Kesha Explains Why She Decided to Go to Rehab

— -- When Kesha checked into rehab last year, rumors circulated as to why she was there.

Now she's clarifying that she was there to cope with an eating disorder, "nothing more and nothing less."

"Making my last record, Warrior, was a pretty miserable process, and it wore my spirit down," she confessed to Teen Vogue. I was fighting like hell to keep my whole irreverent essence and everything raw and visceral that I stand for in it, but in the end I was promoting something that wasn't the animal I wanted it to be. I decided to face my problem head-on."

These days, the singer, 27, is in a much better place. Now appearing on the ABC series "Rising Star," and happily dating her "new squeeze," Brad Ashenfelter, Kesha looks back on her stay in Timberline Knolls, a women's inpatient facility, as a crucial time in her life.

"To have a breakthrough you have to have a breakdown, and I definitely went through both of those -- in hindsight, it saved my life," she said. "Things got worse because I'm in an industry where people photograph your body and zoom in and blow it up and put it on the cover of magazines, and other people make terrible comments."

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"It really messed with my head, and I realized I couldn't do it by myself," she continued. "The decision to take control of it is the scariest thing I've ever done, and this is coming from someone who dives with sharks and jumps out of airplanes for fun."

However, it was a necessary one. Kesha said that she felt herself losing sight of who she is and the message of self-acceptance that she preaches to her fans.

"I have a public persona where I need to be fun all the time, and I refuse to be a hypocrite. I felt I needed to get help, not only for myself but also for my fans. My worst fear in life is to be fake," she said. "My whole message is to love who you are and accept all your beautiful imperfections. When I felt I was slipping into unloving territory with myself, I knew I had to listen to my own advice and correct it."

Now writing music again, the singer said she's in an entirely different place than she was just a few months ago.

"The whole process has made me so much stronger," she said. "[I'm] ready to take my life by the horns and make a record that I'm going to be proud of and not care what anybody else thinks."