Esperanza Hope To Cope: Terry Bradshaw on his struggles with depression and ADD

by bp Magazine

The famous quarterback talks with Pittsburgh psychiatrist Dr. Alan A. Alexson for the American Psychiatric Association:

 

 

On ADD issues in his professional life:

“I wouldn’t admit it then, the struggles I had learning all the plays … learning everybody’s position, or the blocking and the routes and the adjustments and the blitzes and the audibles. It took me a long time. One of the problems I had as a broadcaster and doing games, and one of the things I hated, was the fact I couldn’t remember the players’ names.”

 

On his depression diagnosis:

“…it was like, ‘Oh, thank God. Thank God. It’s good to know I’ve got some issues.’”

 

On seeking help with therapy:

“I tell everybody today, “Listen, just because you’re feeling good and everything else, don’t lose track of your counseling time … You have to understand, first of all, I congratulate myself on saying I need help. I tell people this all the time.”

On being honest:

“I just didn’t want to be your hero and then all of a sudden, you know, your hero has got flaws … I didn’t want to tell anybody the bad things about me,” he said. “First of all, you just got to look in the mirror and go, ‘Hey, look, I have some problems here. I need some help.’ And then you’ve got to seek it out. When you start, you have to be brutally honest. It was not easy. There was hardly ever a session that I didn’t just break down because I just couldn’t deal with it.”

 

On the role of his faith:

“My [Baptist] faith was the only thing I could turn to when I was by myself. When my friends weren’t around. When I wasn’t in a crowd. When I wasn’t playing football, performing and hurting, then it was my faith.”

 

On being received when going public about his mental illness:

“You have to be thick-skinned because it’s all perceived to be a publicity stunt. When I was able to go out and talk about it, having to deal with the idiots that would rip me in the media and make fun of me on television was shocking,” he says. “And then, after awhile, you get to a point where you just, you know what, the hell with these people. They will never understand. They just flat don’t understand.”

 

Related: Taking the Field Against Depression

via Esperanza – Hope To Cope
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