Below is an excerpt of Kendra Fisher’s story in The Players’ Tribune about her battles with anxiety, OCD and depression.

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By Kendra Fisher, retired Canadian National Team hockey player

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In 1999, right before my 20th birthday, I received an invite to a Team Canada camp in Calgary. This one was special. The players they picked at the end of those two weeks would travel to play in the Four Nations Cup.

I was on the brink of realizing my dreams, and yet I was terrified. Things had gotten so much worse.

I need help.

Just weeks before the camp, I called my parents.

“Mom, Dad …” I told them everything.

At the time, I had moved to a private school in Toronto for my senior year, and I was also playing in what used to be Canada’s National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL). I graduated. Found an apartment. Was living a very independent life.

But, hockey was becoming less and less of a safe space for me, and I developed this deep fear of being alone. When my teammates skated away from me to follow the play, my heart would beat louder.

Faster.

I just couldn’t see it. “Tomorrow” didn’t exist. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t picture waking up the next day.

I was convinced that when the play made it back to me, I would be dead.

I had to have someone with me 24/7. If a friend was over and had to use the washroom, I’d follow them down the hallway because I was just too scared to be by myself and my thoughts.

Was I dying?

My stomach was in knots.

Some days it felt like I was having a heart attack. One day I took myself to the E.R. The doctors said things were fine, but they sent me to see specialists just in case.

The cardiologist told me my heart was fine.

The neurologist told me my head was fine.

The gastrointestinal specialist told me my digestive tract was fine.

Everybody was telling me I was fine.

Suck it up.

And that’s what I did as I flew off to Calgary. But I needed my parents to be at the airport in case I couldn’t convince myself to get on a plane.

When I called them, they were nothing but supportive. They wanted to do whatever they could to support my dream. Together we devised a plan.

Dad left for Calgary a day before I did, to be there to meet me when I arrived. Mom would come later after getting me safely on the plane. They stayed in their own hotel room during camp. I couldn’t risk one of my coaches or teammates seeing them because no one brings chaperones to camp. I was afraid/terrified that if anyone saw them they would know that something was wrong.

After I faked my way through the first two-hour practice, I found a stairwell and broke down. Then I washed my face and went to off-ice training. And then I found a bathroom stall and broke down again.

By that night I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. My roommate would probably see me freaking out in our dorm room. I couldn’t hide anymore.

I went into the coach’s office in the arena and told her that my grandma, who lived in Calgary, had been rushed to the hospital and I wanted to make sure my family was O.K. I lied through my teeth:

“I’ll be back in the morning,” I said.

I spent that night in my dad’s hotel room in pieces. I couldn’t breathe.

What’s wrong with me?

I didn’t sleep a wink.

The next morning, I did go back to the arena. But this time I told my coaches the truth. I told them why I had to go home.

They asked me if it would make any difference if they told me that I had already made Team Canada.

It was one of the most memorable moments of my life … but not because it’s one that I want to remember.

“No,” I said.

It didn’t help at all.

What the hell have I just done?

I just gave up on the only thing I had ever wanted.

I found out five days after I left camp that the national team coaches wanted to try to help me. They had booked me an appointment with a sports psychologist. I have to admit, I was kind of insulted.

I don’t need a shrink. I’m not crazy.

I remember my first appointment with the psychologist. It was the most awkward staring contest of my life. I didn’t know what to say. But I knew that the doctor reported to Team Canada, and I had to convince her that I was O.K.

So I told her about the car accident that had injured my back when I was in high school. We did some serious therapy after that, and after two weeks, I was cured. She gave me a pass and I was free to go.

Then I realized how sick I really was.

I couldn’t eat. My stomach was so upset it couldn’t process food. I dropped from 160 pounds to 120. The insomnia ensued and I couldn’t leave the apartment without my body revolting.

On January 3, 2000, I called my parents in Kincardine. My mother answered the phone and I could  barely get out the words.

“I’m not going to be here tomorrow.”

It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to die. It was just that I actually couldn’t imagine making it through one more night. You know how you think about tomorrow and you have this playlist of the things that are going to happen? Like, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment, or I’m meeting so-and-so for coffee tomorrow.

I just couldn’t see it. “Tomorrow” didn’t exist. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t picture waking up the next day.

My mother rushed to Toronto and somehow forced me to see my old psychologist. That day, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety, severe panic disorder, agoraphobia (a fear of leaving safe spaces), obsessive-compulsive disorder and clinical depression.

My mother sat in my doctor’s office as I lay on the couch. She wanted to know how she could help.

“You pretty much need to forget everything you know about your daughter,” my therapist said. ”It’s like you need to go back to when she was a three-year-old who relied on her parents to get through each day.”

This can’t be me. I just made Team Canada.

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Read the rest of the Kendra’s story on The Players’ Tribune.

Shared here is an excerpt of Manchester City footballer Ilkay Gundogan in the New York Times during his lengthy recovery from a season-ending injury and the effects of loneliness and isolation.

