Miley Cyrus Recalls Losing ‘Everything’ in 2013 After Career Controversies

While appearing on the Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky podcast, Cyrus opened up about how it felt to navigate fame in 2013 after she says the world turned on her.

“My 2013 is your 1998, because that was the time that I got, just hit so hard. And I was so embarrassed,” Cyrus recalled, comparing that fraught year in her life with Lewinsky’s scandal in the White House.

She continued, “There was even a time where my brother and sister didn’t want to go to school because of how humiliated they were to be related to me. I remember my brother even saying at one point, ‘I don’t judge you, but you could understand how hard it is for me to go to school and for you to be my sister.”

The “Flowers” singer said, during that time, she lost “everything” in her personal life as a result of the choices she was making professionally, with 2013 serving as one of Cyrus’ most talked about years to date — leaving the Disney channel, posing nude and releasing her controversial album, Bangerz.

“If I kept dressing or acting a certain way, my relationships fell apart. No one wanted to date me because they didn’t want to be with a woman — that sexual expression part wasn’t for them, it was like, shared with the world,” the 32-year-old musician recalled.

“When I was dating, or I was engaged at the time, but that didn’t work out because I was sharing a part of myself that men wanted to be saved for them only, and the fact that I would pose nude or dance in very little clothes or show my body, was making them feel that I was taking something away that was meant to be for them,” she added. “So I had really hard times dating.”

In addition to her siblings and romantic partners, Cyrus said she had a hard time facing her dad during that period, as well as her grandparents.

“It was really hard for me to go home and see my dad and look him in the eyes and not feel super embarrassed,” Cyrus said. “My grandmother was like my best — my grandmother is my best friend. She’s dead, but she’s still my best friend. “And I was like, ‘Oh God, this is gonna kill her.’”

“So having that and going home and seeing my grandparents was mortifying,” the Grammy-winner remembered.

As for what helped release some of the shame she had around both her personal and professional life at the time, Cyrus credit EDMR therapy — which per the Cleveland Clinic stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a specific type of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that helps individuals heal from traumatic experiences and related symptoms like PTSD.”

“It changed me,” Cyrus gushed. “I feel like it kind of deleted the folder of my mind — the guilt and shame folder. So, I haven’t really dealt with that for probably about four years, but up until I did that EDMR, I had a lot guilt about how hard it would’ve been to be my sibling or my parent, and how embarrassing and all those things.”

A lot of the professional decisions had loyal Hannah Montana fans turning on Cyrus, with the singer-actress recalling that parents no longer viewed the former Disney star as a “safe place” for their kids.

“It’s like the babysitter went rogue. I was like a babysitter for America’s children. You put them in front of the screen, you know if they’re watching my show they’re gonna be good, I’m not gonna say anything inappropriate, you feel safe with them spending time with me,” Cyrus said. “And that’s when people felt like I wasn’t a safe place for their kids anymore.”

It got so bad, Cyrus recalled, that there was a petition to get her “banned” from television, which she said was a move to sabotage her career and take away her livelihood, with much of her revenue at that time coming from the Disney series.

While things looked uncertain at that time, thanks to lots of therapy and growth, Cyrus said she’s been able to heal, and she has her latest album, Something Beautiful, to thank for that.

“This album is really about healing,” Cyrus maintained. “I’ve talked about it a lot — this album has healed me me in many ways, but it really is about healing. And sometimes, that can be in the simplest or the deepest of ways.”

Something Beautiful is out now.