For nearly two decades, Iyanla Vanzant has served as a mirror, not just for individuals seeking healing, but for a culture still learning how to name its wounds. Now, with her return to television in Iyanla: The Inside Fix, Vanzant isn’t offering quick solutions or surface‑level affirmations.
She’s going inward, asking harder questions about emotional health, accountability, and what she calls “spiritual hygiene.”
OWN’s Iyanla: The Inside Fix, premiering Saturday, January 17, marks Vanzant’s return after her acclaimed run of Iyanla: Fix My Life. This time, however, the work looks different. Instead of starting with new cases, Vanzant revisits 12 powerful stories from her past, examining them through today’s lens and uncovering new truths shaped by time, awareness, and growth.
“People think that what we’re going through right now is new,” she explained during our interview. “It’s not. It’s ancient. It looks different because we have different approaches, different devices… but nothing is new.”
The goal isn’t to rehash trauma, but to show that healing evolves, and that becoming your best self is ongoing work.
“There comes a moment when fixing the outside is no longer enough,” Vanzant shared in a statement. “This is the moment where the noise fades… and the only work left is the work within.”
During our conversation, Vanzant shared that inadequacy, not anger or ego, is often the most dangerous, unspoken struggle that Black men carry.
“That inadequacy, any form of inadequacy, is kryptonite to a Black man,” Vanzant said. “He will not acknowledge it, speak it… And rather than acknowledge it, very often he will revert to behaviors and engage in things that cover the fact that at the deepest level of his being, he feels inadequate.”
Vanzant doesn’t frame inadequacy as weakness. Instead, she describes it as a natural human experience that becomes destructive only when ignored. “Inadequacy meaning that whatever is required in the moment, either he doesn’t know it or he doesn’t have it,” she explained. “Nothing wrong. He may not know. He may not have it in the moment.”
Throughout her career, Vanzant has sat across from countless Black men on their healing journeys. The patterns, she says, are consistent and deeply rooted. “Black men don’t know how to ask for help,” she said. “They don’t know how to receive help. And very often they don’t recognize the help when it shows up.”
What makes this especially dangerous is that many men don’t even recognize what they’re feeling as pain. “Many Black men don’t know what they feel is hurt,” she said. “Because they’ve been taught to suck it up. They’ve been taught to deal with it.”
For Vanzant, healing begins with self‑awareness, asking not just what hurts, but where. “What hurts you, my brother? What is hurting you? And where?” she asked. “In your finances, in your relationships, in your sense of worth, a sense of value, in your career, where does it hurt you?”
Watch Iyanla: The Inside Fix, premiering Saturday, January 17 on OWN.
