Since she came out about her own rape at the age of 19, Lady Gaga has been a stalwart advocate for victims of sexual violence, through both non-profit and musical works. Her recent song "Til' It Happens To You," featured in The Hunting Ground, which documented campus rape. Thursday (Dec. 10), at a TimesTalks panel she shared how it felt being a survivor of rape and how it changed her.
"I didn't tell anyone for, I think, seven years," she said as reported by Us Weekly. "I didn't know how to think about it. I didn't know how to accept it. I didn't know how not to blame myself, or think it was my fault. It was something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely."
In her speech Gaga described that consequences of her trauma also included physical repercussions that echoed for her long afterwards.
"When you go through a trauma like that, it doesn't just have the immediate physical ramifications on you. When you re-experience it through the years, it can trigger patterns in your body of physical distress. A lot of people suffer from not only the mental and emotional pain, but also the physical pain of being abused, raped, or traumatized in some type of way," she said.
Lady Gaga also recently opened up about her struggles with anxiety and depression. In order to help others the singer began her own non-profit called Born This Way, in order to help struggling teens. The current basis of the program is to investigate how rampant cell phone usage can lead to unhappiness. She additionally opened up about her struggles with depression in 2014, when she reportedly went through a really dark spell.
Gaga is currently engaged to actor Taylor Kinney of Chicago P.D.
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