LeAnn Rimes Feels Like She's 'Starting Over' After Treatment

By Maggie Coughlan

10/23/2012 at 03:00 PM EDT

After a month spent in a voluntary treatment program for anxiety and stress, LeAnn Rimes feels like she's been given a fresh start.

"I feel like I am starting over even though I've had all these years behind me," she tells Katie Couric on Thursday's episode of Katie.

"How many people get to [start] over in this day and age?" the country singer, 30, asks.

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Rimes – who was married to Dean Sheremet when she first met her then-married husband Eddie Cibrian – also discusses how her relationship made her a target for tabloids.

“People look at you and go, 'Why are you struggling?' … No one can quite understand why you hurt so badly,” she says.

Rimes recently told the Boston Herald that being constantly criticized can be overwhelming.

"It's hard to take it day after day of reading and seeing things that someone you don't even know says about you. As much as you said you don't want it to penetrate, it does, because you're human," she says.

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