Demi Lovato admits cutting herself since age 11

In January, Lovato was admitted to a treatment center where she was treated for this terrible habit but also for bulimia and other disorders.

For Demi, the cutting had a meaning as “a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body.”

“I’ve spoken openly about being bullied throughout the past few years,” she tells 20/20 in a recent interview. “But one thing that I’ve never been able to feel comfortable talking about was the effects that it had on my life, afterward. I didn’t know why they were being so mean to me. And when I would ask them why, they would just say, ‘Well, you’re fat.”

“I developed an eating disorder, and that’s kind of what I’ve been dealing with ever since. I was matching the inside to the outside. And there were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn’t know what to do,” Lovato recalls about spiraling out of control.

“The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release, and taking it out on myself,” she says.

Demi Lovato did her mea culpa in taking “100 percent, full responsibility” for assaulting one of her dancers, Alex Welch, last year.

“I feel horrible, [She] was my friend,” she adds.

Lovato concluded by saying that she hopes her story can “open up the eyes of so many young girls”