Lady Gaga Gave A Very Candid Interview To Oprah In Which She Shares Her Trauma Of Being Raped ‘Repeatedly’ At 19

Oscar-winner Lady Gaga sat down for an interview with Oprah as part of the talk show host’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus tour. Gaga was not afraid to get real. Although she did not give a detailed summary of the events, the “Shallow” singer discussed being raped repeatedly at 19 years old. She described suffering from PTSD, a psychotic break down, and self-harm. 

However, the Grammy-award winning singer did so with an important message: get help. Throughout the conversation, Gaga was very transparent about how necessary it is to seek treatment and be unafraid of receiving it. This isn’t the first time she has opened up about past traumas, Gaga admitted to being sexually assaulted upon the release of her song “Til It Happens To You” which is an anthem for assault survivors inspired by the documentary The Hunting Ground. She’s been forthcoming about her struggles with past addiction issues, eating disorders, and fibromyalgia. 

Consider this your Trigger Warning, because Gaga gets real here. 

Gaga opened up about being raped at 19 years old.

“I was raped when I was 19 years-old, repeatedly. I have been traumatized in a variety of ways by my career over the years from many different things, but I survived, and I’ve kept going. And when I looked at that Oscar, I saw pain. I don’t know that anyone understood it when I said it in the room, but I understood it,” Gaga told Oprah. 

While she doesn’t go into the specifics, she revealed before that after being raped for months she was dropped off on a street corner. The 33-year-old said she began to suffer from PTSD after the horrific incident. The pain of her rape still appears to haunt her body until this day. 

“The trauma response is much heavier and actually feels the way I felt after I was dropped on a street corner after I’d been raped repeatedly for months. It’s a recurring feeling,” she said. 

The singer recounted having a psychotic break during a difficult period in her life to Elle last year.

“So I had a psychotic break at one point, and it was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. I was brought to the ER to urgent care and they brought in the doctor, a psychiatrist. So I’m just screaming, and I said, ‘Could somebody bring me a real doctor?’ And I didn’t understand what was going on, because my whole body went numb; I fully dissociated,” Gaga told Elle in November. 

The physical and psychic trauma she endured caused her brain to disassociate. The pop star needed serious help and hospitalization. 

“My whole body started tingling and I started screaming. I was in a hospital. It’s very difficult to describe what it feels like other than that you first start to tingle from head to toe and then you go numb. 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.” Gaga said, “I know this is controversial in a lot of ways, but medicine really helped me.”

Gaga also shared that she used to self-harm.

“I was a cutter for a long time, and the only way that I was able to stop cutting and self-harming myself was to realize that what I was doing was trying to show people that I was in pain instead of telling them and asking for help,” Gaga told Elle.  

Much of Gaga’s interview is about how her traumas could only be managed by seeking support and professional help. Most importantly, she doesn’t want to glamourize mental illness, she simply wants to help others who are struggling with it. She even suggested that those suffering from self-harm or traumatic pain can put their hands in a bowl of ice water to shock the system and bring them back to reality. 

“I have PTSD. I have chronic pain. Neuropathic pain trauma response is a weekly part of my life. I’m on medication; I have several doctors. This is how I survive. But you know what, Oprah? I kept going, and that kid out there or even that adult out there who’s been through so much, I want them to know that they can keep going, and they can survive, and they can win their Oscar. I would also beckon to anyone to try, when they feel ready, to ask for help,” she told Oprah.

Gaga’s final message to those listening was to accept life’s challenges and be kind in times of extreme cruelty. 

“Accept the challenge of kindness. It’s hard in a world the way that we are; we have a very, very grave history. We’re in trouble, and we have been before. But I think life asks us amid these challenges, this hatred, this tragedy, this famine, this war, this cruelty: Can you be kind and can you survive?”