The ‘Chrisley Knows Best’ alum admitted her father Todd started therapy due to “a lot of things happening in our life that caused him a lot of trauma”
Savannah Chrisley revealed her father Todd went to therapy before beginning his 12-year prison sentence for financial crimes in January.
On the latest edition of her Unlocked podcast, the Chrisley Knows Best alum discussed how Todd stopped using “his humor to cope with a lot of things” after going to therapy.
“I would say in the past years, he was in a lot of therapy, a lot of things happening in our life that caused him a lot of trauma and of just dealing with his own mental health,” she told guest Patrick Custer, a mental health and addiction awareness advocate.
“He has started to … use his words a little more instead of his humor, and he’s able to discuss things better,” she added. “He’s more patient, he’s able to dig deep into it instead of using humor as a deflection.”
Amid her family’s legal woes, 25-year-old Savannah said she’s come to the realization that “our parents are human too.”
“I think it finally made me realize, OK, my parents aren’t super humans. They’re not superheroes,” she shared. “They’re human beings and they go through stuff like the rest of us do. They can’t fix everything. They can’t. And that was a big point for me, and I think it really broke my heart because I was like, What, they can’t fix everything?”
“But, watching my parents evolve and grow into the people they are today, It’s been such an honor because I see especially in my dad like where he once was and where he is now,” she continued. “And I’ve never been so proud of a person as I am of him, to see that growth that’s happened. So it is really awesome as their daughter to sit back and watch it.”
Last November, Todd and his wife Julie, 50, were sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison for financial crimes. Todd began his 12-year sentence at Florida’s Federal Prison Camp Pensacola in mid-January on the same day as Julie started her seven-year sentence at Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. They’re currently in the process of appealing their case.
Earlier this month, Savannah opened up about her mother’s experience at FMC Lexington, sharing it’s “definitely harder” for her mother than it has been for Todd.
“But she’s just staying busy. You know, like, she’s trying to do anything and everything, take classes, [be] first at bat — everything known to man that she can do, she does,” she shared. “And you know my mom. Like, she walks in a room, if something needs to be done, she just starts doing it. And so she’s trying to stay busy. Her health, she’s trying to focus on that.”
She added, “I think she’s trying to shield us from a lot of things. Because that’s my mom. That’s who she is.”