Halsey Says Pursuing Music Helps Manage Her Bipolar Disorder: 'I Get to Focus All My Chaotic Energy'
Music hasn’t just given Halsey her career; it’s also given her a way to find stability with her bipolar disorder.
The “Nightmare” singer, 24, is gracing the cover of the October issue of Cosmopolitan. And in the interview, she opens up about how music helped her manage her energy.
“I have bipolar disorder, and I get bored of s— really quickly,” said Halsey. “Music is this thing that I get to focus all my chaotic energy into, and it’s not a void that doesn’t love me back.”
“It’s been the only place I can direct all that and have something to show for it that tells me, ‘Hey, you’re not that bad,’ ” she added. “If my brain is a bunch of broken glass, I get to make it into a mosaic.”
Halsey, born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, was diagnosed at age 17 with bipolar disorder — which is associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.
Back in June, Halsey revealed that she has had herself committed to a psychiatric hospital twice to get ahead of the manic depressive periods.
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Being honest about the highs and lows in her life hasn’t always been easy, especially with the negativity Halsey has received from critics online.
“I shared a lot about myself, assuming the world would be kind. And that hasn’t quite been the case,” Halsey tells Cosmopolitan.
Sometimes, those trolls have slammed her for what they consider to be inconsistencies in her brand.
“‘Are you a crazy, rambunctious bad girl, or are you an activist, political, fund-raising philanthropist?’ ” she recalls her critics asking. “Like, how f—ing immune are you to the human experience? Sometimes I want to have really good sex and sometimes I want to save the world, and sometimes I might try to do both in the same day!”
Ultimately, Halsey describes herself as “pretty regular.”
“I’ll sometimes look at other artists who seem so larger-than-life and wonder, ‘Am I not supposed to be here?’ ” she confesses.
And though she struggles with wanting everyone to love her (“That’s the problem: I’ll do what I want, knock down everyone in my path who says I shouldn’t, and then when people don’t like it, I’m like, ‘Why?!’ “), she’s ultimately happy with not being a picture-perfect pop star.
“I love that, because I wake up every day wild-eyed and spongy, trying to do things better than the last time,” she says.
Halsey previously opened up to Rolling Stone about her bipolar episodes, revealing that the album she’s currently working on is “the first I’ve ever written manic.”
“[The manic periods are] that thing in the back of our minds that drives us to outrageous thoughts,” she told the outlet in June. “Like when you’re driving a car and you’re like [she mimes suddenly cutting over the wheel], or you’re on top of a building, and you’re like, ‘What if I just jump?’ ”
“You are controlled by those impulses rather than logic and reason,” she said.
As exciting as the manic rush can be, Halsey explained that when they end, she’s typically thrust into depression.
“I know I’m just going to get f—ing depressed and be boring again soon,” she said. “And I hate that that’s a way of thinking. Every time I wake up and realize I’m back in a depressive episode, I’m bummed. I’m like, ‘F—. F—! This is where we’re going now? Okay…’ ”
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