Interview: Former White House Chef Andre Rush on his own struggles with mental health: 'I stigmatized myself because I was a big guy'
Earlier this summer I talked to Chef Andre Rush about mental health in the veteran community and his own struggles with PTSD.
Rush is a former U.S. Army Master Sergeant and the White House chef for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
A widely-recognized food personality with almost a million Instagram followers, he famous went viral a few years ago for his 22-inch biceps. He also claims to do 2,222 push-ups a day.
“I have PTSD, and I have been open about it for a long time. I always emphasized that it was okay to have PTSD, but it wasn’t okay not to seek support,” Chef Andre Rush tells BroBible during an interview.
“But I was also one of those guys who was stigmatized. I stigmatized myself because I was a big guy.” Rush continues. He tells me that, as a big guy in the military, he felt like there was a stigma associated with showing vulnerability.
“Just like you, we’re really big guys. And we understand that people look at us like we are unbreakable. We’re planets, we’re rocks, we cannot be breaking. Sometimes we personally take on that persona, and we start thinking that internally for ourselves, knowing that we are messed up or something is going on with us, but we can never say it out loud. Sometimes we wait for our buddies to say it, but they won’t say it and come look at each other."
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