Tyler Perry Started Therapy For The First Time At 54: 'They Wanted To Test Me For Autism"
During his recent appearance on The View, media mogul Tyler Perry shared some insight on his mental health journey, admitting to being in therapy for the first time in his life. "I'm living the freest, best part of my life," he shared.
"I'd been bound by so much trauma, so much pain, so much heartache and heartbreak. 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."
He went into even more detail, sharing that this therapist at one point suggested he may be on the spectrum. "They wanted to test me for autism to see if I was on a spectrum because of the way I see things," he opened up.
"I can see multiple things, but then we realized it's because I was in such a traumatic experience; I was always trying to survive. So everything was hyper-vigilant in me. ... So now, when I'm working, I'm paying attention to everything."
Perry shared that while he knew his struggles, therapy allowed him to understand what to do with them. "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."
The director, actor, and studio owner is now living his healthiest and most successful life, promoting his new Netflix historical war drama, The Six Triple Eight. It stars Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Susan Sarandon, and Oprah Winfrey.
His advice to those on their own journey? Confront the pain. "I have turned toward all of that pain, threw my arms wide open, embraced every bit of it, stared at the shame, went down in it, and took the power out of it so that I could heal," he told The View audience.