Behind The Humor, TikTok Star Chris Olsen Is Busting Mental Health Barriers

If Chris Olsen—content creator and newly a purveyor of his own coffee brand Flight Fuel—were wondering about the impact of the clips from his real-life therapy sessions he posts on social media, he recently got a resounding affirmation.

“Chari D’Amelio came up to me at an event and said my therapy videos were the reason she got back into therapy, because she had had a tough time with a therapist before but seeing mine helped her get back into it,” he says of his fellow social media star.

“And I remember thinking, ‘This is actually impacting people.’ There are plenty of people who feel like it’s just giving them a lighthearted moment and then there are other people who are really starting therapy or restarting therapy because of the videos. It reminded me that the medium of TikTok can be so much more impactful than just something we aimlessly scroll on.”

Indeed, for his 10 million followers on the platform and nearly 1 million more on Instagram, Olsen is not only a chronicler of the comedically chaotic—he’s the guy who got Harry Styles’ attention at a recent show with his sign emblazoned Daddy?—but a steadfast advocate for busting barriers when it comes to mental health, particularly among youth and members of the LBGTQ+ community.

His vibe is somewhere between that guy you notice partaking in shenanigans at the pick-up counter and your close friend who loves a hot take. As such, he has a knack for validating a gamut of emotions, and normalizing anxiety and depression by speaking candidly about his own experiences. Those recorded therapy sessions are just one of his seamlessly delivered musings.

“I know with a lot of people, there is a certain stigma around therapy. And I thought, maybe there’s a way to connect with my audience by sharing how lighthearted therapy can sometimes be. And how it’s not always this scary thing where you have to dig to your deepest levels and share your darkest secrets or traumas—because that’s not happening to us every week,” Olsen says.

“I know there are so many people in pain and I want to be able to reach out and help every single one of them. So I just want to continue to share myself in that way because if I’m not able to directly help you maybe you were able to see one of my videos and I was able to impact you in the way you were looking for.”

The 25-year-old recently marked five years of sobriety, a milestone in a journey that’s been enmeshed with his mental health since high school.

“At home my life had kindof blown up. My mom went to a treatment center, my parents went through a divorce and I went to a boarding school, all within the same year,” he recounts. “That’s when I got diagnosed [for anxiety and depression] and put on medication. So from age 15 to, honestly, until I went to treatment myself it was just a learning experience. You’re trying to figure out how to feel more like yourself again, or even find yourself at that point. It definitely came to a climax when I went to a treatment center, which was just a long year of concentrated self-exploration.”

Olsen credits his family for the tough-love intervention that pushed him to take a hard look at treatment, and says he’s “100 percent grateful” he made the decision to go.

“I think there is credit I continue to try to give more to myself that yes, at 19 I decided I need to take this seriously,” he says. “So many people in treatment spent their 20s partying and going wild, and a lot of them told me, ‘If I had gotten this right at your age I can’t even imagine where I’d be now.’ Those words really stuck with me. I thought, I do have the chance to get this right at this age. It just felt like I had no other choice. There was no forward trajectory with the way my life was going at that point.”

For his followers in the LGBTQ+ community, Olsen’s soul-baring can be even more impactful.

“One of the best interactions I had in person was with someone who came up to me in a gym locker room and said, ‘Hey I just want to thank you for what you do as a sober person in the gay community. We don’t really have many people to look up to in that way.’ Which really stuck with me. Being in the LGBTQ community, similar to a sobriety journey, there’s so much we are just trying to learn along the way. You learn by experiences and you’re sometimes trying to escape from some of your past and trying to just like not think about what’s going on internally,” he says.

“So it makes sense, especially with the people I surround myself with, that there are some substance abuse issues in the LGBTQ community and I just want to be able to show that other side of it. Especially as a younger person and somebody who got sober at 19. There’s also a big party culture in the gay community, which can add so much community and people can find their people in that culture. But if it does become a point of concern for you… I’ve still been able to create a life that I really enjoy living so far. That’s why I like to connect.”

With the debut of his Flight Fuel Coffee brand—a perfect fit for the coffee aficionado behind the viral videos of custom deliveries to everyone from Meghan Trainor to Austin Butler to Vice President Kamala Harris—Olsen is stepping even more into limelight. It’s an opportunity for continued reflection on the balance of being both a person and a public persona.

“A lot of my content is very high-energy and chaotic. And a lot of my friends who know me well say, ‘It’s funny because that is you, maybe less than 50 percent of the time.’ I’m pretty introverted,” he says.

“So a lot of the time I get to myself is definitely not shared. I’ve learned, there are certain things I don’t feel that great about sharing, and one of those things is my dating life these days. I share a very specific amount without giving too much because that’s something I want to continue keeping more private. I started on the app sharing 100 percent of that. It really is just an ebb and flow.”

He’s also working more on his long game.

“I love being very busy [and] I’m also trying to start learning how to be productive with my down time. Not in the way of, I need to fill that down time, but how can I actively relax? How can I choose self-care rather than saying, I’m not doing enough? How can I use that time to give energy back to myself.”

Mind Reading (formerly Hollywood & Mind) is a recurring column that lives at the intersection of entertainment and wellbeing, and features interviews with musicians, actors and other culture influencers who are elevating the conversation around mental health.