Willow Smith speaks frankly about harming her body and how she stopped

Willow Smith, the 18-year-old singer daughter of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, says she had engaged in self-harming behavior during her early teens.

Specifically, she explains in the new issue of People magazine, due out Friday, that she was cutting herself in order to have "a physical release of all the intangible pain that's happening in your heart and in your mind."

That stress had come about partly from her experience of being signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label just before her 10th birthday and quickly scoring a hit with "Whip My Hair,” which reached the top 20 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

"I was super young, and I had a dream, but all I really wanted to do was sing and I didn't equate that with all the business and the stress that ended up coming with it," says Smith. "I was just like, 'Whoa, this is not the life that I want'."

She eventually ceased cutting herself, she says, because, "I was like, 'This is pointless — my body is a temple,' and I completely stopped. It seemed literally psychotic after a certain point because I had learned to see myself as worthy."