Lady Gaga Opens Up About Her Battle With Psychosis: ‘I Felt Ashamed’
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It wasn’t the first time Lady Gaga had faced serious health struggles. The Telephone singer has previously spoken about living with fibromyalgia and PTSD.
Gaga admitted that talking about her mental health became increasingly difficult. (Photo Credits: Instagram)
With the buzz surrounding her latest album, Mayhem, Lady Gaga has been looking back— not just at her musical journey but at some of her most challenging personal battles. In a candid conversation recently, the Abracadabra singer opened up about a deeply painful chapter from five years ago: her experience with psychosis and the support of her fiance, Michael Polansky, during that time. Taking a moment to reflect, Gaga shared that before she could even think about putting out new music, she had to step back and focus on healing. “I had psychosis. I was not deeply in touch with reality for a while,” she admitted.
Psychosis, as defined by the National Institute of Mental Health, distorts a person’s perception of reality, making it difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is not. For Gaga, this experience was life-altering.
“It took me out of life in a big way, and after a lot of years of hard work I got myself back,” she said during The New York Times podcast, published on March 8.
It wasn’t the first time she had faced serious health struggles. The Telephone singer has previously spoken about living with fibromyalgia and PTSD, but this particular episode was something else entirely. Fortunately, she had someone by her side who saw her through it.
The moment she met Michael Polansky, things were already improving, but his presence in her life became something truly transformative. “It was actually really special when I met my partner because when I met Michael, I was in a much better place, but I remember him saying to me, pretty early on, ‘I know you could be a lot happier than you are,’” she recalled. The words hit her harder than she expected. “It was really hard for me to hear him say that because I didn’t want him to think that of me. I wanted him to think I was like this happy, totally together person,” she added.
Gaga has never shied away from discussing mental health, but she admitted that, over time, talking about it became increasingly difficult. “I hate feeling defined by it. It felt like something I felt ashamed of. But I don’t think that we should feel ashamed if we go through times like that. I mostly just wish to say, it can get better. It did for me, and I’m grateful for that,” Gaga explained.
Beyond her personal struggles, she also opened up about her relationship with Polansky. “From the moment that I met Michael, he had the most warm and kind disposition of maybe anyone that I had met in my whole life,” Gaga told The New York Times.