Thierry Henry says that he has struggled with depression and cried “almost every day for no reason” at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Henry was head coach of MLS side CF Montreal during that period and says being unable to see his children for a year “was tough”.
The 46-year-old is Arsenal’s all-time top scorer with 228 goals in 377 games for the north London side and currently manages France’s under-21 national team. He also appears regularly on CBS Sports’ coverage of the Champions League.
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“Everything came at once especially, during COVID time,” Henry said on the Diary of a CEO podcast. “That is when I really stopped. I was becoming a coach and I was trying to find things to stop myself from thinking about what had been chasing me. Deal with what has happened. We tend to run, instead of facing our problems. You stay busy and try to avoid what has happened. When COVID happened, I couldn’t not run.
“I was isolated in Montreal. Not being able to see my kids for a year was tough. Something like that had to happen to me for me to understand vulnerability, empathy, and crying. Understand that anger and jealousy are normal.
“I was crying almost every day for no reason. Tears were coming a lot. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they were there for a very long time. I was crying for everything. I don’t know if that needed to come out. It was weird, in a good way.
“There was some stuff that I couldn’t control. I couldn’t hide them. I couldn’t suppress them. You’ve been told since you were young, whether at home or in your job, ‘Don’t be that guy, don’t show that you’re vulnerable’. If they cry, what are they going to think?
“It wasn’t me, it was the young me. It was the young Thierry. It was tough. This is what I am trying to do now, get the balance between me and my inner child. Once you have that discussion with that little guy inside you, it’s scary. What he is going to tell you are things that you wanted to avoid for a very long time.
“I didn’t know (that I was battling depression). I would like to think so. How did I know? I don’t know the signals. I can’t tell you that I was or I wasn’t (battling depression) because I don’t know the signals.
“I’m a human being. I have feelings. Throughout my career and since I was born, I must have been in depression. Did I know it? No. Did I do something about it? Obviously not, but I adapted.”
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After a successful playing career that saw him win the Premier League twice, the World Cup, and the Champions League, Henry retired from football in 2014, ending his career at the New York Red Bulls in MLS. The Frenchman then took his first steps into management, starting as a youth coach at former club Arsenal before becoming assistant manager of the Belgium national team in 2016 and then taking charge of Monaco in 2018 and CF Montreal in 2019.
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As well as his struggles during the pandemic, Henry also spoke about how retiring from playing affected his mental health and saw him come to terms with trauma he had experienced in his childhood.
“I was lying to myself and made sure that this feeling would not go too far,” he added. “When you aren’t a player anymore, you cannot put the cape on. Everything starts to creep in. You go back to what happened, how you were with people, and how you behaved with people.
“That’s when it becomes scary because you don’t have the answers, and usually, I have the answers for everything. My brain would start overthinking, and when you overthink, you usually don’t go to the positives. You tend to bring yourself down. Whatever is not good in your life, you try and find a way to cover it.
“I was not sad. I wanted to find an explanation as to what happened to me. I am a guy who likes to have an explanation. I need to know why. When you can’t answer it, it is annoying. It is the way I am.”
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