Selena Gomez has long been vocal about her journey to improve her mental health. She opened up to Thrive in late fall about her recent burnout episode, saying she’d taken 90 days off to take care of herself. Now she’s sharing even more about her life and her relationship with social media in the April issue of Vogue.
In the piece, written by Rob Haskell, Gomez explains that she sees a therapist five days a week, saying, “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.” Her commitment to her mental wellness echoes what she told Thrive in the fall — that her energy comes from staying mentally, emotionally and physically healthy.
Gomez’s understanding of how social media can, at times, be an overwhelming force for negativity is equally admirable, and an important message in an age where we’re all constantly plugged in. Despite being the most followed person on Instagram, Gomez doesn’t even have the app on her phone anymore, she tells Vogue. (Her assistant is the keeper of her password.) And during her 90 day-treatment in the fall, she didn’t have her phone on her at all. “As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out,” Gomez tells Vogue. “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.”
We can all relate to feeling overwhelmed by or addicted to technology at one point or another, but few of us talk about it the way Gomez does. Even fewer of us take action to fix the problem. The same goes for mental health — mental health issues are common, but rarely discussed. If we could all be more open about our struggles and our efforts prioritize our own well-being, not only would it encourage others to come forward, but it just may lead to healthy cultural changes that benefit us all.
Read the entire Vogue article here, and see what else Gomez shared in her Thrive Questionnaire.
Originally published at journal.thriveglobal.com