Ingrid Andress Says She Was ‘Crying Every Day’ During Rehab Stay: ‘I Felt So Raw’ (Exclusive)

Ingrid Andress says she was more than happy to give up her phone when she entered rehab last July. Two days before, she’d drunkenly butchered the national anthem at a Major League Baseball event, and social media had blown up with savage commentary.

“This was my first taste of what it’s like to be America’s punching bag, if you will,” the 33-year-old artist tells PEOPLE.

But no one was punishing Andress more than herself. For months, she’d been drowning her emotions in alcohol, unable to deal with losses in her life. By the time she took the microphone at the MLB’s Home Run Derby before nearly 40,000 baseball fans in Texas, she was “completely numb.”

The pitchy, tortured performance drew immediate jeers, but Andress didn’t fully understand the damage she’d done — to the song or herself — until she faced a sober morning. Her first thought: “This is not who I am.” Her second: “I need help.”

Within 48 hours, she had posted an apology and checked into a Utah treatment center. She knew she had her work cut out for her. Not only did she need to deal with serious life issues, but she also had to confront her public humiliation — what she calls “my worst nightmare come true.”

Says Andress: “Half of what I was working through in rehab was processing the immense shame.”

The other half came with even more pain as she finally dealt with the losses. The previous year she had parted ways with her longtime manager and a live-in boyfriend, who, she says, had marriage expectations. She initiated the splits, she explains, after realizing she didn’t share their paths.

“It was that feeling that I think I’m wasting this person’s time,” Andress says. “I was like, I don’t know if I want the same things you do, but I don’t want to figure that out with you.”

Because the decisions were hers, she didn’t allow herself to grieve. “Everyone was like, ‘Well, on to the next,’” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Meanwhile, I was like, is this what you’re supposed to do? I got rid of two people that I saw every day, talked to every day. I loved these people, but this was just not going where I felt like I should be going.”

Andress soon was drinking more than she ever had in her life. “Instead of asking for help — because I didn’t know how — I just was like, drinking feels better,” she says.

Once in rehab, she says, she fully realized the harm she had done to herself. “It’s less about what you’re using, and it’s about the why,” she says. She learned to ask herself, “Why am I using that? What are you hoping it’s going to fix?” And then she learned to acknowledge that alcohol “doesn’t fix it.”

Daily therapy dug deep into her upbringing, a part of her life she wasn’t ready to confront.

“I felt so raw,” she says. “I was like, I don’t think this is the best time to be talking about this because I’m crying every day. But it ended up being such a healing time because I actually had the space to completely fall apart.”

Andress grew up in Colorado, the second of five children, in a sheltered and strict Christian household, and therapy helped her understand how much that background had made her “deathly afraid” of making mistakes. It also helped her separate her identity from her actions — a turning point in her struggle to deal with the shame over the botched anthem.

“That’s a very embarrassing moment,” she says, “but the amount of shame you feel after something like that has to do more with how you process your mistakes — and if you allow yourself to mess up. It’s amazing, actually. I didn’t realize how much pressure you put on yourself to say you can’t mess up. It’s like you can’t breathe.”

Ingrid Andress, “Footprints”

Gradually, she says, she started putting the pieces together. Group therapy, she says, offered additional help “learning how to talk about your emotions with other people instead of bottling them in. And then hearing other people’s stories is so healing.”

She found healing, as well, in outdoor activities (“I got really good at pickleball”) in the Utah mountain setting, which was reminiscent of where she grew up near Denver. In fact, after finishing a month of treatment, Andress went on to spend more months recharging in her home state. It was during that time that she sat down and finally watched the video of the botched anthem.

She wouldn’t allow herself, she says, “until I knew that I could watch it with empathy for the girl who was singing it.” As she watched, she says, all she could think was, “Oh, that poor, poor girl!”

In a way, she says, she now feels grateful for her debacle: It’s what got her help so quickly. It also has shown her she can actually survive her worst fear.

Is there anything she’s afraid of now?

“Oooh, not a lot,” Andress says after lengthy thought.

Not even the fear of failure to live up to her potential?

“Maybe,” she says, “but I feel like any time I’ve thought this is what I’m supposed to do, it’s like the universe has a different plan. And so, I’m just like, it’s good enough that I am just who I am.”

For more from Ingrid Andress, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.