Kelly Ripa has never been shy about discussing her own mental health, and on the latest edition of her podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera, which was released on Thursday, she revealed the precise moment when she made the decision to start seeing a therapist.
“I went into therapy when I turned 40,” Ripa, who is now 53 years old, said with podcast guest Tyler Perry.
“I ran into an old girlfriend of mine at a Bar Mitzvah, and she asked, ‘How are you?’ and I immediately began crying, and I wasn’t exactly sure why.”
“She said, ‘I’m going to write down the name of my therapist,'” the host of Live with Kelly and Mark said while chuckling at the recollection. “I’m going to write down the name of my therapist,” she continued.
Ripa disclosed her struggles with a severe form of social anxiety disorder in her autobiography, titled Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, which was published in 2002.
“When I’m under pressure, I have a tendency to say embarrassing or inappropriate things,” Ripa wrote. People have the misconception that I am an extrovert in real life just because I play one on television. The unexpected. Because of this, many refer to what they do as acting.
Ripa revealed this information about herself on the podcast, saying, “I really got to know myself through therapy.” I finally realized why I had such a hard time accepting any form of accomplishment, and that helped me a lot.
Even though Perry, who is 54 years old, has never seen a therapist, he has indicated that writing is therapeutic for him. In his own life, when he would do anything, he would ask himself, “Why did you do that?'” since he was exploring the motive of his characters in his writing. What exactly was the point of that? Were you in a bad mood? Were you in a bad mood? “What the heck happened?'”
“And then memories will come, and things that will trigger those memories will arrive, and it will be like, ‘Oh, that’s why you feel that way. So, how do we go about undoing that? “How do we turn that around?'” said Perry, whose life story will be detailed in the premiere of the documentary Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story, which will air tomorrow on Prime. Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story will air on Prime.
“So writing characters and developing them helped me kind of understand a lot of my own emotional stuff,” he said, adding, “I’m not opposed to therapy. It’s just not for me.” And who knows, maybe one day I will accomplish that goal. But I’ve been able to go through a good portion of it so far by just focusing on the writing.
Ripa stepped in to suggest that Perry may already have someone in his life who is serving in the role of a de facto therapist, stating, “I feel like when Oprah is your best friend, like, she was my earliest therapist.” Perry did not respond to Ripa’s suggestion. I am aware that she was one of your first therapists. She was the first therapist to practice in the United States.
Ripa continued by referring to The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ran from 1986 to 2011 and discussed issues such as racial discrimination, drug addiction, divorce, and weight loss. “We didn’t know we were getting therapy, but we were,” she said in reference to the show.
Perry said that “And she hasn’t had it either,” which was something that Ripa found “fascinating.”
“Oprah comes to mind as the person who comes to mind first when I think of a person who is therapy-minded,” I said.
Perry said that Winfrey was the one who introduced him to the therapeutic practice of journaling, which, according to him, led to “everything else, writing it down.” Winfrey herself is not currently participating in treatment.
“On her program, she said that writing things down was therapeutic for her. “I had to go get a dictionary to check out what the meaning of catharsis was,” Perry laughed, adding that putting things down “feels wonderful…When I speak about the agony, it makes me feel better. It was almost as if the words were literally erupting from my body and making their way onto the paper. That was a very eye-opening experience for me.