Michael Phelps is raising 4 boys. Here’s how he helps them navigate ‘big emotions’

After the 2012 Olympics, Michael Phelps reached a point where he “didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

For three days, he locked himself in his room. He didn’t talk to anyone or eat anything. He laid in the fetal position as his mind raced, not knowing what to do next.

He realized he needed help, but didn’t know how to ask. He checked himself into a treatment center and spent the next 45 days learning how to cope with his depression and understand why his brain worked the way it did.

“For a long time, I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a person with a pair of goggles and a swim cap on, not somebody with feelings and emotions,” he shares over a video chat, nearly 14 years later.

“When I was carrying the flag in the opening ceremonies in 2016, I could see it written across people's foreheads that they were struggling,” he says. “We were losing brothers and sisters. I'm like, ‘What can we do?’ Like, has it been in my head? Yes, it has. I thought about taking my own life, 1,000%. But I've also tried to find other ways. For me, it's…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/life/