"I'm telling you this because for me it was too late." So said Lady Gaga at a fundraiser Thursday about her ongoing mental-health battles, People reports. While accepting an award at the SAG-AFTRA Patron of the Artists Award event in Beverly Hills, Calif., the 32-year-old performer said her afflictions increased along with her stardom and led to actual physical pain. "...After working as hard as I possibly could to achieve my dreams, slowly but surely the word yes—'Yes, sure'—became too automatic and my inner voice shut down, which I have learned now is very unhealthy," she said. "I was not empowered to say no." Over time she would "black out for seconds or minutes" and saw "flashes of things I was tormented by" that she thought her brain had filed away.
Her symptoms included dissociation and PTSD, which "morphed into chronic pain, fibromyalgia, panic attacks, acute trauma responses, and debilitating mental spirals that have included the suicidal ideation and masochistic behavior," says the A Star Is Born actress. "Okay. I'm done with my list, but that list changed my life." She has talked about her mental health challenges before—revealing in 2014 that she had been raped and in 2016 her battle with PTSD—but this is her first detailed revelation of "debilitating mental spirals." She also called mental health a "crisis of epic proportions" that's directly linked to American violence, per Variety. "Just last night there was a shooting in Thousand Oaks by a veteran who was believed to have suffered from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder," she said. (Lady Gaga has been called "a complete revelation" as an actress.)
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