Raven was a recent guest on Prime Time with Sean Mooney; you can read a few transcribed highlights and listen to a clip from the show below:
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
I’m content now as a human being, I never could have dreamed of being content until I went to a psychologist’s couch. I’ve got a buddy of mine, and he never would have went to a psychologist, and he’s not a tough guy. He never would’ve went until I talked him into it. Now—a friend of his had died, his best friend—he needed to know how to deal with it. I said ‘go see this psychologist’ and he did. He’s grown so much as a person, and it’s amazing what you can learn on a couch about yourself. The best part is—or the worst part is—they make you do all of the work anyway.
One example is I always held myself to a higher standard; I thought my career was a failure because I never became the World Champion of WWE. Of course, the odds against that were astronomical—the fact that I burnt my bridge up there numerous times was making sure it’s not going to happen—and third, I may not even be qualified to be World Champion. I think I was, but let’s just say some people don’t think I was, so let’s say I wasn’t.
I went to a psychologist, and she finally pointed that out, she goes ‘the only one holding you to a higher standard is you. You don’t have to hold yourself to that standard. Your career was incredibly successful.’ And I go, ‘yeah, but…’ and she goes, ‘Let me ask you this; if somebody else had your career, what would you tell them?’ [I’d go] they had an incredibly successful career. [And she said] ‘so why can’t you let yourself have that?’ And that’s what we dealt with and went through until I finally accepted the fact that I had a hell of a career. Especially considering I’m a terrible athlete, a midcard athlete at best. I’m 6’0”—235 now—but in my heyday I was 230-235. I was never a big guy, I was not a good athlete, but I always knew that my psychology was stronger than theirs. Eventually I accepted that, and that was due to seeing a psychologist. Now it enabled me to deal with all of my other baggage, so that now I can be content.
I used to have to go out seven nights a week—I was going out seven nights a week from the time I was 15 until I was 45—I always had to be out. I had to be where the action is. Now, I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to stay home and watch TV with my dog. I couldn’t imagine not going out, I’d be missing out. What’s that FOMO—fear of missing out—that was me! I was scared of missing out, I didn’t want to miss a thing. I didn’t want to miss any excitement, now I don’t need it. I’ve already done it. I got the t-shirt, I threw up on the t-shirt, I bought another t-shirt, I threw up on that t-shirt, I bought another t-shirt, I wiped my ass with that t-shirt, bought another shirt, ripped the shirt to shreds. I finally decided t-shirts weren’t for me.
