Kelsea Ballerini Opens Up About Her Longtime Therapy Journey: ‘I Just Wanted to Dig Deeper’

Kelsea Ballerini has been in therapy since she was 12 years old, but she wasn’t always so open to the idea of working on her mental health.

The country superstar say down for a wide-ranging cover story for Women’s Health, where she revealed that she first went to therapy as mandated by the court after her parents’ divorce as a pre-teen. “I was young, and I was sad and confused, and I didn’t want to talk to a stranger that someone else was making me talk to,” she revealed of her hesitancy towards therapy, which continued a few years later when she was once again mandated to attend counseling after witnessing a shooting at her Knoxville high school. “Being a Virgo, being very strong-willed, especially when it comes to things that are tender, like mental health, I need to feel like it’s my decision.”

That’s why, when she turned 24, she decided to take her me tal health in her own hands and experience therapy the way she wanted to. “I’d been on the road for four years, and I was exhausted. I was married [Morgan Evans], and I was looking around at all my friends who have 9-to-5 jobs and still live in my hometown, and I was realizing I felt really removed, really different,” she recalled. “I was starting to have questions like, ‘What is driving me? Is missing Mom’s birthday worth it? Am I okay? And am I happy?’ I couldn’t answer these fundamental questions I should have been able to answer, so I got back into therapy, by my choice, and fell in love with it.”

Ballerini added of a healing, day-long therapy session she experienced, “My therapist asked me to bring in letters, journals, and pictures from my childhood that are significant to me. I went in having no idea what I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to dig deeper. We started in the morning, and it lasted seven hours. [By the end], I was exhausted, but I had a better understanding of a lot of things. I had the time to really untangle them.”

Now, she’s moving forward in a positive way. “I’m happy, and I’m in control of that happiness,” she says. “I feel grateful to have the people in my life that I do and to be able to put out a record on this level and play the rooms that I’ve always wanted to and also go home to my dogs.”

Ballerini is set to release her upcoming fifth studio album, Patterns, on Oct. 25.