Make Vulnerability Your Superpower (with NBA star Kevin Love)

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0:55As a happiness researcher, I'm grateful to live in 2025, a time when there's been an explosion of conversations about the importance of taking care of your well-being. But we're honestly still in the early stages of breaking the silence around the mental health issues that so many of us struggle with. And in some communities, the stigma against dealing with these issues still runs deep. Men, for example, are much less likely than women to seek counseling or treatment for mental health challenges. And among athletes, that stigma can be even higher. I've seen this firsthand with my student-athletes at Yale.

1:29Many of them hold themselves to incredibly high standards, both in the classroom and on the field. Many of them worry that admitting to mental struggles could seem like a weakness or proof that they're not fit to play. It often takes someone accomplished, respected, and at the top of their game to model vulnerability and open these conversations up for others. Fortunately, I'm lucky to have one of those figures here today. Five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love, who I was thrilled to speak with, even though I'm a Boston Celtics fan. I love having these conversations because I get to learn. You know, if you're not so against the Miami Heat that we can have that conversation.

2:06Let's continue. Yeah, okay. This week marks the beginning of Kevin's 18th season in the NBA. I should note that even though he was playing for the Miami Heat at the time this was recorded, he was recently traded to the Utah Jazz. I spoke with Kevin about his experiences with grief, anxiety, and depression, and how he went from keeping those struggles private to becoming a public leader in the mental health space. So we usually start with an introduction. So can I just have you introduce yourself and tell our listeners what you do? Yeah, last night we had to describe how we looked. You know, people with disabilities in the blind.

2:41Oh, yeah. It's funny. Like, I'm Kevin Love. I'm 36, but I have gray hair and blue eyes. Very tall. Very tall. Yeah, I was like, I'm 6 '8". I literally did say that. I'm like, I'm 6 '8", plus, but my contract height once said I was 6 '10". Maybe I shrunk, but I digress. Sorry. No, I'm Kevin Love, ballplayer, professional athlete in the NBA for 17 years. I'll be heading into my 18th year. I'm not the best at intros, but I'm a father of two girls, one that just turned two years old, another that is four months. My wife, Kate, and a beautiful six-year-old puppy named Vestry, who is, you know, they say you live longer when you have dogs.

3:22So very good for my mental health. Dogs are very good for happiness. And that's what unconditional love looks like. So I'm curious to hear how you get started in basketball. I understand that in a lot of ways, it started with your dad's career. Tell me about that. Yeah. So my dad, he played three years, the University of Oregon was drafted ninth in 1971 by the Baltimore Bullets, played for the Lakers as well, played for the Hawks, played for the Spurs in short stints. And he was my first hero. He was like a giant to me. He was a protector and he's 6 '9", imposing. I mean, it would have been great in today's NBA because he could run, he could jump, he could shoot, I have photos that, you know, date back to 1988 when I was born and I'm in my stroller with the basketball.

4:06And, you know, from then on, I'm just kind of looking at everything that my dad did, try to emulate him. And I just wanted to just mimic his every move and just wanted basketball to be a part of my life. It was truly my first love. I can imagine that makes you love basketball a lot. I can also imagine that that comes with a lot of pressure. Yeah, it certainly did, especially in Portland being not a big city. I was a big fish in a small pond very early and that came with a lot of expectation and with a father who played at the highest level, competed at the highest level, having gone to University of Oregon, just a little bit down the road in Eugene, there was certainly a lot of pressure.

4:42I'm still learning to unpack the weight of expectations for the last at least 20 years because when it came to my early teenage years and primarily high school there was certainly a lot of that. So there was a lot of pressure and a lot of that I'm thankful for. But on the other side of that there was an ugliness to it and at that age I didn't have the language to be able to express what I was feeling And especially as a young man, I just had the playbook to bury it and compartmentalize and try and be stoic within my masculinity and my feelings. And that drove me to be pretty emotion phobic over the course of time.

5:27Which must have been especially hard because I know you've talked about kind of the anxiety you experienced early on in life. You had this quote where you noted that your default setting was often one of dread. Yes. I'm sure a lot of folks listening right now can recognize the signs of anxiety. But how did that manifest for you early on? Well, and when I speak about that, it's dread because my entire identity was built up to be just a basketball player. And how am I going to work myself out of this depression or this anxiety? I'm like, if I can just get that one more accolade or we can win one more championship or I can be not just the state player of the year.

