Willow Smith stopped self-harming after realising her 'worth'

27 June 2019

Willow Smith stopped self harming after reading about science and spirituality.

Willow Smith

The 18-year-old daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith previously revealed that she cut herself following the success of her hit single 'Whip My Hair' when she was just 10 years old, and has now explained that reading about spirituality helped her "see herself as worthy" and eventually led her to stop self harming.

She said: "I was super young, and I had a dream, but all I really wanted to do was sing and I didn't equate that with all the business and the stress that ended up coming with it. I was just like, 'Whoa, this is not the life that I want'.

"[By my early teens I started cutting because it was] a physical release of all the intangible pain that's happening in your heart and in your mind."

Willow then added that doing her own research into both science and spirituality helped her quit the habit, telling People magazine: "I was like, 'This is pointless - my body is a temple,' and I completely stopped. It seemed literally psychotic after a certain point because I had learned to see myself as worthy."

Meanwhile, Willow previously said she found it "hard" to speak about her experience with self harm.

She said: "I think by far [the hardest episode to film] would had to have been the episode where I was talking about my self-harm. I mean nobody wants to come out and tell the whole world about that but I felt that was very important for other girls or boys that are going through that as well for me to come out and talk about my life. But it's never easy."

The singer and actress shaved her head when she was 12, and admitted this year she had turned to self harm by the time she was a teenager.

She said: "It was after that whole 'Whip My Hair' thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this grey area of, 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'

"After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album. And I was like, I'm not gonna do that. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself."

Jada, 47, was left shocked by the news, as she asked her daughter: "What? When were you cutting yourself? I didn't see that part. Cutting yourself where?"

To which Willow responded: "On my wrist. I mean, you can't even see it but there's still a little something there. But like, totally lost my sanity for a moment there. I never talk about it because it was such a short weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it."