The pop superstar was the victim of rape when she was 19 and only first spoke about the attack last year during an honest interview with DJ Howard Stern.
She has won universal plaudits for performing her Oscar nominated song 'Til It Happens To You' with other victims of sexual abuse at the Academy Awards last Sunday (28.02.16) to highlight the issue. Since revealing her own ordeal Gaga feels as though she has had a “pain” eased from her life.
In an interview with New York radio station Z100, she said: “It's the thing I am most ashamed of in my life and I always felt that it was my fault ... I actually suffer from chronic pain all the time - and it's from the paralysing fear that I've experienced for almost 10 years. “You don't have to hide from difficult topics - and it's OK to talk about it to help somebody else.”
Following her performance of 'Til It Happens To You' - which she co-wrote with Diane Warren for the campus rape documentary 'The Hunting Ground' - at the Oscars, Gaga claims people have stopped looking at her like a celebrity and are once again relating to her as a “human being”.
She added: “People every day look at me like a celebrity - that day was the first time in almost 10 years that I was looked at like a human being ... Even if this message isn't about you, that's your chance to see a window into somebody else's life.”
Gaga - who is engaged to Taylor Kinney - previously revealed some of her family only discovered she had been raped as a teenager from her moving Oscars appearance.
She said: “My grandmother and my Aunt Sheri both called me the day after the Oscars because I never told them I was a survivor. I was too ashamed. Too afraid. And it took me a long time to even admit it to myself because I'm Catholic and I knew it was evil but I thought it was my fault. I thought it was my fault for 10 years. The morning after the Oscars when I talked to my grandmother Ronnie, with tears in her eyes I could hear them welling through the phone she said to me, 'My darling granddaughter, I've never been more proud of you than I am today.'
Bang Showbiz