CLEVELAND, Ohio - Former Timberwolves player Kevin Love is opening up about a recent panic attack and how it made him take a new look at mental health.
Love penned an article entitled "Everyone Is Going Through Something" for the Players' Tribune on Tuesday. In it, he revealed that last November he left a game against the Bucks due to a panic attack.
"It’s hard to describe, but everything was spinning, like my brain was trying to climb out of my head," Love wrote. "The air felt thick and heavy."
He ran to the locker room during a third-quarter timeout.
"I was running from room to room, like I was looking for something I couldn’t find," he wrote. "Really I was just hoping my heart would stop racing. It was like my body was trying to say to me, You’re about to die."
The experience was a wakeup call, Love said, not just about his own mental health, but about his fears of people finding out. Soon, he began seeing a therapist.
"I know you don’t just get rid of problems by talking about them, but I’ve learned that over time maybe you can better understand them and make them more manageable," he said. "The biggest lesson for me since November wasn’t about a therapist — it was about confronting the fact that I needed help."
Love said he wants to use his story to inspire other men and boys to share what they are going through instead of keeping it "buried inside."
"For 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else’s problem," he wrote. "To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different."
Love said his article was partially inspired by DeMar DeRozan opening up last month about his struggle with depression.
After his tweet generated a huge response, DeRozan went on to open up about his battle with depression in an interview with the Toronto Star.
Love ended his submission to the Players' Tribune by saying, "Everyone is going through something that we can't see."
His honesty drew admiration and thanks from his fans on Twitter.
