Selena Gomez is reflecting on her 2022 Apple TV+ documentary My Mind & Me, which focused on her mental health battles.
During the film, Gomez, 31, expressed suicidal thoughts that caused her to cancel a tour and led to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
“It makes me sick to hear the things that I was saying about myself in the beginning. It bums me out,” the Only Murders in the Building star said during a panel called “Mindfulness Over Perfection: Getting Real on Mental Health” at SXSW in Austin, Texas on Sunday, March 10.
“But I think everybody can relate to that feeling,” she continued. “It’s important to speak to yourself with kindness, but I don’t think I really understood that [at the start of the film] … It’s weird being able to see myself so long ago saying those things that I would never say to myself now.”
My Mind & Me was shot over six years and captured Gomez’s struggle with body image issues, living with lupus, and facing the burnout she was experiencing as a celebrity with the most Instagram followers in the world.
She shared that she felt “terrified” to release the documentary.
“I went back and forth of whether I’d do it or not,” she told the audience at the Austin Convention Center. “I think the moment I did that, I felt this insane amount of release because there wasn’t any hiding anymore. There wasn’t just this image that people could see and think, ‘Oh, it looks nice.’ It’s probably one of the hardest moments of my life.”
Gomez appeared on the panel with her mother, Mandy Teefey, who is her partner in the Wondermind mental health advocacy website they launched in November 2021.
She said she was inspired to share her journey in the documentary after watching the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted with her mom. The psychological drama starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie follows a young woman who spends 18 months institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt.
The film prompted a conversation between the mother and daughter about how strange the entertainment industry is and how Gomez felt like she didn’t “fit in.”
During the panel, the singer/actress said that “you can’t force someone” to honestly examine their mental health problems before they’re ready.
“There were a lot of people that cared about me more than I cared about myself that really wanted me to do things I wasn’t ready for. I had hit my rock bottom, and I had to do it in my time,” Gomez said.
“It took a couple of tries, but I like to think and hope I’m in a much better place now,” she added.
Gomez is preparing to release her first new album in four years featuring music “from a place of confidence” that’s showcasing the “joy and curiosity,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview published on March 4.
She is also busy filming the fourth season of Only Murders in the Building alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short, as well as joining a reboot of Wizards of Waverly Place and playing singer Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic.
As for her personal life, Gomez went public with boyfriend Benny Blanco in December 2023. In January, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that she’s excited about their relationship.
“Selena has made it clear that she wants Benny by her side from now on, and she’s proudly introducing him to everyone in her life,” the insider said. “They kept things low-key [at first], but Benny has passed every test with flying colors. The new year seemed like a perfect time to essentially shout [their love] from the rooftops, so that’s what Selena is doing.”
