Big E Opens Up About Seeking Help For Mental Illness

During an interview with MackMania, WWE Champion Big E talked about his mental health and revealed how seeking help for mental illness when he was young teenager helped save his life.

Here is what he said:

"It took me a long, long time. I try my best to never tell anyone, ‘this is the way you need to go to overcome mental illness.’ We all have our own paths and what works for us. What worked for me; at 19 years old, I had a coach of mine, Rod Akin, who essentially forced me to go talk to someone. In many ways, it really saved my life. Even then, it took a while for me to get into the process. I think so much of how I was raised and just kind of the culture of what it meant to be a man. I always played football and was in the gym. What I was always told from peers and in the home, it was, ‘a man does not show vulnerability.

You don’t cry, you don’t show weakness, you don’t talk about the way you feel or your emotions.’ Maybe that’s a protective device that allows you to get to a certain point in life without getting picked on too much and you build up these walls, but eventually it’s going to explode. It got to that point with me where it was ‘repress, repress, repress,’ but it’s not going anywhere. What has really helped me is just kind of leaning into the work. I was really opposed to this idea of ‘working’ people tell me in a relationship you have to work or you have to work on yourself. Who wants to do all that? To me, the work is really beautiful."