Shay Johnson Said Iyanla Showed Her "Disrespect" After "Fix My Life" Fail
Shay Johnson Has Words For Iyanla After Explosive <em>Fix My Life</em> Encounter: “I Don’t Vibe With Her Smart A– Mouth”
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Source: Paras Griffin/Getty Images; Paras Griffin/Getty Images for ESSENCE / Getty
On Saturday, the latest season of Iyanla: Fix My Life premiered with reality star Shay Johnson and her family, including her mother and brothers Emjay and Joe. Though her mother and siblings definitely had a breakthrough after opening up about their issues, Shay, we’re not so sure of. She walked out soon after the “process” began.
It really all went off the rails for her from the beginning. It was clear that Shay’s guard was up and that she wasn’t interested in having anyone call out her behavior, though she was the one who reached out for her family to be on the show. It was especially clear she wasn’t ready for the process when Iyanla Vanzant brought her in to hear from her brothers, and they both pretty much told her she’s “rude and disrespectful.”
When Shay tried to respond, Iyanla told her that she would get the chance to talk, but not at that moment. The point was to get her to be able to listen and take in other people’s feelings so she didn’t always react immediately. She didn’t like that, and in turn, reacted immediately.
“I didn’t ask you to take me in there and get negative from my brothers and not be able to have a rebuttal,” she said. “I do trust you but that was BS.”
When Iyanla didn’t agree, Shay said she was ready to go: “Lady I’m out. You’re f–kin’ weird.”
It was literally day one, the beginning of the process and Shay was already over it.
“I told you I didn’t want it to be no intervention, pointing the finger at me making me look bad,” she told the spiritual coach. “F–k the process if it’s making me look like a godd–n fool!”
As she kept interrupting Iyanla, the host became annoyed and told Shay, “You already look like a fool.”
“Alright and you a fool too,” Shay replied. “F–k yo process. F–k yo process. How about that?”
Shay would eventually say she was leaving and go home. That decision, and her outbursts, were enough for Iyanla to make it clear she wouldn’t work with the reality star again.
“I don’t care if she brings Jesus with her, she can’t come back up in here,” she said.
By the end of the episode, her family members were able to work through problems with the matriarch of the family, and Joe was able to clear the air with his wife. Knowing the success they were having, they called Shay to invite her back. She was disappointed that when she walked away from the process, they didn’t do the same. But with the promise that they wouldn’t gang up on her, Shay agreed to return. Iyanla wouldn’t be communicating with her, though. When she came back into the process, she took responsibility for her behavior towards Iyanla, who removed herself from the room but was watching the interaction. However, she also said Iyanla talked to her in a disrespectful manner, too.
“We both said some things we should not have said,” she said. “She’s not here for me to talk to her and that’s completely fine. She needs her space and I do too. But there were things said on both ends. At the end of the day, I have to hold myself accountable for my actions. I should have just ignored what I felt was disrespect from her and just left.”
Shay would continue to find fault with Iyanla and her methods after the show aired. She shared her thoughts in an Instagram Live on Sunday.
“I do believe that she does have a certain type of talent where she can identify certain things in individuals. But I believe how she redirects her emotions and her anger, you can’t throw the same direct approach at everybody. And I’m not even a therapist and I know that,” she said, according to UrbanBelleMagazine. “As a therapist, you should be able to listen and understand people’s emotions and know how to approach them. To me, there shouldn’t have been a situation where, ‘Oh you’re not talking to me no more. Now I gotta prove a point. Now I got my ego in the way to where now you’re not coming back on here. You won’t be able to talk to me.’”
She stated that she believed that as a professional who may not receive a favorable response from everyone she works with, Iyanla, basically, shouldn’t have given up on her so easily.
