Justin Bieber addresses 2018 paparazzi photos of him crying: 'I don't have permission to be human and shed tears'

Singer says he remembers 'just struggling' during moment captured on camera

Justin Bieber has addressed paparazzi photos taken of him crying on the street in 2018, explaining that he was “just being a normal person and crying”.

On Monday, the singer discussed the viral photos during the ninth episode of his YouTube Originals docuseries, Justin Bieber: Seasons.

In the photos in question, taken in August 2018, the Yummy singer could be seen crying while his now-wife Hailey Baldwin comforted him and held his hand during a trip to New York City. The photos prompted fans to speculate that the couple was having relationship issues.

However, Bieber has since explained that the photos were the result of feeling “overwhelmed” and reacting to those feelings by crying, just like a “normal person”.

“I’m just being a normal person and crying,” he said in the latest episode, according to People. “When I’m in the media and I look at things on the internet and people are like: ‘Justin’s upset, why is he upset?’ It’s like, they don’t give me permission to be upset. I don’t have permission to be, you know, human and shed tears.”

The 25-year-old continued: “There’s so many people every day who are in a conversation with their girl or their wife or their mom and they break down, you know? But they don’t have cameras capturing it. So people are like: ‘Is he okay, is he having a mental breakdown?’ And I’m just emotional… and that’s okay.”

According to Bieber, when he looks at the photo, he remembers just “struggling” and feeling “emotionally overwhelmed” because of his inability to communicate certain things to his then-fianceé.

“I remember feeling, like, emotionally just overwhelmed and talking to her, not knowing how to communicate certain things and just feeling kind of frustrated,” he said. “There has been a lot of things that have happened in my life and this was a point in my life where I was just like, so overwhelmed…”

In the episode, it also touched on the trick Bieber uses to manage his stress, a technique called “havening” that was recommended by his health coach Dr Buzz Mingin.

According to Dr Mingin, havening is a “psychosensory technique that actually raises the feel-good chemicals in your brain on demand,” with Baldwin describing it as a “self-soothing thing”.

“Everybody has their own version of havening without knowing it," the model explained. "It's like when you're a little kid and you suck your thumb to soothe yourself. When you're starting to feel really stressed out or just to keep yourself calm, it's almost like when you're a kid and your mom rubs your back to sleep and it's the best feeling in the world. It's kind of like that, except you're doing it for yourself.”

For Bieber, havening involves rubbing his head and face continuously.

In addition to the technique, Bieber also protects his mental health by having a “structured, organised, predictable environment around him,” according to Dr Mingin.