High-pressure careers, whether in sports, corporate roles, caregiving, or creative work, often leave little room for vulnerability, rest, or self-reflection, allowing distress to quietly build beneath the surface. Former Indian tennis player Sania Mirza once spoke candidly about this reality on a podcast with The Live Love Laugh Foundation, opening up about her own mental health struggles during the height of her career.
She told Anisha Padukone and psychiatrist Dr Shyam Bhat, “So 2008, I hurt my wrist really badly. You know, I had to pull out of the Olympics. I didn’t know I was going to play three more Olympics after that, right? But at that moment, you feel like, ‘Oh my god, my life is over.’ I was unable to comb my hair. Like, my wrist was so bad.”
She spoke about the fear she experienced when she could not move her wrist at all, thinking that was the end of her tennis career, “Like, it had reached that stage. So for the first time ever, I started feeling like I’m letting my parents down. That was probably my first time that I dealt with it; I didn’t know it was depression. For a month and a half, I was just in my room. I didn’t want to meet anybody. I barely met my parents. It was awful.”
Sania also spoke about finding joy in the sport despite what she was going through at that time. “It went on for a few months. Because I was not able to give that same kind of love and empathy to just my own being. So I realised that my escape from any kind of stress, I would go on the tennis court and I would feel better. I was truly happy when I was playing tennis.”
Dr Bhat reflected why depression for successful individuals feels different. “I actually see this a lot in people who have achieved great success, where whatever difficulties you are going through in life, emotional and otherwise, becomes transmuted, so to speak, channelled into something like, for example, the art that you’re doing, the sport, the art, and so on and so forth,” he stated.
Why high-functioning individuals often struggle to recognise depression until much later
Gurleen Baruah, existential analyst and organisational psychologist at That Culture Thing, tells indianexpress.com, “Many high-functioning people do struggle with mental health concerns, but their efficiency often hides it, even from themselves. When someone is constantly performing, producing results, meeting deadlines, winning matches, or being applauded, there’s little space left for inward reflection. Life becomes routine-driven and externally focused.”
Because things are ‘working’ on the outside, she adds, emotional distress gets normalised or postponed. Over time, the mind learns to stay busy rather than stay aware. “By the time the body or emotions slow things down, the distress has already deepened. It’s not denial in a conscious sense; it’s survival through functioning.”
How prolonged pressure, routine-driven lifestyles, and constant evaluation affect mental health
Sports, in many ways, prepare people for life. Baruah notes, “They teach you how to lose, how to keep going, how to collaborate, and how to stay detached when outcomes don’t go your way. But they also place individuals under relentless evaluation — scorecards, rankings, performance metrics, public scrutiny.”
This constant measuring creates a subtle belief that worth equals output. Over time, Baruah mentions that external benchmarks start replacing internal ones. “When expectations aren’t met, people tend to internalise it. This internalisation can slowly lead to anxiety, self-doubt, emotional exhaustion, and eventually depression, especially when rest, vulnerability, or pause feels unacceptable.”
Steps to acknowledge emotional overload early and seek support
According to Baruah, a helpful starting point is noticing early signals like changes in sleep, irritability, emotional numbness, or feeling constantly overwhelmed. These are not signs of weakness, but cues that something needs attention. Separating self-worth from constant achievement is important; being human means having limits.
“Building small pauses into life helps, like time that is not about performance, improvement, or results. Talking to someone neutral, like a therapist, allows emotions to be expressed without judgement or pressure to “fix” them. Support works best when it’s seen as care, not failure. Learning to ask for help early is a form of emotional maturity, not vulnerability, and it protects mental health before distress becomes overwhelming,” concludes the expert.
Sania Mirza opens up about her mental health struggles (Source: Express Photo by Mahendra Parikh) 
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