“Instead of allowing your ego and pride to get in the way, why not have a conversation because you guys came to me and asked me to have a conversation with her. I said yes and she shut it down allowing her ego to get in the way,” she said. “So that’s why I’m like, if you’re a professional, this isn’t what you do. I didn’t attack you. I didn’t call you out your name. I didn’t do anything for you to have the reaction that you had because this is something you do professionally. So you deal with all different types of emotions. So based on that, your reaction to me was bulls–t.”
“But I will never go on national television and talk to a therapist again,” she continued. “What I did realize is it’s very important to see a therapist. If you have issues it really can help situations. But the right therapist can help your situation. You have to find the right therapist that you connect with and you just have a vibe. I don’t vibe with her. I don’t vibe with her attitude. I don’t vibe with her smart a– mouth. I don’t vibe with her disrespect. And I don’t vibe with the fact that she don’t own up to sh-t. ‘Cause you want to act like I was just there arguing with the air and talking to myself and the walls. No, I was actually talking to you. And you had a rebuttal for everything I said.”
“You had a rebuttal for everything I had to say so don’t try to play victim and put out the edit version as if you didn’t snap at me, cuss me out,” she added. “Oh no, I’m a bust your sh-t right on out sweetheart. And I don’t got nothing against her. I think she’s amazing but your approach, you got to switch it up for the people you deal with ’cause everybody can’t handle that bark, bark approach. Just switch it up a little bit and you’ll be fine.”
You can see the clash between Shay and Iyanla for yourself below:
But this isn’t the first time the Fix My Life star has bumped heads hard with the people she’s worked with. Hit the flip for a few other times things went left in Iyanla’s attempts to fix lives.
Iyanla and DMX
Talk about cringeworthy. DMX reunited with his son Xavier after more than a year of not seeing each other and being in touch. It was emotional from the moment the rapper walked in the door. There were too many barriers in the way, from DMX not being fully clean in terms of drug abuse to Iyanla also being somewhat of a barrier by interrupting their conversation. It was understandable when the talk didn’t seem to be going well that she would want to help facilitate something more positive, but for their first conversation in a long time, it may have been necessary for them to talk alone. Frustrated by that, the rapper lashed out, cursing at Iyanla and leaving the room.
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Iyanla and Tamar Braxton
Tamar Braxton was quite resistant to Iyanla’s process when she and her family appeared on Fix My Life to address their issues. Despite Iyanla being her elder (which hasn’t held anybody else back in unloading their frustrations in the past), she talked to her in a very harsh tone, and did so in front of her mother. Eventually, Ms. Evelyn had to get her daughter in line for yelling at Iyanla about feeling disrespected. All the neck rolling, batting of the eyes and facial expressions were way over the top not only to Iyanla, but pretty much to all of her siblings who loudly said she was being out of line.
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Iyanla and The Braxtons as a Whole
However, it wasn’t just Tamar that was playing with Iyanla’s time. The Braxton family members were all tasked with being ready to work at a certain time (11 a.m., which most abided by with the exception of Toni and Tamar), and by 4 p.m., they were all just getting sitting down together to be served their lunch. Iyanla, understandably heated after feeling like the family couldn’t honor their commitments, went off.
“I ate in the car out my lap to be here to honor my commitment,” she said. “Y’all stay and participate in this. I don’t! I’m not gon’ participate in this. I need order! I need clarity! I need honor! I need honesty! I need respect!”
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Iyanla and Kamiyah Mobley
This was another incredibly uncomfortable moment. Kamiyah Mobley, a child abducted in the hospital after her birth and attempting to have a relationship with her biological family as an adult, was filled with rage. When she was expected to stay the night to go through Iyanla’s “process,” and not allowed to have contact with her family overnight, she lost it on everybody. She especially lost it with Iyanla.
“I’ll stab the f–k out this b—h,” she said. “I don’t argue with b—hes! I slap b—hes!”
Iyanla, however, was never scared.
“The words don’t bother me,” she said. “What bothers me is that’s inside of her and nobody is addressing it.”
