Olivia Rodrigo opens up about therapy: ‘I’ve learned so much about myself’

Olivia Rodrigo's vividly anecdotal songwriting leaves little to the imagination, and the 18-year-old breakout star displayed the same brutal honesty during her interview with CBS Sunday Morning's Tracy Smith.

"I was very sad," Rodrigo said of the time when she wrote her record-breaking single "Drivers License," which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in January. "I was a 17-year-old girl going through my first real heartbreak, but I think a lot of people also think listening to my music that I'm really a sad, depressed person, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Definitely not at all, you know, crying on the bedroom floor all the time, but it's fun to write about stuff like that. If I was just writing how happy, going to get my iced latte every morning, like, nobody would listen to it. It wouldn't be interesting."

Rodrigo's ability to understand the nuances of her many emotions at such a young age stems from "her strong relationship with her parents and her therapist," Smith relayed.

"I hadn't really started going [to therapy] until I was, like, 16," Rodrigo explained, noting that it was her own idea. "And that was a really big, life-changing moment. I've learned so much about myself."

"I think there's sometimes a stigma around it, too," she continued. "Sometimes people are like, 'Oh, you don't need that. You have so much. Your life is so great. What are your problems?' I think that's definitely a thing that sometimes older people can do to younger people, too, is kind of trivialize what they're going through just because, you know, 'Ah, they're fine. They're just kids. They'll get through it.' But it feels so real when you're in it, and it's so valid. Just because it's not an adult problem—or you don't have to pay taxes yet or whatever—doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt."

Rodrigo packaged that revelation up across the 11 tracks of her remarkable debut solo studio album SOUR, which arrived May 21, included yet another No. 1 single in "Good 4 U" and infiltrated the Hot 100.

The California native has taken pop by storm while remaining committed to her acting duties on Disney Plus' High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Watch Rodrigo's full CBS Sunday Morning segment below.