Camila Cabello gets candid about her mental health struggles: ‘I was embarrassed and ashamed’

Camila Cabello is getting candid about her struggles with mental health.

In an essay published in WSJ magazine Thursday, the singer, 23, discussed not wanting to come forward about her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, OCD is when someone “has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and/or behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.”

“I didn’t want to tell you what was going on for the same reason a lot of us don’t want to talk about what it feels like to be at war in our minds and in our bodies. I was embarrassed and ashamed,” Cabello wrote. “That same little voice also told me maybe I was being ungrateful for all the good in my life – and that hiding the open wound I’d been avoiding the last few years was the easiest and fastest solution.” 

But, she said that was “not the truth.”

“There was something hurting inside me, and I didn’t have the skill to heal it or handle it. In order to heal it, I had to talk about it,” she said. “Denying my suffering and berating myself didn’t help things. I needed to say those three revolutionary words: ‘I need help.'”