Tyler Perry reminds us that starting therapy is never too late. The director was recently a guest on The View and revealed that he began therapy for the first time at 54. Perry said a question from The View co-host Joy Behar inspired him to start that part of his healing journey.
During the recent episode of The View, Behar reminded Perry of that conversation.
“The last time you were here, you were talking about your documentary [Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story] and you bring out in the documentary the traumatic childhood that you had and I said to you, ‘Have you gone to therapy?’ Because that seems to be my solution to emotional issues and I always think it works,” Behar explained. “It worked for me, believe it or not. So?”
The Beauty in Black director revealed that he took Behar up on that suggestion she made back in November 2023.
“I really took your advice. I went to therapy for the first time at 54 last year,” he said, to which Behar responded, “Good for you.”
The movie mogul added that therapy has helped him “really get in touch” with himself and his past.
“I’m living the freest, best part of my life,” he said. “I’d been bound by so much trauma, so much pain, so much heartache and heartbreak and, you were right, Joy. You were completely right and I would recommend it to anyone — the right therapist. Because the wrong ones will make you crazy as hell. But the right therapist, yeah, for sure.”
The co-host explained how helpful therapy can be since it’s challenging to heal from traumatic events that take place if you don’t have space to talk about them.
“Or even understand it,” Perry added. “I knew all the trauma and I had all the bells and tools to understand it, ‘cause as a writer I would always chase down the motivations of my characters and I used that for myself. But I didn’t have the understanding of, now I have the information, now what do you do with it? So getting the information was so powerful.”
Congratulations to Perry for taking that big step! We love to see Black men undoing generations of trauma by going to therapy and healing.