Demi Lovato: Growing Up Under Spotlight Gave Me PTSD

The ‘Cool for the Summer’ hitmaker found fame as a child star and her therapist told her it’s one of the reasons she developed post-traumatic stress disorder.

AceShowbiz –
Finding fame caused Demi Lovato to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

The “Confident” hitmaker didn’t believe it at first when she was diagnosed with the disorder because of her celebrity status, but she now realises it all resulted from the “hyper-vigilancy” she experienced alongside her success.

She said, “At first I was, like, ‘Woah, excuse me? How is that so?’ And the therapist explained to me the hyper-vigilancy that you maintain when you’re in public. I can hear the snap of a phone from 20 feet away; I can feel it when a camera is pointed at me, even if it’s 100 feet away. It’s that hyper-vigilancy.”

And Demi has urged others who comment on her life to think twice before they make any comments about her, because the experience of growing up in the spotlight can be suffocating.

Speaking to The Sunday Times magazine, she added, “It’s very easy to have an opinion about the celebrity on the cover of a trashy magazine when you’re buying your groceries. The temptation to say, ‘Well, they should have done this, they should have done that’, can be irresistible.”

“But no one will ever know until they walk a mile in someone’s shoes. When I walked a mile in those other child stars’ shoes, I was, like, ‘I get it.’ ”

During the interview, she also opened up that the person who sexually assaulted her when she was a teen appeared in a movie with her although she had confided in “somebody of power.”

She said, “That was completely swept under the rug. Nothing was done about it. That person was still in that movie.”