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By Rory Smith

For months, the best part of the day was the first part. Every morning after he returned from Barcelona at the end of January, Gundogan had arrived at Manchester City’s training facility — in the shadow of the Etihad — at the same time as the rest of the squad.

At first, his teammates made a point of fussing over him, welcoming him back, asking how long it would be until he would be playing again. “After the second, third and fourth day, it is less and less attention,” Gundogan said. He preferred it that way, being just another face in the crowd.

Gundogan had been in this situation before. In August 2013, only a few weeks after he scored for Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final, he had sustained a back injury that would, eventually, prevent him playing for a full year. Three years later, Manchester City signed him while he was sidelined with a patella injury, so keen was Guardiola, the club’s new manager, to work with him.

“That is the most difficult thing: to feel that you are useless, not worth as much as before, not worth as much as the others.”

As Gundogan walked the long path to fitness once more, he could not only make light of his past — “I am quite good at sitting on the couch now,” he joked one night in Barcelona — he could draw hope from it.

On the day Gundogan tore his ligament, he had cried on Guardiola’s shoulder, his despair overwhelming him. Less than 24 hours later, he had reconciled himself to his situation. The A.C.L. is a more common injury than his back problem; there was a clear road map to follow.

But another long stretch out troubled him, too. His injuries might have been unrelated, but he knew what the cumulative effect would be. Soccer has a short memory. There is always someone ready to take your place in the coach’s plans, in the team’s roster, in the fans’ affections.

Gundogan appreciated the sympathy, but he exists in a brutal world. He did what little he could to mediate its effects. He posted regular images on Instagram, and made sure he was present on Twitter. He enjoyed the interaction and, in particular, the photography, but pleasure was just a byproduct.

“I do not want people to forget me,” he said in February.

That kept him going as his recovery started in earnest — that desire not to be forgotten, not to be written off.

His schedule was physically exacting, his life mapped out for him by Cugat, Sala and City’s medical staff. Monday and Friday were for conditioning; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday were for strength; Wednesday was cardio work. On Sunday, he rested.

The principal target, as explained by James Baldwin, the City physiotherapist overseeing his recovery, was “to restore the mechanics of the knee.” Baldwin talked about “gait re-education,” and proprioception, making sure all the disparate parts of the body are working in unison. In simpler terms, Gundogan was learning to walk again.

The exercises were simple, but demanding: a series of stretches and flexes, lifts and dips, followed by an arduous series of crabwalks. As the weeks passed and Gundogan’s knee improved, the exercises were made incrementally harder: resistance bands were introduced, or a Bosu ball, or an unstable surface. Baldwin said the idea was to “replicate the elements of human movement.”

All of City’s state-of-the-art facilities were available to Gundogan. His cardio work took place in a heat chamber. A couple of afternoons a week were spent in the pool area, walking against rapids to build up resistance, using underwater treadmills, donning one of a dozen buoyancy suits that hang on the walls. There were regular cupping sessions, to “stimulate the lymphatic system and clear effusions in the knee,” Baldwin explained early in the spring.

The days were long and tiring, but it was not the physical demands that were most punishing. It was the mental strain, the sense of being apart, adrift, incomplete, surrounded by those constant, early-morning reminders of what he used to be, and where he wanted to be. “The general feeling,” Gundogan said, “is of loneliness.”

“The worst thing for me is seeing the other players,” he added. “I see them on the training field, when they are in the locker room, when they go up to the meeting before training. I see how they work in the gym, and I am not able to do the same. You know that you are not able to be a full part of the group.

“That is the most difficult thing: to feel that you are useless, not worth as much as before, not worth as much as the others.”

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Read the rest of the story on NYTimes.com.

Eight athletes opened up about their mental illnesses in a story by USA Today.

Michael Phelps (swimming), Imani Boyette (basketball), Mardy Fish (tennis), Rick Ankiel (baseball), Royce White (basketball), Allison Schmitt (swimming), Brandon Marshall (football), Jerry West (basketball) share their respective stories of battling depression and bipolar disorder. The story is written by Scott Gleeson and Erik Brady. Below is an excerpt of Rick Ankiel’s story.

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Rick Ankiel

HARDLY ‘IMMUNE TO INNER PAIN AND TORTURE’

Rick Ankiel was on the mound for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the 2000 National League Division Series when he found he couldn’t do what had always come so naturally. Ankiel, the pitcher, couldn’t pitch anymore.

He threw five wild pitches in an inning; no major leaguer had done that since 1890. More starts produced more wild pitches. He was never the same.

“There’s such a stigma, especially with men, that you can’t falter, and that you shouldn’t get help.”

Baseball people said he had the yips — jitters that make it nearly impossible for an athlete to throw a strike or sink a putt — though in his case severe anxiety was at the root of it.

“For anyone who hasn’t had it happen to them, they don’t understand how deep and how dark it is,” he says. “It consumes you. It’s not just on the field. It never goes away. … It’s this ongoing battle with your own brain. You know what you want to do — in your heart. But your body and brain won’t let you do it.”

Ankiel would eventually have to give up his pitching career. Remarkably, he would come back years later as an outfielder. He is one of two players in major league history who have started a postseason game as a pitcher and hit a home run in the postseason as a position player. (The other? Some fellow by the name of Babe Ruth.)

