Cape Town - Willow Smith has opened up about her battle to deal with fame after admitting she used to cut herself following the success of her debut single Whip My Hair.
The 17-year-old made the confession on Red Table Talks, a Facebook show she participates in alongside side mom Jada Pinkett Smith and grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Jones.
The topic was on loss and Willow admitted that having found fame at the tender age of 13, she began to question her purpose.
"I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point. 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?'" she explained.
"After the tour, the promotion and all that, they wanted me to finish my album and I was like, "I'm not going to do that". 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."
It was the first time Jada had heard the confession and Willow admitted she has only ever told one friend about her self-harming.
"On my wrist. You can't see it. I totally lost my sanity there," the singer added.
"I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life. I honestly felt like I was experiencing so much emotional pain, but my physical circumstances weren't reflecting that. One night I was like, 'this is actually psychotic and after that I just stopped'."
Jada also shared her experience with loss as she reflected on the death of her close friend Tupac in 1996.
The rapper, who was 25, was shot and killed as he rode in a car driven by Death Row Records chairman “Suge” Knight near the Las Vegas strip.
"I've had a lot of loss. So many of my close friends, gone. Didn't make it to 30, they didn't make it past 25," the 49-year old reflected.
"A lot of people talk about my relationship with Pac and trying to figure that out. That was a huge loss in my life. Because he was one of those people that I expected to be here. My upset is more anger, because I feel that he left me and I know that's not true and it's a very selfish way to think about it, but I really did believe that he was going to be here for the long run. When I think about it, I still get really mad, I get mad at God, I get mad at him, I get mad at everybody."
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