Jesus: Have you always taken to soccer specifically for your mental health?

So I have anxiety.

That kind of used to be my baseline for a long time.

Like, I was, like, just anxious all the time.

Sure.

Did some therapy, and then my therapist was telling me that when you do have, like, a panic attack, it's your fight or flight.

Correct.

So if you actually flight, if you run, you move the feeling.

Oh, interesting.

Ali: It's about being present, being in the moment and taking care of this one thing at a time.

I'm a lot happier, like, due to therapy and exercise.

I have anxiety.

When you have anxiety, you get bad advice all the time, OK?

I asked one of my family members, I said, "Hey, man.

I'm going through panic attacks.

Do you have any advice?"

And his advice was, "Stop acting like a white boy."

[Laughter] That would get a bigger laugh if this was not a white crowd.

[Laughter] Jesus, voice-over: Therapy is a big thing.

It's like, there's a lot of stigma around it, right?

Ali: There's a lot of sigma, which is kind of funny to me.

I feel like it's worse to be burdening people with your trauma, with whatever, you know what I mean?

Don't burden your barber, OK, with your problems.

Right.

Yeah.

Go see a professional.

Leave the barber alone.

That's why your lineup's all messed up.

It's like, "Oh!

He messed me up.

He messed up my beard for a reason."

A hundred percent.

♪ Ali: For me, I had some childhood traumas.

I grew up fatherless.

My mom had my sister when she was 14, 15.

She had me, maybe 17, 18.

Jesus: Wow.

Ali: When she came to the States, she applied for me and my sister to come to the States, and it took about four years.

I lived in Ethiopia in that time.

Language, culture, friends were all in Yemen, so I had to, like, live in a new place, new language.

So that period of separation, you know what I mean, you're not going to feel that much support.

What gave you the confidence to go seek out therapy?

Because, you know, I'm a first-generation, as well.

I remember being hyper-aware to my parents'...

Absolutely.

financial situation and the hard work, the double jobs that they worked, so that comes with its own-- And they're immigrants, also, so they...

They're immigrants.

probably went through, like, a harsher life.

A way harsher life, and there was always this pressure.

It's like, "We're doing all this so you can have a better life."

It's like, "Oh, damn.

No pressure," you know?

Sometimes they look at kids, it's like, "Oh, they're just kids.

They don't understand."

Nah, man.

No.

I feel like I was the smartest version of myself when I was a kid.

Yeah, man!

You are almost smarter because you haven't numbed your emotions yet.

Man, as you're saying that, it took me years to be OK with my-- on my own, like, that journey of seeking out help, getting therapy.

Whenever I would kind of share this therapy thing with, like, a family member, they'd be like, "Wait.

What are you doing?

We don't tell other people our business."

You know, Did you ever deal with-- Ha ha!

Why are you snitching, Huh?

Yeah.

"Why are you snitching on us, man?

That's for us."

Ha ha!

I don't know if you feel this way, but I'm so grateful that I found comedy.

It's you controlling the narrative of your life.

Well, I feel like comedy is, like, this lived experience accounting, right, in the sense that you take this thing that maybe was a debit, you know, to you and becomes a credit, it becomes this, like, an asset...

Absolutely.

something where I can relate to, you know, getting held at gunpoint as a kid.

It's like, that, when it happened, was so terrible.

Yeah.

But I talk about it in my act and it was just like-- Now it's your closer.