Iyanla said she wasn’t going to deal with the situation because Kamiyah clearly wasn’t ready for help and her family wasn’t ready to do the work to aid her in addressing her issues.
“I don’t have to fight you for your healing.”
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Iyanla and Jillian
While production staff did drop the ball and ran late in picking up guest Jillian, when Iyanla tried to address her about it, the energy was off between them both. Terribly off. Jillian wanted an apology for the unprofessionalism and Iyanla just wanted her to fix her attitude. While the guest had a reason to be very much annoyed after having her time messed with by production, she clearly wasn’t interested in getting over it to move on to do the work, and neither was her husband. With that in mind, Iyanla decided to shut down filming. It was a complete and total mess.
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Iyanla and Nikki
Sometimes people have opinions on the show that they express in ways that Iyanla can’t get with. When a guest named Nikki talked about her volatile relationship with her mother while appearing on Fix My Life, she stated that relatives told her when she was young that her mother didn’t want to be a parent when she had her. Iyanla told Nikki that what her family members told her about her mother was absolutely inappropriate. It was a passionate appeal.
“It’s inappropriate for somebody to tell a child their mother’s story,” she said. “Your mother gets to tell you her story. Right, wrong or indifferent, it’s her story.”
Nikki, however, wasn’t interested in what the spiritual coach was talking about.
“Okay, Miss Iyanla. Whatever.”
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Iyanla and Leronda
It’s rare to see Iyanla full on blow up at guests. But when it came to dealing with a guest named Leronda and her sons, whom she abandoned when they were young, Iyanla couldn’t take too much more of their arguing. She ended up telling everybody to “shut up” and said, “You wanna act like park apes? You won’t do it here!” She blamed Ms. Leronda for the reason her family and their communication was so dysfunctional.
“I’m holding you totally responsible because these adults invited you back into their life and put you in the throne as the mother and you come in here acting just like them,” she said. “You got to up level your wattage…mother!”
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Iyanla and Eugene
Veteran and sexual assault survivor Eugene clashed with Iyanla over the way she looked at the military. He said the reason many like him don’t go seek help for their issues is because of what he deemed her close-minded opinion on the methods of the armed forces. Iyanla didn’t understand where the disconnect occurred.
“I said that I get that the military strips the individual to create the community. I said I get that. And what I said was, if you don’t have the same mother and father, you’re not family in the blood sense,” she said.
He got upset about her comments, eyes bulging out and telling her that she didn’t “get” something that he couldn’t even verbalize with her without getting extremely frustrated.
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Iyanla and Althea
Iyanla had to call out Althea Heart, reality TV personality, for posting pictures and video from her being on set to work with Iyanla when she claimed she was serious about working with the spiritual coach to get some real healing. When Iyanla told her that her actions made it look like she was really just there to be on TV, she disagreed (and mispronounced Iyanla’s name, child), saying she should be able to post what she wants.
“Why she’s having a hard time is ’cause she ain’t telling the truth. She didn’t come here to do no damn healing. She came here to be seen with Iyanla Vanzant,” the coach said. “You putting my name on your Instagram wasn’t about the celebration of this healing process. It was about you making sure they knew that you was with me. Tell the damn truth about it.”
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Iyanla and Neffe
When Iyanla and reality TV personality Neffeteria Pugh came together in 2017, the spiritual coach attempted to show Keyshia Cole’s big sister that there was a difference between Neffe, and Neffeteria. The latter was who she really was, but it was “Neffe” that was ruining her and her relationship with husband Soullow. How Iyanla went about making that clear caused friction with her guest, who got up and walked away from the “process.”
“Neffe is a nasty b—h,” she said. “Neffe is running her show.”
“Neffe’s been running her life and Neffe is a b—h,” Iyanla added as her frustrated guest left. “A nasty, vile guttersnipe right up out the hood.”
That experience didn’t stop Neffe from signing up to obtain Iyanla’s help a second time, though.
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