Kevin Smith is opening up about how he learned he was minimizing traumatic experiences from his childhood, hoping others also realize that “trauma is trauma.”
The “Clerks” filmmaker told People in an exclusive profile published Wednesday that in January, he woke up one morning and had a mental health emergency he described as “scary” and a “complete break from reality.”
Smith told the magazine, “At that moment, I wouldn’t have been averse to not being around any longer. I called a friend and said, ‘I’m in a weird, dark place. I need to go somewhere and get help.’”
The actor checked into Arizona’s Sierra Tucson treatment center the next day, where he spent a month realizing his mental health emergency stemmed from unaddressed childhood trauma.
Smith disclosed to People that at 6 years old, an older boy he didn’t know forced him to perform a sexual act on a girl in his neighborhood. Smith said he always shrugged off the incident as “just playing doctor in an alleyway,” but a therapist at the facility framed it differently when Smith told her about it.
“When a third party is instructing you to do something against your core values like that,” Smith recalled his therapist telling him. “That’s sexual abuse.”
Smith also told the magazine he had a humiliating experience in fourth grade in which his teacher fat-shamed him in front of his class by pointing out the size of his “gut.”
Smith admitted when he first entered the facility that he had a hard time viewing these experiences as traumatic — especially since he was sharing them in group sessions that included military veterans. But he stressed to the publication that no one should ever downplay their trauma.
“In the beginning, it was tough to share when somebody’s talking about watching their friend get killed and I’m like, ‘Well, my fourth-grade teacher told me I was fat,’” Smith said. “But I learned that there’s no differentiation [between levels of trauma] to the human nervous system. Internally, trauma is trauma.”
Although Smith has never before spoken about being sexually abused, he was publicly fat-shamed by Southwest Airlines in 2010 when the company explained in a now-deleted blog post that he was removed from a flight after being deemed to “have needed more than one seat for his comfort and those seated next to him.”
To read Smith’s profile in full — and how he used his public persona, which he calls “the other guy,” to mask his trauma as an adult — head over to People.
If you or someone you know needs help, dial 988 or call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also get support via text by visiting suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention.