Jay Glazer is opening up again about his struggles with mental health, posting a video to social media saying he has leaned on his wife, Rosie, and Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps to help him resist “suicidal ideations.”
“It’s a battle a lot of us deal with and a having a daily battle between my ears is not something I signed up for,” the Fox NFL Insider wrote on X. “But with that said, years ago I made a DECISION to CHOOSE life and promise I will choose to make this same decision every day moving forward.
“Instead of being angry and resentful about my pain I now look at it as a way to be of service to others. It’s now my honor! Please, please, please choose life. You are worth it! We all are. GOD bless.”
The 56-year-old Glazer added that he was “hesitant” to post his message because when he made similar comments in the past he “got trashed with the worst comments and [the] content was too sensitive to bother dealing with that s–t again.”
But Glazer, who previously detailed a lifelong battle with depression in his 2022 memoir “Unbreakable,” decided to post his latest message “with the chance it can help” because Thursday was World Suicide Prevention Day.
“I was really in that thing of like, f–k, like, I didn’t want to live,” Glazer said in an accompanying video. “I had suicidal ideations a lot, and I feel like people are better off without me. I still have those a lot.
“And I told my wife, when I have these moments, she said, ‘What do you need from me?’ She’s like the first person who said, ‘What do you need from me?’ I said, ‘Just tell me you’re not going anywhere.” I’m getting choked up, but ‘just tell me you’re not going anywhere.’ She’s the first person that’s ever done that.
“I have bipolar meltdowns, dude, and I will never put my hands on her or anything like that. But I put them on me. I self-harm, to this day.”
Glazer added that he and Phelps — the 23-time Olympic gold medalist who also has openly detailed his long-term battles with anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts — regularly support and help each other.
“Michael Phelps and I will FaceTime each other when we’re having these moments. He does a similar thing. And we stop each other, it’s because we’re now these voices that can open up,” Glazer said. “This used to be my friend, but that’s my brother.”
The video cuts to one FaceTime chat in which Glazer asks, “Give me your unbreakable moment?” and Phelps replies, “It’s probably the moment of not wanting to be alive.”
“Everybody else uses it against us, right? They weaponize it against us, they shame us,” Glazer added. “It’s that whole ‘We don’t show it, we don’t show it, we don’t cry, we don’t show pain.’ That same mentality gets so many of us to want to throw ourselves off a bridge. Dudes need to start knowing you can be that f–king warrior when you need to do warrior s–t. But be more of a warrior by being vulnerable.
“You only have a couple of times in life you really get to find out who you are. But I made the commitment to the universe and to God, I’m not going to kill myself. I can’t now. Like, I’m not going to do it. Because if there’s anything I can do, I can take on pain, and I won’t do that to anybody else. If I caved into that, then everything I would have [done] … all the help that I’ve tried to help everyone else with, I would have been full of s–t. I can’t leave the world like that. I just can’t.”
The two-minute video then concludes with a message posted on the screen, reading “You’re not alone…Please call 988 if you need help. You got this!!”
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis, you can call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for free and confidential crisis counseling.