6:03I got to be the national player of the year. We have to win the national championship. In some ways, it's like masochistic, like it hurts so good. Right. chase those things. And that's okay. That can be an admirable quality in some cases, but your brain is going to go back. Dopamine is going to go down. You're going to go back to that baseline. And I think that's when you think that these things are going to, for lack of a better term, fix you. Those anxieties and especially the dark spells and depression, those emerge from dormancy. They just come in waves. And in some cases, still when I have failures, it can be a house of cards and just burn down very quickly.

6:42So that's what happened with me and maybe even more so with high achievers. Yeah. And this is the kind of thing I totally see in my students at Yale, right? I work with a lot of amazing student athletes. I don't know if they're going to play for the heat, but you know, we'll see. But yeah, but this idea that their whole identity is caught up in their performance, that they're, you know, an athlete first, a basketball player first, lacrosse player first and then a human second. And then just this incredible perfectionism where you just have to be perfect all the time. My students are fond of this DJ Khaled song, All I Do Is Win.

7:17But it's like, if all you do is win, then the first time you lose, it's like the whole world has crumbled down. And it seemed like you were dealing with that, but also this super hyper-masculine culture where you grew up. But I think also having your dad in the early days of the sport where this stuff really wasn't talked about. And it's generational, too. I mean, there's some generational trauma within my family. I mean, Brian Wilson just died as well. And, you know, my dad was a caretaker and a bodyguard for Brian when he had struggled with substance abuse. And just to be clear, Brian, you're actually related.

7:53You know, Beach Boys were started in a garage in Hawthorne, California. And it was, you know, the loves side. Their cousins were the Wilsons and it was Brian and it was Carl and it was Dennis. And it was, you know, my uncle Mike. And they created the West Coast sound. And, you know, he dealt with his share of mental health problems as well as, I mean, the loves I think have always been prone to melancholy and dark spells dating back almost a hundred years now. I keep looking back and unpeeling layers of all of that where I'm like, yes, this helps tell the story. It is generational. And that was something that my dad and I spoke about towards the end of his life when he was in hospice.

8:32We really finally opened up about it. his emotional regulation was never quite there because of his father being a physical father. And so when my dad was in hospice, he started seeing some of those things in his dreams. And a lot of those memories had come up in a very ugly way, but it allowed him to be a lot more vulnerable and face it. But it was him coming to peace with how he lived. The true lesson that he He taught me through all of this, as well as our relationship. We were in strange for a number of years. And, you know, he taught me two true wisdoms that were reconciliation and forgiveness as well.

9:16It's so great that you were able to reconcile with your father before he passed and also kind of come to terms with the fact that he struggled with emotion regulation and it wasn't his fault. Well, I get it now. Yeah. I get it. Like, it all makes sense. He did the best that he could and he wasn't equipped. And there's such a stigma. There's still stigma, huge stigma around speaking about mental health. And what am I going to do after basketball? What if there's nothing for me after my sport? And my dad certainly fought that as well. And I think he felt like he failed often. But I kept telling him, I go, dad, all you wanted at the end of your life was your kids to be there when you passed and for mom to be here when you pass and to be at home and to die at home.

9:57and I go, dad, you're successful. You are enough. You're here. Your kids are here. We want to be here. And success is having your kids come home. Like we're here. We got you. That's so awesome. So I'm like, you're successful. You can die knowing that like you're good. Yeah. It's so cool to hear you say that because it feels like that must've been such hard one knowledge, right? Like hearing about how things started off. It really was like, don't talk about your mental health. Even as your dad was dealing with Brian Wilson, It sounds like his kind of way to deal with substance use and mental health issues was like, let's get you on the court.

10:31Let's exercise more. And this was something that you, I know, took on early on too, right? We often talk on the Happiness Lab podcast about how exercise is really good for mental health. But it seems like your exercise pushed into like, you know, trauma, perfectionism rather than just mental health. Yes. I think that in some ways I was killing two birds with one stone and I do love to work out. But there is still something there that I'm like, am I doing this because I have to be perfect or I'm doing this because I have to stay in my sport? And early on, that was in some ways really reinforced because you get very, very good at your sport.

11:04When did you first realize that you could be a professional kind of like your dad? My best friend's dad tells it all the time. First day of preschool, driving us home. And, you know, he kind of asked, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I'm just going to be in the NBA like my dad. And he tells a story all the time and talks about how he's like, this kid, there's just something about him where I actually believed. I really, truly believed him. I'll be honest with you. I always believed it. There was no doubt in my mind. And I think it helped that, you know, the doctor said, I heard them say when I was young, I'm the pediatrician.

11:40They said, well, he's going to be very tall. This is going to be a tall kid. I knew I had that. I liked the idea of being tall like my dad and being a basketball player was all I ever wanted to be. But it was probably around eighth grade and my freshman year of high school when I played up with my brother. I was playing two grades up with him and then I was playing against college players and then pro players once I got into high school. And I thought to myself, if I just keep on this same track and keep this singular focus, I can have a lot of success. And if you have to have a little bit of luck, it's timing, it's culture, it's demographic, it's luck, it's all of these things.

