Kesha opened up about her decision to enter rehab in a candid new essay for Elle UK. The We R Who We R singer held nothing back and wrote about her insecurities and the pressure of being in the limelight. She also cleared up speculation that she entered rehab because of substance abuse rather than an eating disorder.

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"Sure, I've written songs about partying, but my dirty little secret is that I'm actually incredibly responsible," she wrote. "I take my music and career very seriously, and certainly didn't land in this situation from partying. But I was cut off from the outside world and I imagined people making up stories at a time when what I really needed was support."

Kesha explained that after returning from her world tour she was unusually exhausted and quickly understood why. "I felt like part of my job was to be as skinny as possible, and to make that happen, I had been abusing my body," she wrote. In turn, the star took a hiatus from her career to focus on her well-being.

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The 27-year-old also revealed that her dedication to music spawned from years of feeling like an outsider. She was signed to a record label at 18 and "suddenly it was OK to be different." However, the industry wasn't always kind to the singer.

"The music industry has set unrealistic expectations for what a body is supposed to look like, and I started becoming overly critical of my own body because of that," she wrote. "I felt like people were always lurking, trying to take pictures of me with the intention of putting them up online or printing them in magazines and making me look terrible."

And, while Kesha's music advocates for loving yourself, she didn't practice what she preached. On January 2, she entered the Chicago-area rehab and her time there helped her change her perception. "I started to not worry as much about what other people thought of me," she wrote. "I could focus on my music and my happiness and not what I looked like."

She added, "I knew I was ready to leave when I'd gained enough confidence to get on a plane knowing there would be paparazzi at the airport at the other end. I was right - they were there. But this time, when I saw the pictures, I felt OK."

Read Kesha's whole piece posted by ATRL here.

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