Tish Cyrus is opening up about the long and emotional road she travelled while trying to heal after her divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus, revealing that it took years before she truly processed everything she went through.
Nearly four years after the former couple filed for divorce in 2022, Tish reflected on that period during a Jan. 14 appearance on The Squeeze podcast, describing how survival mode became her default response.
For years, Tish said she pushed herself to keep moving forward without stopping to fully confront the pain.
“Anything that’s happened I’m kind of like, ‘Well that’s life, just keep it moving,’” she shared, explaining that she had been in the relationship since her early 20s and didn’t pause to unpack what she was feeling.
That approach became even harder after she lost her mother, Loretta Jean Palmer Finley, just two years before the marriage ended.
Tish admitted she was extremely close to her mom and barely had time to grieve before her personal life began to unravel.
“Two of the most tragic things in my life that happened—I did not process or even stop to really think about,” she said.
During that time, Tish acknowledged she relied heavily on marijuana, calling herself “a major weed smoker.”
She explained that it helped manage her anxiety and acted almost like medication, even though she didn’t fully recognize she was self-medicating.
“I didn’t even realize that I was doing it for that reason,” she admitted.
That changed in 2024, when she stopped using cannabis and was suddenly overwhelmed by emotions she had suppressed for years.
“I do think it kind of numbed all that pain and then I stopped smoking and all of a sudden a week later, I’m just in full-on anxiety to the point of not functioning,” Tish recalled.
“It was the roughest thing I’d ever gone through.”
Now, more than a year later, Tish says she’s finally learning how to manage her anxiety and feels stronger on the other side.
“I’m so much better,” she emphasized.
“Like, I was not functioning for that year, I was just trying to survive. Now, I’m completely on the other side of that.” As she put it simply, “I’m learning to control it.”
