Gabrielle Union Discusses PTSD From Being Raped on ‘Peace of Mind with Taraji’

Taraji P. Henson and entrepreneur Tracie Jade Jenkins recently launched a Facebook show, Peace of Mind with Taraji, which addresses mental health and its surrounding elements. The first episode addresses PTSD outside of its regular association with war.

Gabrielle Union was the first guest on the new show, and talked about her experience being raped in 1991 at 19-years-old, and how she suffers PTSD from that moment, still to this day.

“The terror that exists to this day in my body, in my spirit, in my soul,” said Union stated. “Usually my right arm starts to feel like it is going numb, and it just feels like a full body heart attack, the way you would imagine a heart attack, but in your knees, in your legs, in your arms, in your chest, in your eyeballs. Trauma can take so many forms…”

“For whatever reason, every time I talk about being a rape survivor, people are like [gasp] and then they forget, and I’m like we are so conditioned that we know what someone looks like who has suffered from PTSD, we believe we know what rape victims look like and it is not me.”

Union also spoke on Zaya Wade, and says Wade told her she felt “outed.”

“‘When you guys posted that picture of me, in Chicago at my birthday party,” Union recalls a conversation with Wade. “It’s just Zaya standing next to her cake and that picture was dissected on certain Black blogs and the comments were guessing as to who Zaya was and why…she said ‘I felt like I was outed, and I was just standing next to my cake.’

Watch the episode below.