Chris Rock Says He’s Been Living With Learning Disability, Now Attends Therapy

Chris Rock Attending Therapy 7 Hours In A Day After Discovering He’s Been Living With Nonverbal Learning Disability

Prolific comedian, actor and film maker, Chris Rock, is opening up about some issues he’s been quietly battling for his entire life. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the comedian reveals some of the things he’s been struggling with during quarantine.

Christopher also touched on other problems he’s been able to solve with all of this extra time on his hands. The ace comedian reflects on his early years.

“I had this great combination of big ego and low self-esteem,” he reveals. “And the ego gets you out onstage, but the low self-esteem is the thing that makes you practice so much because you don’t believe in yourself at all.”

 

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A post shared by Chris Rock (@chrisrock) on Sep 1, 2019 at 4:40pm PDT

Chris continued, “You think you’re a total f***ing fraud and you don’t think anybody could love you for being you, so you have to be good at this thing.”

He admitted that he constantly fears disappointing others. His decision to seek meaningful help for the first time in his life was caused by a friend’s suggestion that he may have Asperger’s. That prompted a nine hour battery of cognitive tests earlier this year, from which doctors diagnosed the comedian with a condition called nonverbal learning disorder, or NVLD.

Nonverbal Learning Disorder is a learning disability that causes difficulty with motor, visual spatial, and social skills. Rock also revealed during the interview that he finally learned how to swim.

“Do you know how f***ing hard it is for a grown-up to learn how to swim? You’ve got to not be scared to die,” he says, acknowledging how crazy it is to have a pool that he couldn’t use at his Alpine, New Jersey, home this whole time.