Simone Biles’s Comeback Means More For Women With Mental Illness

Simone Biles knows what it’s like to be under pressure. The athlete has been doing gymnastics since age six and just 10 years later found herself at the World Championship taking home 2 gold medals. In her near twenty year career, she’s had multiple moves named after her and following her early success, expectations for the gymnast have been undoubtedly high. But the pressure got to her at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics when she experienced the “twisties,” which in gymnastics happens when your brain stops communicating with your body. The disconnect caused her to mess up her vault performance and stumble during her balance beam dismount, which ultimately led her to withdraw from competing in the rest of the Olympics. Citing mental health issues, Biles said she needed to focus on herself. Little did the gymnast know it then, that she had changed the definition of failure for women everywhere, but especially those with mental illness.

I’ll never know what that kind of pressure feels like to have the whole world watching you and relying on you to win, but I can tell you I too have felt the crushing weight of everyone else’s expectations my entire life. Since I was young, the need to prove myself was a constant. Living up to the expectations I thought were expected of me was crippling. Succeeding was something within my control — perfection was the only answer. But whenever a brief moment of success was reached, the high of winning only lasted so long before the obnoxiously loud critic reared its ugly head again. “You’re not doing enough,” said my inner voice as I beat myself up at every twist and turn. Nothing was ever quite enough. The cycle was unrelenting.

As the years went on, the voices only grew louder, and my tried and true efforts to appease them did nothing anymore. It felt like I had tried everything: talk therapy, psychiatric medicine, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, ketamine therapy, life coaching, shopping, dating emotionally unavailable men, drinking, smoking weed, the list went on. Nothing quite seemed to help me the way I really needed. I had pretzeled myself so hard into the person I thought I needed to become and yet I was wholly unhappy and full of fear all the time.

Then, in December 2022, I began picking my skin in a way I had never experienced before. My fingers scoured my body for anything I could rip away and night after night, I bled. Over the course of a year and a half, I caused scar after scar, resulting in many infections that required antibiotics. The pain I had been hiding inside was finally bursting out of me. At home, I was subject to constant, painful, and bloody picking, and outside, I was subject to looks from others who could see and judge the pain I was in. Nowhere felt safe.

Eventually, I decided to get a second opinion from a new psychiatrist and after years of battling my demons — severe anxiety and depression — I was diagnosed with OCD and ADHD at age 34 for the first time. All at once, my world began to crumble. The grief over all those years I had spent suffering and expending my energy to succeed (or survive) had become unbearable. The pain was taking over, and my ability to hide it was gone. I decided I needed more help and wound up checking myself into a residential treatment center in Wisconsin. While leaving behind my cat, my job, and my life in New York to embark on another healing attempt was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, I had no choice. I did not want to live anymore. My mental health had reached a whole other level.

Upon recently watching the new docuseries “Simone Biles Rising,” I realized Biles and I have a lot more in common than I thought. In the show, the gymnast talks at length about the pressure she felt to pretend she was fine after the notorious Larry Nassar abuse scandal came to light and the all encompassing doubt she carried with her from competition to competition — how she got the twisties. By the time the Tokyo Olympics came around, as Joe Rogan aptly said, she literally just couldn’t take it anymore. It’s really no wonder she froze — with Covid-19 fully underway and her family and friends not able to be there to physically support her, she felt utterly alone. I’ve felt the crushing weight of loneliness before, too.

I, too, like Biles, am a trauma survivor and I know what it’s like to doubt yourself to an extreme, to have your brain and body disconnect and to worry that if you step out of the light, even if just for a second, your entire world could come crashing down. So to see someone like her, against all odds, come back and win gold after gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics, means more than words can say. She may have been called a quitter and a bad role model by some, but what she really is is a hero. She sought help for her mental health and that was a sign of strength not failure.

Biles’s recent wins at the Olympics have helped lessen the debilitating shame I’ve felt for ages about my mental health. I, too, took time to heal myself and now, I’m on the other side of the pain, finding my way back to winning all of my own gold medals. I wear my old scars as badges of honor.

In taking back her power and reclaiming her title as the “GOAT”, Simone Biles has helped women at large learn that there is truly no such thing as failure. She has taught the world a massive lesson — that sometimes putting yourself first is necessary for your survival, and to ultimately thrive. Whether that’s turning off the comments on social media or not talking to the media before a competition as Biles mentioned in the docuseries — or in my case, taking time off from working and going to intensive treatment — we owe it to ourselves to set boundaries and take time to repair ourselves.

Doing so is one of the bravest things you can do, and now with Simone’s mental health experience out in the world, I think women around the globe will feel much more comfortable doing so.

Sara Radin is a writer and publicist based in Philadelphia, PA. Her writing on internet trends, style, youth culture, mental health, wellness culture, and identity has been published by the New York Times, Glamour, Self, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Allure, PS, and more.