Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario has recently opened about a not so pretty childhood that included an eating disorder and self-harming.

Bellisario, 28, can identify with her Pretty Little Liars counterpart, Spencer Hastings. Both struggle to attain an unrealistic level of perfection.

"I was the youngest daughter, the perfect little girl," Bellisario said in an interview with Seventeen. "My school was a very intense college prep school. So it was about wanting to please my father and mother and wanting to be perfect to everybody."

In the Feb. 2014 issue of the magazine, Bellisario explained how her road to perfection resulted in self-destruction.

"I just thought if I ever expressed to [my parents] any sadness or anger or anything that's going on with me, they would disown me," she said. "I kept a lot of it bottled up inside, and it turned into self-destructive behavior."

By her junior year of high school, the Los Angeles-native started "self-harming."

"I would withhold food or withhold going out with my friends, based on how well I did that day in school ... I didn't know what was right and what was wrong, so I think I created this bizarre system of checks and balances to create order in my world, but it really backfired," Bellisario admitted.

Bellisario realized she was in trouble once her friends found her journal and told her they were going to tell her parents.

"It made me ask myself, 'What do I really want to be doing? What would make me happy?'" the actress recalled.

To this day, Bellisario fights to feel confident amongst her co-stars Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale and Shay Mitchell.

"Honestly, it's an ongoing struggle," she said. "Especially for a woman on a show that has the word 'pretty' in it! Sometimes I feel like I'm trying too hard, like I don't belong. I just look around at Lucy, Shay and Ashley and I'm just like, 'Why am I on this show?'"

Once the cameras are off, the actress morphs back into herself.

"Dressing like myself again helps," Bellisario said.

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