Anderson Cooper Opens Up About Coping with Immense Grief: 'You Have to Face It at Some Point'

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Anderson Cooper knows all too well the pain of losing a loved one.

When the CNN anchor was just 10 years old, his father, actor and writer Wyatt Cooper, died unexpectedly during open-heart surgery at age 50. Ten years later, his older brother Carter died by suicide at the age of 23 when he jumped off the terrace of mother Gloria Vanderbilt's 14th floor New York City apartment.

For most of his life, Cooper's coping mechanism was avoidance. "I just sort of retreated deep into myself," he says. "I didn't talk to people about it. I just became very introspective and introverted."

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It wasn't until the Anderson Cooper 360 host, 55, became a dad to sons Wyatt, 2, and Sebastian, 7 months that he started to think about processing grief in a healthier way.

"I don't want to pass along to my kids any of my own failures or limitations," says Cooper, who authored Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty last September. "I want to be the best parent I can be, and I realized that the way I dealt with loss was effective for the time that it occurred, but that stuff catches up with you. You have to face it at some point."

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Rather than fall back on old habits, "I started talking to people about it, and the more I did, I learned things that really helped," he says.

Those conversations inspired his new podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper, which explores loss and grief. "It's not really discussed openly, but grief is a bond that we all share," he says. "I realized this is something we all go through or all will go through in one way or another."

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All There Is with Anderson Cooper is available now on Apple Podcasts.