On his Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze podcast, MVP shared deeply personal details about his childhood and the steps he has taken to heal from lifelong trauma.
Reflecting on how he historically handled pain and loss, MVP explained that he grew up in an environment where men were expected to stay silent about their struggles. He opened up about the severe adversity he faced at an early age:
“I’m a man of my time, you know. You deal with it. You don’t complain, you don’t cry, you don’t talk it out, you deal with it. And you know, I was abused as a child. Physically abused, $exually abused. Got beat up a lot.
Then, you know, was in the streets, gunplay, violence. Saw my best friend get shot and killed at 15. Did my own dirt, can’t take back. Then at 16, went to prison for 10 years. I grew up in prison. I went from being a teenager to a man in prison.”
MVP revealed that for decades, he simply boxed up those traumatic events and tried to move forward without ever addressing them. However, that unresolved pain eventually surfaced in unexpected ways, including panic attacks during flights that felt so intense he believed he was suffering a heart attack.
Those experiences led MVP to talk with AEW’s mental health counselor, Chris Manzione, who provided a perspective that changed his approach to mental health:
“Chris Manzione said that we all have a reservoir for trauma. Like a dam, if you don’t release some of that water, that water is going to find a way to get out, it’s going to start coming through.
He said some of the anxiety that I was experiencing… that’s that compartmentalized trauma that we as strong, manly men just put away.
If you don’t confront it, if you don’t deal with it, it’s going to come out. And he said to me, ‘You, my friend, have a 50-year reservoir of trauma built.’ That was my impetus for therapy.”
MVP credited regular therapy sessions with helping him finally process his past, noting that carrying emotional weight in silence is not healthy. He strongly urged other men to shed the old stigma surrounding mental health:
“It’s okay to go and get help. It’s okay to talk to somebody. It’s okay, because sometimes people snap because they don’t deal with it… it just builds up.
I’ve seen Mike Tyson cry several times, and who’s going to tell him he’s crying about his feelings? That man’s a savage. It’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to cry.”
