“On November 5th, right after halftime against the Hawks, I had a panic attack,” is the first line of Kevin Love’s article for The Players’ Tribune. The title of Love’s article is Everyone is Going Through Something, and boy, is he right.
Everyone is going through something that is so personal, so painful, and so embarrassing to them that they feel like they can’t even share it with their best friends. There is still a nasty stigma around mental health in today’s society — many still feel as if they cannot speak out or ask for help.
“Everyone is going through something that we can’t see,” Kevin Love for The Players’ Tribune.
This doesn’t exclude any type of person. No matter your gender, sexuality, race, social class, or age, mental health affects you in both positive and negative ways. For Love, he never thought that his mental health was affected by his lifestyle of never sharing any personal issues. Love, like most boys, grew up in a world where they were told, “be strong. Don’t talk about your feelings.” This message not only hurts the child’s sense of self but also the child’s sense of relationships. How can you ever learn to trust someone if you are told to never be vulnerable because your problems are just a weakness? Love even admits that he “didn’t want to look weak” for needing someone to talk to.
After his panic attack and coming to terms with the fact that it was a panic attack induced by the stress of life — which everyone understands — he had worries.
“But what I was worried about wasn’t just my own inner struggles but how difficult it was to talk about them. I didn’t want people to perceive me as somehow less reliable as a teammate, and it all went back to the playbook I’d learned growing up.”
“Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing,” Kevin Love for The Players’ Tribune.
Why is it that so many people, athletes, and non-athletes alike, feel as if the stigma around mental health is that you can’t ask for help? Love states, “if you’re suffering silently like I was, then you know how it can feel like nobody really gets it. Partly, I want to [share my experience] for me, but mostly, I want to do it because people don’t talk about mental health enough. And men and boys are probably the farthest behind.” That is why he decided to write for The Players’ Tribune—to showcase the importance of positive mental health and positive attitudes towards the subject.
Kevin Love finally understood how important it was to seek out someone to talk to. Love began to use his platform to speak on the issue of mental health and wrote for The Players’ Tribune.
The New York Times will be hosting an interview with Love on Thursday, November 29th from 6 pm to 7 pm, which will be broadcasted to many universities around the country. Boston University’s Her Campus is lucky enough to host a watch party supported by HBC Foundation’s HEADFIRST Program, a program focused on supporting young adults and their mental health.
To join BUHC RSVP to both the Facebook Event page and the WUFOO RSVP site! Hope to see you there!
(All quotes are taken from Kevin Love’s article Everyone is Going Through Something for The Player’s Tribune)
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