'It was about feeling like I could never be myself,' the 'Braxton Family Values' star says.
Tamar Braxton is candidly opening up about what she's been up to ever since she was found unresponsive and hospitalized over the summer.
As multiple outlets reported at the time, the Braxton Family Values star was found unresponsive on July 16 at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in downtown Los Angeles. The singer and TV personality was then transferred to a local hospital facility to receive more specialized mental health treatment. News of Braxton's hospitalization came just a day after a trailer was released for her We TV docuseries, Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life!.
During her guest appearance on Wednesday's Tamron Hall, Braxton addressed everything from the scary incident to her continuing struggles with mental health and her desire to repair her relationship with her family.
When asked by Hall if she's "ever tried to end her life before," Braxton responded, "That was the lowest point of life. I'm just going to be 100%. There has been a time where I wanted to, but this was the first time where I've actually acted on it."
"I already felt dead. I felt choked. It was about feeling like I could never be myself and being misunderstood and having the stigma of the angry Black woman all the time," she added, of how she was feeling at that time and the negative impact of having so much of her personal life in the spotlight. "And that's not who I am. That's not what I wanted to portray. It wasn't just about being an angry Black woman, it was about real issues coming up on the show."
Braxton told Hall that "it's been a lot of hard, dark times," and she was "diagnosed with depression and anxiety due to a circumstance."
"No, I'm not medicated," she clarified, "but I am in counseling every single day."
In another portion of the interview, Braxton also opened up about the story of her sexual abuse being shared on TV. She claimed someone in her family gave the information to show producers.
"My family did an episode with Iyanla [Vanzant], and I was excited about it," Braxton recalled. "But that excitement came to an end when she decided to tell everyone that I was domestically sexually abused from the ages of six to 16. And I've never told anyone that."
"It's not an allegation. It's a fact," she continued, telling Hall that she never told anyone in her family about the abuse and it "haunts" her. "Because to be betrayed, just so people can tune in and laugh at you and judge you and criticize you. It was terrible."
As of July, Braxton is no longer working with WE tv, and is currently attending counseling sessions in an attempt to mend things with her family. Braxton slammed the network back in October for using her pain for ratings with the release of a new Braxton Family Values trailer.
"We went for help. Me and my family. We went for counseling," Braxton told Hall. "Because the show, it did create a lot of division between me and my sisters and it did create something that was never there, which was we couldn’t get along and we couldn't communicate. We stopped communicating. And we just simply wasn't a family anymore. And that help turned into a nightmare for me."
"I talk to my mother every single day," she continued. "I love my sisters. I feel like I have what I want from them. I have their love. I know my family loves me...I know, everybody wants me to blame my family. When you sign up for something like this, and you have the kind of people behind the scenes that you have…"
Braxton added that what she wants from her family moving forward is just "forgiveness from both sides."
"There are things that I've done that I'm not happy about and that I'm not proud of," she confessed. "I've had my dark moments with my family where I feel like, I'm sure that I betrayed them at some point and I feel like forgiveness all the way around."
"I'm not going to sit here and act like a complete victim. I played a part in that. I know what it's like to keep up ratings and keep up having the number one show on a network and having all of those bells and whistles and that comes with a price," she continued. "Sometimes that comes with embarrassing your friends or embarrassing your siblings. I don't think I sold my soul [to keep the show on]. I don't think at the time I knew exactly what I was doing. I think that for the show and for my family, we wanted to have a great show and sometimes that is making the deal with the devil and that is doing things that you wouldn’t normally do."
At the end of the day, Braxton says she loves her family and "doesn't want to fight." She said that was never her intention when creating Braxton Family Values.
"Now we're at the point where it's assaults and threats. This is not the show that I created," she said. "I created the Braxton Family Values because I wanted to be an example of the Black community with five Black amazing sisters, with all different walks of life, who can inspire and help and people can learn from our experiences along the way. We wasn't teaching anything but being devilish and I didn't want to do that."
And as for whether she could see herself ever doing reality TV again? She told Hall she is "absolutely" done with it!
"Forever and ever, amen," she replied. "I feel like that’s the best thing for me. I don’t feel like I need to give a depiction of my life and what’s happening and a play by play."
Hear more in the video below.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
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