Alessia Cara takes baths to ease her anxiety

She said: "I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and that anxiety turned into full-blown panic attacks. I was dealing with panic attacks like days and days on end for hours at a time. It was some of the scarier days of my life.

“[I had to] make a lot of changes to my lifestyle. I take a lot of baths now and relax my body.”

Alessia still has days where she “hates everything”, but now has more days where she is “comfortable and confident” in who she is.

She added: "I have days where I hate everything, and I don't even want to leave my bed. I hate everything. But then there's other times where I feel a lot more comfortable and more confident. I feel like overall I have a new lightness to life.”

The ‘Shapeshifter’ singer also reflected on her 2017 MTV Video Music Awards performance where she removed her makeup and dress mid-performance in order to make a statement about people judging her appearance.

She told People magazine: "It was hard to stand my ground because I was so young and I was so new and people have a vision of what you should be. The public is always judging me and talking about the way I look and this and that, so that, for me was a statement of like, I can do this.

And I can also do that."