Camila Cabello made headlines last fall after leaving a Fifth Harmony concert mid-set due to “too much anxiety.”
The 20-year-old singer had been vocal about her struggles with anxiety well before the incident, which came just months ahead of her decision to leave the girl group. The now solo artist recently opened up about coping with her OCD for Latina magazine’s April issue.
“Late 2015 and the beginning of 2016. I had terrible OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder], and it was just totally out of control,” Cabello told the magazine. “I would wake up with a super-accelerated heartbeat and really negative, intrusive, compulsive thoughts. I was so inside my head, and I didn’t know what was happening.”
Cabello says the experience dealing with her OCD has taught her about the importance of self-care and giving mental illness more visibility.
“I totally understand now, being in it, why there shouldn’t be such a stigma on mental illness, because it’s a pretty common thing for people,” the singer said. “But you can get help. If you’re dedicated to making it better, you can — because I’m in a much better place now. I started reading books about it and it really helped a lot when I understood [the illness], and that [the thoughts I was having] weren’t real. Sometimes you have to remind yourself to slow down and take care of yourself.”
The Cuban-born star described her bouts of anxiety to Billboard in May 2016.
“I was having terrible anxiety, nonstop,” she said. “My heart would beat really fast the whole day. Two hours after I woke up, I’d need a nap because my body was so hyperactive. It was so eff ― sorry, but it was so f**ked up. I was scared of what would happen to me, of the things my brain might tell me. I realized the stuff I thought was important isn’t worth my health.”
In the feature for Latina magazine, the singer credited her mother for helping her through it all. She also touched on why she decided to leave Fifth Harmony.
Read the full Latina magazine cover story on Cabello here.
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