At the height of his career, there was a time when Rafael Nadal could not leave the house without holding a water bottle in his hand.
The worst of the mental health struggles hit the Spanish tennis great around 2015. By that point, he already had 14 Grand Slam titles to his name as well as a slew of injuries, which brought on a concoction of pressure and debilitating anxiety.
“Probably because I went through a lot of injuries, a lot of pressure, and arrived in a moment where, in some way, you are not able to handle all of this – even if in my mind I was able to handle all of this,” Nadal told CNN during the promotional tour around the new Netflix documentary Rafa.
“It arrived at a point where your mind fails, and that’s what happened. I always thought that I needed to fix things for myself, in terms of mental strength. But when I cannot go out on the street without a bottle of water in my hand, that’s a big thing. So I needed to find help, and that’s what I did.”
Nadal sought help from a psychologist. When the improvements he had hoped for did not come, he turned to a psychiatrist.
“After that, I started with some medication for a while, and I was able to start feeling improvements after a couple of months,” he said. “That was for around a year and then, of course, I recovered.”
Setting aside time for non-tennis-related trips was another strategy that worked well for the Mallorca native during his career. The 22-time Grand Slam champion travelled to Ibiza every year to relax and spend time with friends – a strategy that World No.2 Carlos Alcaraz, who some call Nadal’s successor, employs as well.
Alcaraz has received some criticism for his trips to Ibiza. Nadal, however, understands perfectly why those trips are necessary during the relentless tennis tour.
“Everyone needs to find their own space,” Nadal said. “My life was much more than tennis, but I didn’t want to project that to the world. I didn’t find it interesting for the world that I was going to Ibiza. (Alcaraz) decided to make that public. I respect that. It seems like it’s working very well for him too.”