Jennette McCurdy reveals what made her walk out of her first therapy session

Jennette McCurdy is not afraid to put it all on the table, which is exactly what she’s done in her new memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. McCurdy joined the hosts of The View for a chat today about growing up, therapy, and a complicated healing journey.

McCurdy was thrust into the realm of child acting at just 7-years-old, at her mother’s insistence, which she chronicles in her memoir. She also shares the years enduring what she would come to realize was abuse at the hands of her mother. While it wasn’t always physical, McCurdy’s mother had abusive tendencies throughout her entire life, something her famous daughter didn’t truly realize until she experienced several forms of therapy years later. 

McCurdy notes that she had her mother on a pedestal, so when she first started therapy, a comment from the therapist made her get up and leave the room quickly. Ironically, the very same statement would eventually lead to her being able to recover and heal.

“The first therapists that I saw, as I was just sort of sharing anecdotes of my experience with my mom — she eventually got to a point where she said, ‘You know what you’re describing as abuse.’ I left, I quit therapy. I couldn’t tolerate the idea…that notion that my mom was abusive, because that would mean bringing her down off of that pedestal and reframing my whole existence that revolved around this idea that my mom knows best. [The idea that] What my mom wants for me is better than what I want for me because she knows better, and I’m nothing without her.”

Of course, McCurdy would return to therapy and work through that idea, but it took some time. As she explains, she wasn’t prepared or willing to accept those words when she first heard them.

“So to try and unpack that was something I wasn’t willing to do initially. And it took me a while to be able to say you know what, I’m going to get there again. I’m going to face that she was abusive. I’m going to deal with whatever that entails.”

McCurdy’s willingness to allow someone from the outside looking in to help her navigate a childhood that was full of some of the most extreme highs and lows is part of the reason she’s able to talk about it today. The title of her memoir is I’m Glad My Mom Died, after all. She knows it is polarizing and can be quite a shock, but it was the only way to make sense of everything she’d experienced and be honest with herself.