Lady Gaga opens up about the steps she took to overcome mental illness.

Photo via Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images

On Thursday, November 8, Lady Gaga was scheduled to speak at a SAG-AFTRA fundraiser in Beverly Hills, California. But because of the mass shooting at a bar in nearby Thousand Oaks the night before, she felt she had to address the issue of mental illness.

The alleged shooter is a veteran who was believed to have PTSD, a condition that Lady Gaga has struggled with as well.

“When I speak about mental health, especially when I’m speaking about mine, it is often met with quietness,” she said. “Or maybe, a somber line of fans, waiting outside to whisper to me in the shadows about their darkest secrets. We need to bring mental health into the light.”

Back in 2015, Lady Gaga revealed the steps she’s taken in her life to combat her ongoing fight against anxiety and depression.

“I invented myself, Lady Gaga, I curated my life to be an expression of my pain,” she said at The Yale university Centre of Emotional Intelligence. “This is how I overcame my depression. It’s by creating somebody that I felt was stronger than me.”

“But once I went through all sorts of changes, my career taking off, becoming isolated ... nothing was able to fix how I was genetically made,” she continued. “I was born this way.”

After finding success she she felt she was being used by people to make money and the superficial trappings of fame made her felt isolated. Her depression came to the forefront again.

So she learned how to say no.

“I started to say no. I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that. I’m not taking that picture, I’m not going to that event, I’m not standing by that because that’s not what I stand for,” she said. “And slowly but surely, I remembered who I am. And then you go home, and you look in the mirror, and you’re like, ‘Yes. I can go to bed with you every night.’ ”