These days, Lady Gaga gets by with “radical acceptance.” The singer previously spoke about adopting the dialectical behavior practice in an appearance during Oprah Winfrey’s speaking tour earlier this year, and in a new interview with Paper, Gaga opened up about how it’s helped her as she gears up to promote her highly anticipated sixth studio album while still dealing with clinical depression and chronic pain as a result of her fibromyalgia diagnosis.
“Some days are way worse, some days aren’t,” Gaga said. “But you know what I can do? I can go, ‘Well, my hands work; my arms work; my legs work, even though they are sore; my back works; my brain works; my heart works; I’m taking breaths, my lungs work.’ You can just be grateful for what you can do.”
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Gaga was also quick to address skepticism surrounding the legitimacy of fibromyalgia, which can cause widespread muscle tenderness, pain, and fatigue, among other symptoms. “The debate around fibromyalgia, we could have it for hours . . . Some people believe in it, some people don’t. Essentially it’s neuropathic pain: My brain gets stressed, my body hurts,” Gaga said, before adding that she often feels “angry” toward her body and the condition.
“You will hear the pain in my voice and in some of the lyrics, but it always celebrates.”
And yet, Gaga is still “dancing through her pain.” Though there were times when she “couldn’t get off the couch” while working on Chromatica, she persisted to deliver an album that reconciles both the highs and lows of life, even when much of mainstream pop music only acknowledges the former. “Give me a break, [happiness is] not that simple,” she told the magazine. “I have clinical depression. There’s something going on in my brain where the dopamine and serotonin are not firing the same way, and I can’t get there. If someone says, ‘Come on, just be happy,’ I’m like, ‘You f*cking be happy.'” Expanding on the realism of her own music, Gaga said, “You will hear the pain in my voice and in some of the lyrics, but it always celebrates.”
