Hayley Kiyoko's chronic stress 'impacted her mental health'
Hayley Kiyoko has opened up about her mental health, revealing that she suffered with "chronic stress".
Hayley Kiyoko's fame has affected her "mental and physical health".
The 32-year-old star first found fame as a child, and she's admitted that it's taken a toll on her mental health.
She told Variety: "I don’t think chronic stress is a great thing to have. I think it’s severely impacted my health. I’ve had a lot of health issues.
"Being in this industry and having such a demand to constantly show up, and be going and going and going, has definitely affected my mental and physical health. It’s always been a challenge of how do I manage that stress while also still getting to pursue the things that I want to?"
Hayley battled depression and loneliness as a teenager, and the singer believes that it stemmed from hiding her true self.
The Los Angeles-born singer - who came out as a lesbian in 2015 - explained: "I didn’t feel like I had a community or group of people in my life that I could really share my true emotions to or my authentic self to, and so the only person I could do that to was myself.
"When you hold in your truth, that affects your stress and your health, and even though I didn’t feel safe enough to share in my environment, I was able to share and let it out through song."
Hayley now leans on her songwriting as a way of coping with her mental health concerns.
The 'Girls Like Girls' hitmaker shared: "I think I was always stressed that I was never enough or that I didn’t belong, so I overcompensated on being able to do as many things that I could do. That was my defense mechanism at [the] time."