Anxiety on the mound led to obsessive thoughts in his daily routine. TV analysts called him weak. They said he lacked mental toughness.

“I can’t imagine how bad it’d be with social media nowadays,” he says. “There’s such a stigma, especially with men, that you can’t falter, and that you shouldn’t get help.”

Ankiel found himself envious of players who had physical injuries that rehab could fix. He turned to therapy, breathing exercises and different medications — mostly to no avail.

“Nobody really had any answer,” he says. “There’s no remedy or cure.”

Ankiel was USA TODAY Sports’ high school baseball player of the year in 1997. Some touted him as the second coming of Sandy Koufax. And then, poof, it was gone.

“It was beyond frightening and scary,” he says. “We’re getting paid millions, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to inner pain and torture.”

Ankiel wrote about all of this in The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips and the Pitch that Changed My Life, which came out this year. It tells of how he tried vodka and marijuana to calm himself. Nothing worked. Enter Harvey Dorfman, the late sports psychologist, who became a father figure in Ankiel’s darkest hours and helped “save my life” as his pitching career unraveled. Dorfman, who wrote The Mental Game of Baseball, helped Ankiel face his abusive childhood.

“For athletes, you want to try to turn over every stone possible to be at the best of your ability,” Ankiel says. “So if there’s a doctor or counselor who can help you, why not turn over that stone? Having a culture conducive to mental health is big. I think we’re getting there. Just about every (MLB) team has a psychology department. I’m glad we’re starting to understand. We’re all human, and I think the more we talk about mental health, the better.”

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Read the rest of the story on USAToday.com.

ESPNW dives into the story of former Penn State football kicker Joey Julius and his struggle with depression, disordered eating and suicide ideation, as well as how Julius has sought help to get better. Below is an excerpt.

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By Emily Caron

On Monday, March 27, 2017, the day after his 22nd birthday, Penn State kicker Joey Julius walked into the Louis and Mildred Lasch Football Building, just minutes from the famed Beaver Stadium, where he had gained national notoriety for his bone-crunching hit on a Kent State kick returner in 2016. He had an 8:00 a.m. monitored workout scheduled in the training room.

Medically monitored workouts weren’t abnormal for Julius, who had openly struggled with binge eating since October 2016. In May of that year, a then-21-year-old Julius said a temporary goodbye to his home in State College, Pennsylvania, to seek solace in St. Louis — home of McCallum Place, an eating-disorder treatment center with male- and athlete-specific programs. He stayed for two months.

“If you let me go home, I’m going to kill myself.”

At the facility, Julius was told he had an eating disorder, a diagnosis he had never before received. The 5-foot-10, 258-pound kicker had dealt with erratic eating for most of his life, but after gaining 50 pounds within months of graduating high school — where he was a four-time football letterman and soccer star — in the spring of 2014, his erratic eating rapidly escalated and became an increasingly consuming disease. He left McCallum in 2016 finally understanding what was going on with his health.

But after his workout that March morning — an abnormal weather day, he remembers, warm for a town known for its snowy winters and bone-chilling cold — he was about to leave when instead he stepped on the scale. He weighed nearly 300 pounds, the heaviest he’d ever been. He then walked into the office of Tim Bream, the head football athletic trainer.

“If you let me go home, I’m going to kill myself,” Julius says he told Bream.

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Julius came back from his time at McCallum for the 2016 Penn State football season seemingly better than ever. He started speaking openly about his struggles with binge eating, restricting and purging, and returned with a vengeance on the field, continuing his tear as one of the hardest hitters in football.

But with each big hit on unsuspecting opposing kick returners, the media and the public reinforced what often fueled part of Julius’ self-consciousness about his body: Kickers just aren’t supposed to weigh in at 260 pounds.

“Body image is my biggest struggle,” Julius says. “I think it’s one of the hardest things we deal with as human beings. I was a kicker on a football team, and you’d always hear, ‘He doesn’t have the typical kicker’s body.’ But I really did not have the typical kicker’s body. I was not built like a kicker. I literally looked nothing like I was ‘supposed’ to be.”

While Happy Valley supported his success on the field and heralded his hits, they unknowingly and unintentionally contributed to the narrative that had defined Julius’ entire athletic career. He didn’t look like an athlete. His self-consciousness and self-loathing amplified by the day.

Throughout the fall of 2016, Julius remained under the watchful eye of the Penn State football staff and medical personnel. He says they all wanted what was best for him; his teammates, trainers, coaches, the fans — all of Nittany Nation had his back. They were a family in that sense, close-knit enough that Julius could fall back on their support when needed.

By March 2017, he needed it. Binge eating was only part of the problem for Julius, who had also long struggled with depression. The depression led to unhealthy eating, which led to a lack of sleep and placed an extra toll on his organs. As his physical health declined, so too did his mental state, and vice versa. It’s a toxic cycle and the reason eating disorders are so dangerous. This spring, his sickness had taken hold again.

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Read the rest of the story on ESPNW.