Selena Gomez pulls back the curtain on her mental health struggles with brutal honesty that hits close to home. The star shared how early misdiagnoses complicated her path to understanding her bipolar disorder.
Her words remind us all of how chaotic and personal the journey to getting the right help can feel.Selena Gomez appeared on the March 3, 2026 episode of the Friends Keep Secrets podcast alongside her husband, Benny Blanco. The 33-year-old singer and actress thought she was sensing something long before her official diagnosis. “I knew something was wrong, but I think I was misdiagnosed,” Gomez said on the podcast. “People would just assume, ‘I’m going to try multiple therapists.’
That’s why it’s difficult. It’s actually really hard when we talk about these things.
And for me to go see a therapist, it’s all very complicated. She described moving between “several different people” for diagnosis and treatment, emphasizing the basic idea. “You can’t give up,” Gomez emphasized.
Selena Gomez drops a bombshell about bipolar ‘highs’ on Benny Blanco’s podcast
Four rehabs and hard-earned clarity
Selena Gomez revealed that she entered four different rehab centers while searching for answers. Penny Blanco, 37, who married Gomez in September 2025, explained the ongoing challenges she faces.
“She’ll start to realize she has this illness after it happens, and sometimes she doesn’t even remember when it happens,” Blanco said of her manic episodes. “It’s sensitive because you’re not technically supposed to talk to this person about this topic while they’re delving into it.
It’s as if even a date who’s hyper-conscious will say, “I think I’m feeling a little obsessive.” This awareness has grown over time, allowing Gomez to live more freely now.Her openness builds on previous engagements, such as her 2022 documentary My Mind & Me. There, Selena Gomez detailed a 2018 psychotic episode that led to her being diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a hospital stay. She spoke to Rolling Stone about the darkness of her early twenties. “I think when I started in my early 20s, darkness started to creep into my life, when I started to feel like I wasn’t in control of what I was feeling, whether it was really great or really bad,” she told the magazine.
Accept and understand shyness
Selena Gomez now sees treatment and diagnosis as freeing from misconceptions. “This is the problem of misunderstanding,” she said on the podcast. “The whole hypocrisy of people shaming therapy or people not understanding it is that it’s not for you. That’s totally fine, but for me, it finally allowed me to say, ‘Oh, that’s why I handled things the way I did.’ “That’s why everyone else was able to get over things so quickly, and I wasn’t.”
“It mirrored previous reactions that had been driven by fear, love or emotion. It was all inconsistent, it was crazy,” Gomez added.With Only Murders in the Building and her Rare Impact Fund, Selena Gomez turns pain into purpose. Benny Blanco’s support highlights partnership in mental health.
