Selena Gomez‘s new chilling documentary My Mind and Me offers the most uncensored look at the pop star and actress yet. So much so, that weeks before the premiere, Gomez was still deliberating whether to release it.
“Because I have the platform I have, it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose. I don’t want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it,” Gomez told Rolling Stone on Thursday.
Gomez first openly mentioned her bipolar disorder diagnosis on an Instagram live with Miley Cyrus in 2020, but the scope of how the illness has impacted her life was largely unknown until now. Once the most followed person on Instagram, Gomez has become increasingly private over the past few years.
Don’t expect My Mind and Me to offer any new scoops on relationships or the things that have mostly kept Selena Gomez’s name in tabloids throughout her life. Instead, the documentary focuses primarily on the star’s relationship with her mental health, as well as her growing discontent with what her job entails.
It’s an incredibly revealing look at the reality of struggling with mental illness and your purpose in life while in the public eye. Here are six things My Mind and Me taught us about Selena Gomez.
She was unhappy with the Revival Tour
At the very start of My Mind and Me, which was initially meant to be a project to cover the Revival Tour, we see Gomez really struggle with the direction the rehearsals for the tour were taking. She didn’t like the way she looked in her outfits, or the general aspect of the show. Of course, we later learn this was entirely based on personal insecurities, seeing as everyone else around her couldn’t see the faults she was pointing out.
“It just sucks, all of it. It looks so bad. I’m just like, I have no idea what the f-ck I’m doing. So I get the voice that comes in my head that says, ‘Oh, you missed this. That sucks, that sucks,’ and then you get a glimpse of yourself on the screen and, wow, that looks pretty f-cking sh-tty. And then I’m sitting there and I’m tripping over the clothes. It sucks the life out of me, and I don’t want to perform.”
Selena still went on to perform 55 shows of the tour, before canceling the remaining dates in August of 2016.
Her Disney past haunts her
Selena Gomez started working as an actress when she was seven. Her big break on Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place catapulted her to worldwide fame and imprinted a public image on her from she has since struggled to break free.
In the documentary, we see Selena fearful that her record label’s CEO will regret signing a “f-cking Disney kid” during rehearsals for her 2016 Revival Tour. In the same scene, while sobbing, she vents about a collaboration with Justin Bieber that her label has been talking to her about, expressing anger and anguish about never being good enough by herself.
Throughout My Mind and Me, Gomez also mentions having bad dreams about her past and the mistakes she’s made. At one point, during a particularly rough promo stint, the singer says she feels like she’s back at Disney. “I’ve spent years, years of my life trying to not be that. I f-cking look like a witch with the outfit doing it all, like the wand again,” she angrily confessed.
She canceled the Revival Tour after a psychotic break in 2016
My Mind and Me is the first time Gomez and her family have gone into detail about the psychosis episode that forced her to cancel her tour in 2016. The singer checked into a mental health facility at the time, which her mother only heard about afterwards through TMZ. Theresa Mingus, Gomez’s assistant between 2014 and 2018, said that was the worst shape she had ever seen the star in.
“It was 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-ck this. This needs to end, we need to go home,’” Mingus shared. Gomez’s close friend, Raquelle Stevens also said that she had been hearing voices that were getting louder and louder.
Gomez was then diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which she has been learning to live with since.
Her relationship with her parents suffered
Although not much is seen of the period between 2016 and 2019, one of the most heartfelt moments in the documentary is when Gomez talks about her relationship with her mother, Mandy Teefey.
Gomez’s mental health issues right before her diagnosis drove her to push her mother and step-father, Brian, away. They weren’t on speaking terms when her psychosis took place. Teefey explains in the documentary that her daughter “didn’t want anything to do” with her and her husband, and recalls worrying that she would die.
The “Rare” singer talks about how her family never gave up on her, regardless of her actions, and how grateful she for it. “I shouldn’t have spoken to them the way that I did,” Gomez confessed. “I say ‘I’m so sorry,’ because I remember certain things that I did, and I was really so mean,” she added in tears.
As for her dad, he has always been supportive, but has never wanted to be involved in her public life.
Her lupus came back
During the pandemic, Gomez started experiencing intense pain from her lupus disease. She confessed to crying as soon as she woke up due to muscle pain, and on a call with her doctor, he informed her she would have to undergo another Rituxan treatment that would ease her symptoms for at least a year.
Scenes of Gomez at the hospital getting the IV drip ensue. “My nana didn’t want to come because she’s just seen me being put through all of this,” she says.
She wants to help create a mental health curriculum in schools
After battling with the dissonance between her profession’s frivolous nature and the importance of her platform and fame, Gomez decided to dedicate herself to creating change in the world. She first started working with the WE Charity, by building schools in Kenya, which she is seen visiting in the documentary. In 2020, the organization was involved in a political scandal that led to its demise.
Since then, Gomez has been focused on implementing a mental health curriculum in American schools through the Rare Impact Fund, which she created, and by working with president Biden and surgeon general Vivek Murthy.
Read We Got This Covered’s review of Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me here. The documentary, directed by Madonna: Truth or Dare‘s Alek Keshishian, is available to stream now on Apple TV Plus.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. A list of international crisis resources can be found here.