12:20But I certainly had that. Definitely involved some luck, but also involved a tremendous amount of hard work and skill. Yeah, you became super successful, Ariel, in your career. You know, all-star, 2010 world champion, 2012 Olympic gold. But in some ways, I feel like that luck was kind of contrasted with a lot of tough stuff that happened early on in your career. I know in 2013, you had a huge hit. Yeah. So tell me what happened. I just never went through the grieving process with my grandmother. And she was the cornerstone. She was like the pillar of our family. She lived right next door to us our entire life.

12:55And she was just so special. She didn't need much. She just wanted family. She wanted to volunteer at the school. She wanted to help raise my sister, who was a preemie baby. As my dad worked a back-breaking job at a warehouse. but she was just the absolute rock and the best woman. And I don't think I appreciated it or had the presence of mind to lean into that type of a figure in our life. And she was right there. So there was so much regret. I talk about it all the time. Regret is more tied up in inaction rather than action. Like of course there's things that I did and, and especially offloaded hurt on people that were the closest to me or just did not deserve it.

13:40So I certainly regret that action, but the inaction of not spending more time with my grandmother and you go to her little cottage and you go around there and you just see photos of like everything that her family had ever done because she understood what really mattered. And I don't think I appreciated that enough. I didn't go back when she, you know, was cremated or get to grieve with my family back home in Portland. I just kept on being with the team in Minnesota. I was there for six years. I just kept being with them and lost myself in basketball. I was just running from it. I didn't want to go to the extremities of those feelings.

14:20So I never got to unpack that. And that manifested in my body in different ways. Again, the body keeps score. Everybody loves to say that, but it's so true. In some way, shape or form, that's going to have to come out. And for me, it was in panic attacks. It was rage fits. It was agoraphobia and not wanting to go out for maybe fear of public embarrassment or felt like I was doing something wrong. And that must have been a really awful one-two punch because my sense is like you had her loss, but then you also had kind of a loss on the court. I understand that you suffered an injury pretty soon after that, right?

14:52I did. And I broke my hand and I only played 18 games that year. And I was, you know, suicidal gestures, suicidal ideation, didn't ever leave my apartment. It was kind of like how I was often growing up. I remember just being in my room and I'd go to school, I'd go to basketball practice, and then I'd just kind of be in there. You know, I looked at my dad as well, not wanting to get out of bed and just kind of lay there, throw the TV on, be in a dark room, sleep often, early and often, you know, go eat at the dinner table. And my mom's just finishing up. I would sit there with her and I'd be like, you know, where's dad?

15:27And in some ways this must've been worse because this is now on the professional stage where you're in your room, not coming out, kind of recovering from an injury. I mean, what was it like going through that? Did you talk to anybody about what you're going through? No. And my agent, and he always talks to me, he's like, I'm going to talk to you as your friend. I'm going to talk to you as your agent. But he didn't know how to speak to me, but he would just say, you know, snap out of it. I'm like, oh, I've never thought of that before. Oh yeah. Let me just snap out of it. I mean, it's just remarkable how little people get, how mental health issues really work.

15:57Yes. But now it's like, you know, my agent, Jeff Schwartz, he has three beautiful daughters who are like, I'm Uncle Kevin now, and I love them, that he gets it. And they're athletes. So again, he's evolved and he understands it far more. But in 2013, I wasn't equipped at all to deal with it. And I didn't have the language to express it. And I was just in bed a lot, in a dark room a lot. Eventually, Kevin found a way to heal and to share his story with others. But as is often the case, things had to hit rock bottom before they got better. When we get back from the break, I'll talk with Kevin about his very public panic attack and the viral article that detailed his experience.

16:44The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

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17:32so how did you wind up healing well it wasn't until i really started doing the work and you know i it's not to say why i didn't have these like great moments and times when i'd come out of it you know maybe it was three weeks maybe it was three months of these really dark spells and my best friends didn't know. But things got so much worse in our 17, 18 season, you know, that very public panic attack and mental health episode that I know we'll speak about happened. It got a lot worse before it got better. Yeah. So, so what happened to that season to make things get worse? Again, it was unpacking the pressures of an expectations of 15 to 20 years and the weight of, you know, an organization and ownership and the front office putting pressure that we have to win and win now.

