Selena Gomez became a star thanks to her role on the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place, which ran from 2007 until 2012. Gomez was 14 when the show began, and she played teenage wizard Alex Russo.

The role shot her to superstardom, and her high-profile relationships with Nick Jonas and Justin Bieber, plus her singing career, only further elevated her fame. All of the unrelenting attention ultimately took a toll on the star’s mental health, affecting her anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. (Gomez also speaks candidly about these struggles in her Apple TV+ documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind And Me.)

This week, Gomez appeared on the podcast Wizards of Waverly Pod, hosted by her former co-stars David DeLuise and Jennifer Stone, where she discussed her experience on the show, as well as her life after the series ended.

Gomez told Stone, who played her best friend Harper on the show, and DeLuise, who played her father Joe, that one of her great regrets in life was losing touch with them and the rest of her Wizards castmates.

Gomez told them that she found a second family on the set of the show, saying, “I bonded with everyone. Little did I know that I ended up with everyone I needed to be in my life. I think I felt safe, and that’s a really hard thing for me to feel. I know that you guys love me for me… You guys genuinely loved me, and that’s all I could have asked for, the unconditional trust and bond we had, I miss so much.”

Stone agreed, “That was such a special time in our lives that we all share,” while DeLuise added, “It’s very rare in this business that you get to bond with people like that.”

“I felt like I was the happiest I’ve been in my whole life,” Gomez said about the years she spent filming the show. But while answering the question, “What has been your biggest mistake so far?” she got serious about how that years after the show caused her to lose touch with her co-stars.

“Jesus!” she began. “You know what? Probably not staying in touch with you guys…I think I slowly became kind of shamed. I felt ashamed of the decisions that I made. I didn’t want you guys to see me in the state that I was in, because A, you would have told me the truth, which terrifies me, and B, I didn’t want to let you down.”

“I appreciate you saying that, too,” Stone responded. “Because to be perfectly blunt, there has been times where I’m like, ‘Did we stop being friends because I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear?’ You know what I mean?”

“Of course, they’re all valid, and I appreciate you guys dearly,” Gomez replied.“I love you so much in a way that I’ve never loved anybody else.”

New episodes of the Wizards of Waverly Pod drop on Mondays.