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Chris Brown to Ray Rice: ‘Seek Therapy or Become a Monster’

Chris Brown Ray Rice Advice anger management

With all the attention being paid to Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his now-wife in an elevator, it was inevitable that comparisons would be made to Chris Brown’s brutal 2009 assault of then-girlfriend Rihanna. The latter case is the most famous celebrity domestic-violence incident in recent memory, and both events share the fact that the public saw images of the victims after (or during) the attack.

Yesterday, Rihanna was affected by the fallout from Rice’s offenses when the NFL decided to scrap a video of her performing “Run This Town” before a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Ravens, who cut Rice this week. While she has yet to speak out about the controversy, Brown sat down with MTV News to candidly speak about his troubles and offer up some surprisingly level-headed advice to the troubled NFL player.

“I think it’s all about the choices you make,” Brown said in an interview with Sway Calloway. “With me, I deal with a lot of anger issues from my past — not knowing how to express myself verbally and at the same time not knowing how to cope with my emotions and deal with them and understand what they are.

“So I think help is great. I still talk to my therapist twice a week, and it helps me to … if I’m frustrated and I’m dealing with something, to vent and say what I’m going through so I can hear from an actual clinical person, ‘This is how you should react,’ or ‘It’s good to feel this way because feelings, emotions, and energy are supposed to come and go. It’s not supposed to stay there, you’re not supposed to keep it inside, because it’ll bottle up and you’ll become a monster.'”

He concluded with a message directed both at Rice and any other man who’s been involved in these disgusting crimes: “To Ray, or anybody else — because I’m not better than the next man — I can just say I’ve been down that road. I deal with situations and I’ve made my mistakes too, but it’s all about how you push forward and how you control yourself.”

Though it doesn’t even minutely erase all his wrongdoings with Rihanna, Frank Ocean, the fan he punched in Washington, D.C., or any of the other violent behavior he’s exhibited over the years, we’ll grudgingly commend Brown on his honesty about his issues and commitment to therapy. As it stands right now, this situation can’t get any worse, so hopefully his words make an impression on Rice or any other troubled men out there who have or might harm a woman.

Watch the interview here: