Caeleb Dressel says the Tokyo Olympics took a significant toll on his mental health.
In a video interview published Wednesday, Dressel told journalist Graham Bensinger that he “felt so lost” in the months following last summer’s Games, prompting him to withdraw from part of International Swimming League competition.
He revealed that he spent part of Christmas Day in tears because he felt that, even six months later, he had yet to regain the sort of balance he wanted in his life.
“(My mindset was), ‘I need help with all this. Yeah. I need to talk to people more. I need to just be honest,’ ” Dressel said in the interview. “I felt so lost. I wanted to get away from the water, but then that’s also one of my safe places. So it was, again, a rock and hard place. Yeah, it was a pretty miserable couple months.”
Dressel, 25, won five gold medals in Tokyo and blossomed into one of Team USA’s biggest stars. But he said that, after returning to the U.S., he still quietly beat himself up because he had not hit the goal times he set for himself in any of his races.
“And that’s not fair to myself. That’s not fair at all,” he told Bensinger. “Like, I just won five gold medals on the biggest world stage in sports, and I’m thinking about how I wish I would’ve gone faster in certain events.”
Dressel said he suffered from panic attacks as a senior in high school, as his profile in the swimming world and the expectations surrounding him began to rise. And he described the spotlight leading…
