Lady Gaga brings Oprah Winfrey to tears sharing heinous story of how she was ‘repeatedly raped’ as a teenager
Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey speak during the WW (Weight Watchers Reimagined) Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour. (Jason Koerner/Getty Images for Oprah)
In front of a packed 15,000 crowd, pop queen Lady Gaga opened up to Oprah Winfrey about the repeated sexual abuse she endured as a teen, prompting the media mogul to break down in tears.
Gaga candidly chatted about the fragility of her mental health, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from being “raped repeatedly” when she was just 19.
The ‘Shallow’ singer was the first star to grace Winfrey’s national tour, 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus last Saturday at Fort Lauderdale, US, reported Yahoo! Entertainment.
Lady Gaga suffered through ‘insurmountable pain’ after being ‘raped repeatedly’.
Stepping onto the stage revealing her electric pink hair, Gaga explained how she experienced as “psychotic break” as the divide between her pop star image and her rugged reality seemed to yawn apart.
Ridden with trauma to the extent that she couldn’t get out of bed, the abuse haunted her. Pushing through her pain as she rocketed to fame in her early 20s, her roaring success came in parallel to the “intense pain” that mimicked “the illness” of her assault.
With no support system at the time, she felt directionless: “I just didn’t stop moving and working and dancing through insurmountable pain.
“It was so frustrating,” she said, “I was improperly medicated and I wasn’t in therapy.
She revealed to Oprah in the vulnerable interview that after five years she was “afraid I was gonna die,” she said, her voice cracking, “and I’d rather face that, those five years, because they made me who I am.”
‘My whole body started tingling and I started screaming,’ says star.
The Star Is Born actor, hardened by her past, ultimately found release in the middle of a court deposition.
“This part of the brain where you stay centred and you don’t disassociate, right? It slammed down,” she said.
“My whole body started tingling and I started screaming. I was in a hospital.
“The brain goes: ‘That’s enough, I don’t want to think about this anymore. I don’t want to feel this anymore.’
“Boom. You break from reality as you know it. You have no concept of what’s going on around you.”
Psychiatrists helped Gaga navigate her prolonged psychological trauma, including use of the “unorthodox set of pills” such as antipsychotic and anti-depressive medications.
Together with talk and dialectical behaviour therapy, Gaga carved out a path to her recovery and advocates for better understanding of mental health from primary care doctors.
“This happened for a reason,” she said.
“All the things I’ve been through. I was supposed to go through this. Even the rape — all of it.
“I radically accepted they happened because God was saying to me: ‘I’m gonna show you pain. And then you’re going to help other people who are in pain because you’re going to understand it’.
“Now, when I see someone in pain I can’t look away. I’m in pain too. Now, I’m in problem-solving mode.
“I’ve got my suit on and my heels and I’m ready to go.”
Following the vulnerable interview, Gaga and Winfrey reunited backstage and away from the audience applause, sharing a tender hug as both icons broke down in tears.
