Joe Jonas Had To Get Therapy After Experiencing “Physical Pain” Over The Underperformance Of His Solo Album — And It's Sparked A Conversation About Self-Worth
by Ellen Durney · BuzzFeedPosted 2 minutes ago
Though he's best known for being a Jonas Brother, Joe Jonas has had several other ventures in the music space.
He was in the band DNCE from 2015 to 2019 ("Cake By The Ocean" is still a bop in my house), and he's also released two solo albums: Fastlife in 2011, and Music for People Who Believe in Love in 2025.
Now, on a recent episode of their Hey Jonas podcast, Joe opened up to his brothers, Kevin and Nick Jonas, about how the underperformance of his first solo venture caused him to completely spiral.
"I released a solo album when I was about 21, 22, and it didn’t do as well as I thought it would do," Joe said, referring to Fastlife, which peaked at No. 15 on the U.S. Billboard 200, with its lead single, "See No More," peaking at just 92 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Joe said he had expected the album to be a hit because the Jonas Brothers were a huge deal at the time. “Everything the Jonas Brothers touched back then, it would be like gold, like it would be a number one thing [with a] sold-out tour," he said. "I put something out by myself, and I think I had a lot of high expectations of success without you guys, and, like, that was important to me."
Though he acknowledged it was "wrong" to feel this way, Joe said that having a successful solo project would make him feel that he really "mattered." So, when it didn't do as well as he'd hoped, he "started having panic attacks and started having physical pain."
"I would go to the doctor quite a bit and do full body checkups and blood work," he said, recalling that it was this doctor who eventually told him that the issue wasn't physical, but mental. "She was like, ‘Look, you’re physically fine. I can show you the charts again for the third time this month... I think you should— could you speak to somebody?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean like a therapist?’" he recalled.
Joe said he was initially reluctant to see a therapist, but eventually "put two and two together." "The only thing that would make me feel better — I was living in New York at the time — would literally be taking my bike and going for bike rides all day long where I couldn’t be on my phone, and I couldn’t like scroll reading comments or seeing what was going on with that album," he said. "And I think just like being able to be outside and distract myself, but I was still running away from the problem."
He continued: "I finally spoke to somebody, and after crying through the first question for an hour, [I] realized how great it was... It was so helpful during that season, and it has been throughout my life for other major life things that I’ve gone through, to just speak to somebody that’s a professional."
"Friends are great, family’s great, but there’s definitely an importance of [having] a sounding board of somebody that you can speak to that will ask questions in a completely different setting, and also there’s not a personal ultimatum," he added.
It hasn't taken long for Joe's comments about his mental health to get attention. And over on Reddit, it's got people talking about the danger of "tying your self-worth to numbers" or success.
"It’s so easy to tie your self-worth to your occupation or education, sometimes you don’t even realize how deeply you feel your worth is tied to this thing until something goes wrong and the crushing feeling of failure kicks your ass," one user wrote. "I’d imagine it’s much worse for a celeb who is in the public eye. It’s part of why it’s crucial to try to build a life and hobbies outside of professional accomplishment."
Interestingly, lots of people found they could relate to Joe's experience. "I shame spiral when my Instagram posts get less likes than I hoped for," one user quipped. "I can only imagine."
"I had to delete Instagram for this reason," agreed someone else. "[There's] no reason as to why I should be debating deleting my vacation pics because I didn’t get as much interaction as I thought I would. I’d imagine this is amplified when you release something that more or less has to be open for vocal criticism."