Jim Curtis Opens up About His Health Struggles Alongside Girlfriend Jennifer Aniston

The rare joint appearance gave fans a glimpse into a side of the former Wall Street banker they hadn't seen before. What followed was a candid look back at the diagnosis that changed the course of his life.

Jim Curtis is getting candid about his past health struggles alongside his partner, Jennifer Aniston. The couple made a rare joint appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Wednesday, September 2, to promote Curtis' new book, "The Book of Possibility."

During the conversation, Curtis opened up about his health journey and how the discovery of lesions on his spinal cord that caused chronic nerve damage and partial paralysis in his 20s impacted him.

The hypnotherapist — who now walks with a limp — called the diagnosis "an ultimate low."

"I found myself in the hospital one night because I was having such severe pain in my body, and in a New York City emergency room, I was there for 13 hours, and it was maybe 2:00 a.m," Curtis recounted.

"And the nurse came, and I said, 'Is the doctor going to see me? What are you working me up for?' And she said, 'A diagnosis right there,'" he continued. "And it was a really scary diagnosis."

Still in the hospital, Curtis admitted he turned to Google to research his condition, and upon reading about it, felt his body "freeze and seize up without the fear of what Google had to say about this." He pushed through that fear, he said, by telling himself, "Tomorrow, everything changes."

Even so, he was quick to note that this shift in mindset didn't happen overnight. "I'm not saying here that the doctor tells you to do something you should get up and leave," Curtis said. "What I'm saying is that you don't have to live as the victim. You don't have to live in your suffering."

Curtis noted that the key to moving past a health challenge is learning to "accept it and love it," but he confessed that acceptance didn't come easily for him. The 50-year-old wasn't always upfront with people who asked about his limp, either.

"I would say I got into a motorcycle accident," Curtis said. "I was so shameful that I had a medical condition. [I thought] I was broken in some way. I thought the motorcycle accident was at least a little macho."

Eventually, Curtis found a way to "overcome" those insecurities through "self-acceptance and self-love," though he described the process as "a long journey" — one he wishes he'd started sooner.

"There are people who are just suffering because they don't know what the next step is or they need a little bit of inspiration," he explained. "That was an easy choice for me."

Picking up on that thread, Aniston asked her partner what he might say to someone who felt "stuck" in the daily "rat race." "I'm not a proponent for 'drop everything and leave,'" he noted. "That [acceptance] was 25 years in the making for me."

"There's a reality of life too. You have rent to pay and medical bills to pay and kids to feed, all of your stuff," he continued. "But I will say this: you don't have to let fear stop you from living your dream. You can manifest at any time by placing your focus on the outcomes that you want."

Curtis and Aniston were first romantically linked in July 2025, when the pair were spotted vacationing together in Mallorca. They made things Instagram official that November and celebrated one year together this past May.