Continuing with our I'm listening initiative designed to destigmatize conversations around mental health, Audacy’s Katie Neal speaks with country duo John and TJ Osborne of Brothers Osborne about how therapy has remained a guiding light in both of their lives.

“Therapy is very important,” John Osborne says bluntly. “Everyone should absolutely do it because -- which leads me to the second thing that you should do for mental health -- is just talk about it. The more you talk about it, the less you internalize it, the smaller your mental struggles become. They'll always be there,” he adds, “that's just part of being a human. It's OK. That's just purely natural, but the less you talk about it and the less you confront it, the more of a big scary monster in a dark room it feels like.”

“So talking about it, talking about it to your friends, talking about it to your family and talking about it to a proper therapist is really good,” Osborne believes, “because you can say anything to these people and it's like -- that's what they're there for.” Opening up allowed him the space to truly tackle one hill at a time. “I swept it under the rug for years and years and years until it became, you know, the Swiss Alps with the tiny rug sitting on top of it -- and then talking about it, it's just shrunken down to just a little grain of sand.”

“You know, whenever we have like a physical ailment, like if we broke our thumb, we would just go get it fixed, right? We would tell somebody, ‘Oh I broke my thumb.’ It's no different,” Osborne says. “The mental side is just like the physical side. You just gotta talk about it, seek help. It's there.”

“People want help,” he believes. “There is a stigma around it, but that's all a construct. I have never had one person over the years of me talking about it to hundreds of people roll their eyes. I would say 100% of the time they lean in and go, ’Tell me more… I struggle with this or my significant other struggles with this and I'm wide open about it.’ That’s the number one thing: Just talk about it as much as you can.”

“There's so many different types of mental things that are challenging,” TJ adds, “but the thing [that is] really unfortunate about it is it’s expensive to get therapy. It's also really challenging to make it work into some people's schedules -- and some people are a little embarrassed about it and don't want to talk about it. It can be challenging. One of the first things I feel like therapy taught me was -- and sometimes what helps us -- is instead of coming in with explaining what someone did wrong or like, ‘You do this, you do that,’ just explaining how whatever happened made you feel…  it really brings people in.”

Keeping things to yourself, John reiterates, is “like carrying like bricks, and the more you talk about it, you just take a brick and you put it on the ground. You take another brick, you put it on the ground… and you'll always have a brick or two. It's just part of being human, but, you know, holding on to an entire pallet of bricks gets really heavy after a while.”

“I'm telling you, if you're a person out there listening and you're like, ‘I don't need therapy, I already know what's wrong with me,’ you're the prime candidate for someone that needs therapy -- because we all need it.”

“Even if it's a friend, a confidant, or a partner," TJ says, “just to talk about it a little bit, that will do wonders.”

Words by Joe Cingrana Interview by Katie Neal