Dove Cameron Shares How Hiatus Helped Her Fall ‘Back in Love’ with Music and Acting

• Dove Cameron is partnering with Wells Fargo for a shoppable livestream on Thursday
• The singer/actress will sell off personal memorabilia from her life and musical journey, with all proceeds benefiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
• Cameron jokes she is “famously someone who keeps everything” 

Dove Cameron is rediscovering herself.

After taking a hiatus to focus on her mental health, the singer, 29, is coming back full-force with new music and acting projects, including her latest single “Too Much” and her upcoming role in the TV adaptation of 56 Days. Though she tells PEOPLE exclusively, getting to the place she is now took a lot of self-reflection as she felt burned out mentally.

“I think I was under the impression that because I have always been someone who was very in touch with what was going on with me, that it almost acted as a hindrance as I got older, I had convinced myself that I knew how to manage my mental health well,” she explains. “I tricked myself into thinking that I never needed to stop and take breaks. It was like, ‘I know what this is. I know how to deal with myself. I know how to help myself so I can continue doing whatever I want to do professionally at the rate that I want to do it, and I never need to stop.”

“When I finally did get the cue from my body and my brain, it was like there’s no other way around this other than to stop and sort of take action around what’s going on inside my brain and my body,” she continues. “So while, yes, I felt a little self-conscious taking time for my mental health when nobody really knew what was going on with me, it’s the best thing that I’ve done for myself, and it will continue to be the only reason why I am so good and relatively functional now because I took that time.”

As an outspoken mental health advocate, Cameron is using her platform for a good cause as she partners with Wells Fargo Credit Cards for a unique livestream concert specifically curated for her longtime fans.

The “Everything Must Go” concert, streaming live from Cameron’s YouTube and Instagram channels on Thursday, April 3 at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET, will be a first-of-its-kind shoppable livestream event where the Disney Channel alum will sell off personal memorabilia from her life and musical journey, with all proceeds benefiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Noting that she’s in “a season of change and growth and letting go,” she said curating the personal memorabilia for fans was a “pretty easy process,” especially as she jokes she is “famously someone who keeps everything.”

“I am such a nostalgic and emotional person,” she explains. “I held onto obviously the things that I couldn’t part with, but there are certain things like a coat that I very famously wore for three, four years of my life that I’m photographed in pretty much everywhere. So I included that. I let go of my studio bag that I have been carrying with me now for over a year while I was writing the album. I let go of a page of one of my songwriting books that was an early draft of a song that is now going to be included in the album.”

“It wasn’t as emotional as much as it just felt good,” she says of letting go of specific items from her life. “These were things I was either ready to part with or that I figured would have a better home somewhere else. I was just really focusing on contributing things that I thought people actually might want because I’m really focused on the cause at hand,” she says, referencing NAMI.

“I’ve always been a massive vocal advocate for de-stigmatizing the taboo around mental illness and mental health,” she explains. “As someone who was struggling with mental illness and mental health and someone who was surrounded by people who were struggling with mental illness and mental health, I always found it quite interesting that it was one of the only things as a society that we all shared that we never felt we could speak about.”

“I always found great peace in confiding in other people about what was going on with me, and I always found it to be one of the most beautiful things that someone could do for me in their life, confiding in me about what was going on with them,” she continues. “And the more that I did that as a practice, the more that I felt it was destigmatized in my social groups, in the world around me with fans coming to me talking about things where we relate and places in which our mental health crosses things that we’re all sort of struggling with.”

As she took time off to focus on her own mental health these past few years, Cameron says she finally feels like she’s doing things “out of a place of joy.”

“Before I think I loved music and I loved acting, but there was a part of me that felt that I had to do it to prove that I was worthy or I had to prove that I was worth contributing or I belonged here,” she explains. “It was always like I was trying to pass a test every day of my career, I think because I also started so young.” She admits she reached a point where she “didn’t know” if she could “continue doing this job” and began “looking at [her] other options.”

“I had to really ask myself, ‘Who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for me? Would I be doing this for me if I didn’t feel this huge lack of self-worth? Would I be doing this for myself if I didn’t just start as young as I did? Is this something I still want to continue to choose?’ And I’m very grateful to say that I spent a lot of time working on myself on my own,” she adds. “I’ve been saying that I really didn’t have a life for a year. I really just spent time alone with myself … I stuck to a promise with myself just basically being like, if this is the thing that is causing this pain, then I have to be honest with myself and I can’t lose myself to it.”