Nicole Scherzinger has opened up about her battle with bulimia, and how it was incredibly difficult for her to talk about it in public.

“It was hard for me to speak about, it still is hard, and thinking about it I try not to well up.”

The gorgeous singer first revealed her struggle with the disease back in 2012 during an episode of Behind the Music on VH1, saying that she hated herself at the height of her fame with The Pussycat Dolls: “I really was so disgusted with myself and so embarrassed. I felt so alone. I was in a group, and I never felt so alone in my life.”

Nicole has now spoken out about how the disease nearly robbed her of everything: “I had started losing my voice, I couldn’t sing at shows, and then I remember my manager finding me passed out on the floor in Malta or in the south of France.

“I thought, ‘I’m going to lose everything I love if I don’t love myself.’ One day when you feel like you’ve reached the end, you just say, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ It’s sad to see how I wasted my life. I had such a great life on the outside, the Dolls were on top of the world but I was miserable on the inside. I’m never letting that happen again; you only get one life—I was 27 only once.”

The singer says that the reason she empathises so much with people who are going through tough times, is because of what she went through herself, and she offered some words of encouragement to anyone who is feeling defeated:

“It is such a horrible paralyzing disease and it was such a dark time for me. That’s why I can empathize so much with people who have demons and voices in their heads, who aren’t nice to themselves. It robs you of living your life. But you can recover and you can get rid of it forever. I did it and that’s why it’s so important for me to share my story. I felt so alone…but I made myself so alone. You hide it from the world, you isolate yourself. But you can beat it—do not give up because you’re so special and you’re meant for such great things.”