty is inspiring, tbh.
To kick off Mental Health Awareness Month on May 1, Selena Gomez interviewed Camila Cabello about her personal mental health journey for Gomez’s Wondermind newsletter. The “Bam Bam” singer got real with Gomez about her experience with anxiety and OCD, as well as how she learned to open up on her third studio album, Familia.
In a cover story for Wondermind’s May issue, Cabello described her periods of anxiety as feeling “dizzying and overwhelming.”
“[It’s] like you’re on this ride thinking, ‘Just help me get off.’ In my mind, it's a loop, like obsessive compulsive stuff,” she said. “In my body, it’s a tightness, almost like I can’t move, like my hands are tied and everything is just tied up.”
Cabello also said she’s been taking medication to help cope with her anxiety. When Gomez remarked that finding the right medication is so important, Cabello agreed and said, “100%, it can save your life!”
Going to therapy is also a cornerstone of Cabello’s mental health journey. However, she said finding the courage to begin therapy wasn’t easy after experiencing stigma surrounding the topic. “I feel like it exists even more in the older generations,” she said. “People like my parents’ age have such shame about needing therapy or feeling anxiety.”
Cabello also opened up to Gomez about how her mental health influences her music. She said she experienced one of her “worst” mental health moments while recording her new album, Familia. Cabello said she initially didn’t feel ready to hit the studio and would constantly think that every day was “like a battle.” To help her get through those difficult times, Cabello invited people over to the studio who she felt “emotionally safe” with. In the end, she realized opening up about her personal struggles on her album was actually “the most healing thing.”
She especially got vulnerable in her Familia track “Psychofreak,” featuring WILLOW. “[The song] was really about the anxiety I felt around intimacy and relationships where I’m like, ‘I feel like you’re lying when you say you love me. I feel crazy,’” she said, noting she previously only spoke of these worries to her mother and therapist.
Gomez launched Wondermind in April with her mother Mandy Teefey, as well as media entrepreneur Daniella Pierson, as a way to destigmatize mental health. They couldn’t have picked a better cover star for May, considering how Cabello has been so open about her personal mental health journey through the years.
