The solid footing on a path forward is often found on the other side of a breakdown.
This becomes so crystal clear when you listen to 5-time All Star basketball player, Kevin Love, share one of his big breakthrough moments. If you are expecting to hear how he got his big break in basketball by following in his father’s steps or how he broke a personal best record during a heated championship playoff game, you are in for a much bigger surprise.
Kevin’s most impactful breakthrough came as the direct result of a breakdown. And it happened in the most public of ways. Kevin suffered a debilitating panic attack courtside, in a nationally televised home basketball game against the Hawks on November 5th, 2017. There was no denying that something was wrong, very wrong. Kevin describes this experience as one that feels like a debilitating physical injury; we can all just imagine our body unable to do its job. His heart was racing wildly and he could not think clearly. He stumbled and fumbled, off the court, into the locker room and eventually he passed out, feeling like he was unable to breathe.
Kevin was only 29 years old. He was already a basketball superstar who was in the limelight a lot. But there was a lot of stuff going on for Kevin that he kept hidden within himself and away from the public eye. He was estranged from his family and out of touch with the root cause of his struggles emotionally and mentally.
On the outside, he had a lot of support and scaffolding to help him become the best basketball player he could be. He had an agent, coaches, trainers and daily practices in the gym and on the court to help him build and improve his core athletic strengths.
Yet on the inside, he felt completely alone and ill-equipped to handle mental and emotional obstacles. He’d been struggling all alone for a very long time, not sleeping well, bottling up emotions and ignoring his overactive nervous system warnings.
Kevin will tell you today that at that time, he did not have an on-ramp to help him deal with all these internal emotional and mental struggles. He did not have language or people he could talk to about such intimate, sensitive subjects. The advice he would get from his agent was to “suck it up” and “look on the bright side”. The social culture was one where real men don’t show their emotions. Just get the job done. There was still a tremendous amount of stigma around revealing any sign of weakness when it came to mental and emotional health.
But he knew that he was in struggle and that his body was taking a big hit due to the inner turmoil. He was losing his touch, his motivation and drive, he was physically breaking down, just a little at a time.
Until that one game, when his nervous system, his weakened emotional and mental health and yes, his physical body too — all reached their limits. Stretched too far, Kevin broke down. He had a full blown panic attack right there in the middle of a basketball game for all the world to see.
This was a pivotal moment in Kevin’s life. Over the course of the next few months, Kevin came to grips with the reality that his emotional and mental health was every bit as integral to his life and his basketball career as his physical health. In fact, it had taken such a big toll on him that his ability to play basketball at an elite level was in serious jeopardy.
During a recent Happiness Lab podcast with Dr. Laurie Santos, Kevin shared that after this panic attack, he became very aware that his body was keeping the score and he was losing. It was during this point in the podcast that he begins to reveal unprocessed events and emotions that were really hurting him. One was the death of his beloved grandmother, who had been the family rock for many years, the constant who offered unconditional love, support and who listened deeply. He hadn’t really known how to deal with this loss, his grief and he’d stuffed it all down.
In a recent short podcast episode, Dr. Andrew Huberman, skillfully explained that much of our emotional pain and trauma gets stored in our nervous system. So whenever our “fight, flight, flee” nervous system gets taxed, we have an instant recall of unprocessed emotional pain. Whatever is occurring in the present moment gets amplified with these strong past feelings. Just imagine how often Kevin Love’s nervous system was triggered in those highly intense basketball games. There was no getting around the truth that some day, it would all catch up to him.
Furthermore, since Kevin isolated himself in his apartment and wasn’t talking with anyone about what he was feeling and dealing with, he was in that perfect Petri dish of isolation and loneliness, that only serves as an incubator for unprocessed emotional pain to metastasize. That stigma around mental and emotional health was a huge barrier for Kevin getting the same kind of scaffolding and support that was so readily accessible for his physical development.
Another big pivot point and flex for Kevin. The court-side public panic attack happened in November, 2017. On March 6, 2018, Kevin publicly published what quickly became a viral article entitled “ Everyone is Going Through Something”.
Kevin Love, the basketball All-Star, made his biggest contribution ever – he busted the myth and the stigma surrounding emotional and mental health. He put in on the top of the charts, as critical and core to a lifetime of overall quality health and well- being.
No more denying that our mental health and emotional health play a significant role in our ability to be at our best, to achieve our potential and to live a balanced, meaningful life fully integrated in our uniquely human mind-body connection.
Kevin’s personal experience of a breakdown became a powerful breakthrough, not only for him personally but for so many others. That article he wrote shifted the conversation and became an open invitation for others to learn from Kevin’s experience.
Ryan Holiday, author of the Daily Stoic, often reminds us that we do not have to learn all of life’s lessons the hard way. When others write what they have learned, they offer us a lighted pathway for a better path forward. This is exactly what Kevin Love did. He wrote an article that serves as a transformational guide, a shortcut, to avoid the obstacles that he faced. He shows us all the way out of emotional and mental health hardships.
Kevin has founded the “Kevin Love Fund” which supports schools, sports teams and non-profit organizations in providing language, education, tools and shared experiences to help others care for their emotional and mental health in beneficial ways.
Here is what Kevin states boldly on the homepage: “Mental health challenges are one of the greatest thieves of human potential. With the right support, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Dr. Michael Gervais is renowned psychologist for elite athletes and he knows firsthand the integral importance of emotional and mental health for optimum performance at the highest level. Elite athletes are pressure-tested every time they set foot on the track, the field, the court. You know who else is pressure-tested on a daily basis? Navy seals, first responders, teachers, parents, kids — you got it — all of us.
Kevin Love is now 37 years old. At age 28, he probably thought his claim to fame would be his basketball prowess. At age 29, he crashed and burned and it looked like he’d lose all he worked for thus far. Then he “did the work”, the real work of addressing his emotional and mental health; even he will tell you that it was harder than putting in the drills to become an All Star basketball player and it was more than worth it. By his early 30’s, he became the public face of advocacy for proactively addressing emotional and mental health. Kobe Bryant reached out to him to express what a major contribution Kevin was making to humankind. Imagine how that outreach resonates with Kevin these days (five years after Kobe’s tragic death).
As Kevin tells Dr. Laurie Santos, he now has a much greater understanding of his impact on others and his real legacy will be all the lives he touches through his Kevin Love Fund program.
If not for that game-changing public panic attack during a basketball game, he may have never reached his most meaningful human potential.
Read Kevin’s revelational article: Everyone Is Going Through Something
Click here to visit the website for Kevin Love Fund: Kevin Love Fund
Click here to listen to Kevin Love on The Happiness Lab podcast with Dr. Laurie Santos: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040?i=1000732309222
