*The second episode drop from premiere week of Facebook Watch’s newest talk show, Peace of Mind with Taraji, is now available!
In Peace of Mind with Taraji, Golden Globe Award-Winning Actress Taraji P. Henson and her best friend and co-host Tracie Jade shine a spotlight on the challenging mental health issues facing us today – particularly of those in the Black community. Through personal interviews with both celebrities, experts and everyday people, the series shows how to provide support, bring awareness and help eliminate the stigmas of mental health issues.
On the Wednesday episodes of the new series, Taraji and Tracie delve deeper into the experiences of Mondays’ guests with licensed therapists, and reveal their own stories related to the topics in an effort to provide the community with useful tools and techniques to help manage the specific mental health issues.
Watch the new episode above
- Title: Breaking Down PTSD
- Description: Women are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD as men. Taraji and Tracie sit with therapist Melody Murray to tackle the misconceptions of PTSD and the issues raised by this week’s guests, including Gabrielle Union. What are signs you have it and how you can treat it?
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Some highlights from the episode include:
- 1:22 – Taraji, Tracie and licensed therapist Melody Murray discuss the misconceptions about PTSD
- Melody Murray: “Most people think that…you have to be in combat, some type of combat veteran, but PTSD can get developed because of bad surgeries, car accidents, physical fights. That feeling – you’re in an event where you feel like your life is in danger, that’s what it is.”
- Taraji: “You know I will bring my own experience; I watched my Mom get robbed twice, the first time I was six and she was held at gunpoint, and you know I am fifty, and I remember it like it was yesterday… trauma. I remember the way my mother carried herself, was so that we wouldn’t panic, and I remember my mother pulling plugs of hair out of her head, that’s how hard he was pulling her hair, but watching her go through that, and because she didn’t crumble, what she didn’t realize was that she was putting fight in me… it made me a fighter.”
- 2:30 – Melody Murray on the three trauma responses to PTSD
- Melody Murray: “When it comes to PTSD there’s three different trauma responses: fight, flight or freeze… but here’s the thing, did you know that you don’t decide which one you do? And that’s why it’s so extremely important for people to understand that whenever you are in a traumatic experience and you don’t respond the way you think you should, the tough way to respond, ‘I just was silent, I didn’t fight, I didn’t run’ that shame does not belong to you.”
- 3:56 – Melody Murray on people’s fear surrounding trauma therapy and the power in sharing your experiences
- Tracie: “What is it about trauma therapy that makes people so afraid of it?”
- Melody Murray: “I think the big one is, you don’t want to go through that experience again because a part of that is ‘if I have to talk about it again, I’m going to feel the same way I did then and I don’t know if I can handle it.’
- 4:10 – Melody Murray on the power in sharing your stories and why PTSD doesn’t have to be a forever diagnosis
- Melody Murray: “I love that with Gabi and with Bri [Gabrielle Union and Bri who shared their stories in episode drop 1] they’re talking about their stories, and there is power in talking about our stories. To be able to tell our stories it’s a hard thing to do, but it is a necessary thing to do and that’s the thing about PTSD, most people don’t know it doesn’t have to be with your forever, it is not a forever diagnosis, you’ve got to work through it and you’ve got to talk about it. The more you talk about it the more you heal from it.”
- 4:55 – Taraji, Tracie and Melody Murray discuss the first step of getting help for PTSD.
- Taraji: “For those who need it now, what is the first step of getting help, you know because people just don’t know?”
- Melody Murray: “I think you need to acknowledge how you feel, how do you sleep? How do you eat? When you get stressed out what do you do? If there is something that is swimming around in our brain, a memory, an experience, our heart starts beating, our adrenaline starts rising, and then boom you wake up.”
- Taraji: “That’s exactly what happens to me every day, and it’s something different I am thinking about every time, it’s not the same thing, it’s not the same thing.”
- Melody Murray: “Pay attention to your friends, what are your friends saying, about ‘maybe you’re just too snippy,’ ‘you’re too irritable,’ or ‘you hit the bottle a little hard last night, what is up with you?’”
- 5:32 – The group discuss how to find a therapist and how Taraji found hers through a celebrity friend
- Tracie: “How do you find a therapist? I know we [Taraji and Tracie] have the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, have a resource guide where there are therapists but what are other ways to go about finding a therapist?”
- Melody Murray: “Word of mouth, asking people ‘who do you go to?’ or ‘have you heard of anybody?’ Talk to your primary care physician, they can have a list of people that they can refer you to, and there’s a bunch of websites geared towards Black women, websites geared towards Black men.”
- Taraji: “I was referred to my therapist by (actress and author) Gabourey Sidibe. ‘Thank you, Gaby… I love you!’”
- 6:50 – Wine time with Taraji and Tracie, discussing the week’s episodes
- Taraji: “It was so empowering to hear Gabrielle [Union] say sometimes she doesn’t feel seen because sometimes I don’t feel seen, and you are talking about two people who are always seen … go figure… you just ever know how you are there for someone.”
- Tracie: “Bri [from Monday’s episode] she felt like us, when we were younger, sort of mesmerized by the idea of ‘I got me a man and he is doing this for me and that for me, take this’ … whatever abuse it was, and stand up for him, even after the abuse.”
In week two, Taraji and Tracie will cover the topic of Mental Breakdowns, with guest Tamar Braxton who has a no-holds-barred conversation on her own mental breakdown, suicide attempt and what pushed her over the edge. Episodes can be found on facebook.com/Watch and Taraji P. Henson’s Facebook page: facebook.com/tarajiphenson
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