Chris Rock has been diagnosed with nonverbal learning disorder.
The 55-year-old comedian has revealed he struggles to understand non-verbal signals made in conservations, which he says is great for comedy and writing jokes but not more "one-on-one relationships".
He said: "And all I understand are the words. By the way, all of those things are really great for writing jokes – they’re just not great for one-on-one relationships. And I’d always just chalked it up to being famous.
"Any time someone would respond to me in a negative way, I’d think, ‘Whatever, they’re responding to something that has to do with who they think I am.’ Now, I’m realising it was me. A lot of it was me."
And Chris admits he has never really "dealt" with his childhood trauma.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he added: "I’m not belittling today’s youth, but I wish somebody had sent me a bad text when I was a kid. These m************ were trying to kill me … I thought I was actually dealing with it, and the reality is I never dealt with it. The reality was the pain and the fear that brought me, I was experiencing it every day."
Chris has also been learning to swim during lockdown.
He shared: "Do you know how f****** hard it is for a grown-up to learn how to swim? You’ve got to not be scared to die. The other day, this guy says to me, ‘OK, you’re going to dive into the deep end and swim to the other side,’ and I’m like, ‘Are you f****** crazy? But then I dove into the deep end and I swam to the other side, and it’s a metaphor for what I’ve been trying to do during this time."