Selena Gomez’s mother, Mandy Teefey, was scared for her daughter’s life the moment she learned the popstar was having a mental breakdown during her 2016 Revival tour.
“We heard about her mental breakdown through TMZ. They called me and desired to know what my daughter was doing within the hospital with a nervous breakdown,” Teefey recalls in Gomez’s forthcoming Apple TV+ documentary, “My Mind & Me,” out Friday. “She didn’t want anything to do with me and I used to be scared she was going to die.”
Gomez, 30, who has been working as a toddler star since she was 7, shares a raw and rare glimpse into her battle with mental health struggles, a lupus-induced kidney transplant and a bipolar diagnosis within the forthcoming documentary, filmed over the course of six years by “Truth or Dare” director Alek Keshishian.
“Let me make a promise. I’ll only let you know my darkest secrets,” Gomez says in a voiceover reading from her diary. She delivers inside the first half hour. An early scene from 2016 shows the singer grappling with body image issues while rehearsing for her Revival World tour, lamenting that she doesn’t wish to seem like a “12-year-old boy” moments before the camera pans on her performing her self-acceptance hit “Who Says.” Viewers watch the singer spiral deeper into self-confidence issues about her performance.
“The pressure is just overwhelming because I would like to do the perfect I can,” Gomez says, hysterically crying. Moments later, she asks: “ When am I going to only be ok by myself? When am I going to be good just by myself not needing anybody to be related to,” referring to her duet with ex Justin Bieber.
After 55 performances, Gomez canceled her Revival tour amidst issues with anxiety, panic attacks and depression. Rumors swirled that she had a drug problem.
“At one point she’s like, ‘I don’t wish to be alive at once. I don’t wish to live,’” Gomez’s former assistant, Theresa Mingus, who worked with the star between 2014 and 2018 in response to her LinkedIn profile, says within the doc.
“It was considered 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. You’re like okay, f—k this. This needs to finish, we want to go home,” she says.
Gomez’s mother was gutted when her daughter sought treatment at a mental sanatorium.
“You hang on as tight as you’ll be able to and take a look at to assist them with their treatment and that’s the toughest thing to do. To then just go to bed and hope that they get up the following day,” she says.
In one other voice-over diary entry, Gomez sadly confesses: “My thoughts take over my mind often. It hurts once I take into consideration my past. I would like to know methods to breathe again. Do I like my very own self?”
Gomez’s health struggles go way back to 2014, when she initially sought treatment at a rehab facility in Arizona for her lupus diagnosis. In 2016, she went to rehab again for anxiety and depression in Tennessee amid her Revival World Tour, prompting her to cancel the remaining tour dates. A yr later, she had a kidney transplant from her best friend, Gomez revealed. Still grappling together with her mental health following her transplant, Gomez sought therapy again in 2018 and later that yr, she was hospitalized following a low white blood count.
After a hiatus from performing, the documentary picks up with Gomez in 2019 when she reveals she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t wish to go to a mental health hospital,” she says. “I didn’t wish to. But I didn’t wish to be trapped in myself, in my mind anymore. I assumed my life was over. I used to be like, ‘That is how I’m going to be without end.”