18:26And while we love that because it drove us to do these great things, we went to four straight finals from 15 through 18. We won in 2016, first major sports championship in Cleveland. But, you know, I was at that time not speaking to my parents. I was estranged from them, you know, within my love life and my personal life, things had gone wrong, as well as always feeling these things and never facing it head on and not going to therapy or having a trusted confidant that I could speak to. I don't think I wanted to admit that there was a problem. I felt like I was a failure of even having these feelings and that idea of masculinity and showing emotion.

19:08Of course, I'd get angry and get a technical foul and that sort of thing. But in terms of saying like, you know, I'm at home crying or I'm at home and my anxiety is coming up in a way that is severely unhealthy. I just said like everybody else has these problems worse than me. And I was comparing grief, but I was also withholding compassion for myself and not having grace within that. And I believe that nobody benefits from that, that it just all bottled up into a moment and it was public and I was on the court. It was on TV. I mean, we were a team that had nationally televised games. And, you know, I'd had these feelings before, these types of things that happened, but I've always just been able to remove myself from a situation or have like rage fits in my space at home, right?

19:58Like it manifested in different ways. I had nowhere to go. So I just ran to the locker room or tried to escape like I always did. But this is around my teammates that were back in the locker room. It was around our trainers. trainers, I feel like I'm having cardiac arrest. I can't catch my breath. I can't get oxygen in my brain. I don't, I've never had this type of attack happen before. So is it life-threatening? I end up passed out on the floor of our head trainer, Steve Spiro's office, and he's the one who finds me there. So I ended up leaving after that. They put me on oxygen. I'm able to sit back up, think of myself, what the hell just happened?

20:39I go and they run several tests at the Cleveland clinic who's and still is just so amazing and everything checks out like there's nothing wrong but I'm asking the question what just happened then is this going to happen again who's going to know about it so it's like this negative feedback loop that I don't know if I'm going to survive professionally and then how is that going to now impact not only my livelihood but this safe space that was once the basketball court so it got a lot worse before it got better But I think there is a lot of good that came from that. It made me say, okay, things aren't adding up.

21:18I need to change something. So it was my first time I had gone to therapy. And I was incredibly lucky to find a great therapist. He just sent in my medication this morning, so respect. But I had finally come to terms that, okay, it's time to start doing the work. So amazing to hear you talk about this transition to understanding therapy and being more self-compassionate because the amazing thing about the oxygen mask that you put on is having put yours on first, you're now able to help others put their oxygen mask on. You know, I know you as an amazing NBA player, but I first got really familiar with you when you became like a huge mental health advocate.

22:01Tell me about the article that you put out in 2018 because that was when I first started hearing your name and learning about what you're up to. Right. So fast forward, I go to therapy. I was an all-star that year. It was my fifth all-star appearance and I had a great year. Statistically very efficient, statistically producing at a very high level. And then a couple of things happened. I had another attack, Oklahoma City, that I am recently just starting to speak about because, you know, I've had to unpack my team kind of, at the time, turning on me after that game. I had mispracticed the next day, and everybody was like, no, no, no, we need to address this.

22:46And I just wasn't ready to expose, like, what I was going through at the time. We left for, I think, San Antonio. And again, I felt isolated. My anxiety went absolutely through the roof, and I still had to go out there and compete. So I felt like I was on an island. And that same trip, we were in Detroit. I broke my hand. So again, the game was taken away from me. I had no outlet. I had nowhere to go. It's like, okay, here's the game. We're paying this guy all this money. We're supposed to go to the finals. We have no idea what's going on with our teammate. We feel like we can't trust him. I think it was that as well as our media availability.

23:22I started getting questions in front of a group about my mental health and that scared me. And I didn't want anybody to tell my story but me. I had to have it be in my own words. And I told my agent I wrote the same, made some adjustments. Only wanted to take it so far at that point because I was scared. I was really scared. I didn't know what this was going to do. Is this going to end everything? Is this going to end my basketball career? And what is pressing send going to do? But I think, one, I was just exhausted. I was exhausted, and I was playing this character and putting on this facade.

24:05I was just tired of struggling and being in a terrible place in silence and in the shadows. So press send, and then my life inherently changed forever. The article, published in 2018 in the Players' Tribune, was titled, Everyone is Going Through Something. In it, Kevin acknowledged his mental health struggles, described the panic attack as a turning point in his decision to seek help, and encouraged others facing similar challenges to do the same. The reaction to Kevin's piece was overwhelmingly positive. I would have never expected it I thought in the comments people are going to say like you're a bitch and how are these guys going to be able to be with him out there on the court when he knows he struggles with this and is he just going to leave another game and I mean it's primitive we're so it's ingrained in us psychologically like to perceive threat first and I think as athletes It's criticism is a tax on success.