By Adegboyega Adeleye
American ace comedian, actor and filmmaker, Chris Rock, has revealed that he has spent the post-COVID-19 years undergoing intensive therapy to confront personal insecurities and reevaluate the direction of his life.
The 61-year-old entertainment icon made this known during a recent interview with The New York Times, where he opened up on his mental health journey, his emotional evolution, and why it took him over a decade to return to the director’s chair.
According to Rock, the lockdown forced him into deep introspection, making him realise the necessity of mental healthcare and finding peace with self-worth.
“I’ve been doing a lot of therapy the last few years, post-Covid, and a lot of it is about not feeling insecure. A lot of it is about ‘you’re enough,’” he stated.
When asked about whether he feels insecure about his fame or industry standing, the veteran stand-up star dismissed the notion of status anxiety. However, he admitted that self-doubt occasionally creeps in when he observes his peers’ relentless work ethic or compares himself with other parents.
“I don’t ever really feel insecure about my ‘status,’ per se. Occasionally I’ll meet people that are obviously working harder than me and that’ll make me feel insecure. Adam Sandler, Rick Rubin. You’re like, ‘How many things are you doing right now?’ And some people are better with their kids than me. I think I’m a good dad,” Rock said.
Rock, who shares two daughters, Lola and Zahra, with his ex-wife Malaak Compton-Rock, noted that fatherhood and therapy have combined to reshape how he relates to people.
He disclosed that a diagnosis of NVLD (nonverbal learning disorder) required dedicated professional sessions to unlearn certain personal habits that once hindered his private life.
“The effects are that I’m really bad at reading nonverbal signals. I catastrophize, I have black-and-white thinking — both things that are great for being a comedian but bad in personal life and real relationships. So I’ve been learning. I have to see a woman once a week,” he explained.
He credited the continuous therapeutic journey with fostering deeper emotional intelligence: “Part of all this therapy is developing empathy and really being able to get inside of another character. So the last four or five years, I’m a way more empathetic person.”
Touching on his 12-year hiatus from directing feature films following his 2014 critical hit, Top Five, Rock disclosed that the gap was driven by a complex mix of marital divorce, financial obligations, and professional dead-ends.
“Life, Covid, I got divorced, which meant I had to make real money. Maybe I had some other scripts that the market didn’t respond to. It’s not like I was sitting around. But Covid was a time to be like, OK, what am I doing with my life? And other [expletive] I don’t feel like talking about. I had a lot of stuff going on the last 12 years,” he noted.
Rock emphasised that the self-examination helped him realize his true creative calling: “I should be directing small movies, character-driven pieces. Maybe I’m not in the movie as much as I used to be. So I’ve been writing a lot more.”
That artistic realisation birthed his upcoming Hollywood drama, Misty Green, produced by A24 and scheduled to premiere on October 9. Rock wrote, directed, and co-starred in the feature alongside British-Nigerian actress Rosalind Eleazar.
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