AJ Lee was one of WWE’s biggest stars while privately dealing with something almost nobody around her knew about — she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder years before she ever stepped into a WWE ring.
During an appearance on the Mind Over Mountain podcast from iHeart Women’s Sports, Lee opened up about just how much she kept hidden during her first WWE run. AJ said the culture around mental health was completely different back then, and she was terrified of telling people what she was dealing with.
“It was a different time culturally also where I was very afraid to tell people that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And I just—it wasn’t like a mental health days off kind of world, you know.”
The wild part is AJ wasn’t diagnosed during her WWE career. She said she found out around age 19, before she ever started wrestling, meaning she carried that secret through essentially her entire rise in the business.
“Before I ever started wrestling, it was maybe around when I was—had just start—maybe like 19 years old. So, I had kind of gone through my whole career not telling anyone and dealing with these ups and downs privately and quietly.”
AJ said there were times when the women traveling with her knew something was off, but they had no clue what she was actually going through. She remembered sitting alone in the car while everyone else went into the gym and breaking down in bathroom stalls without being able to explain why.
“I had like—I would, you know, be on the road with some girls and they would be like, ‘It’s so weird that she’s just staying in the car while we go in the gym. Like, why is she—why is she crying in a bathroom stall over there?’ You know, it would be these really weird moments that I couldn’t explain to anybody.”
Instead of blaming WWE or the women around her for not knowing, AJ put a lot of that silence on herself. She admitted she was ashamed of the diagnosis and simply couldn’t bring herself to talk about it at the time.
“I didn’t feel like I could and that’s on me. That’s just me being ashamed and I wouldn’t talk about it.”
AJ also explained that she grew up without the kind of access to treatment that could have helped her understand what she was dealing with. For years, she basically learned how to survive it instead. Once she stepped away from television, she finally had the time and resources to start trying different therapists and treatments until she figured out what worked for her.
That puts AJ Lee’s original WWE run in a completely different light. Fans saw championships, huge reactions and one of the most recognizable women on the roster. Behind the curtain, AJ says she was sitting in cars, crying in bathroom stalls and trying to keep a diagnosis she had carried since she was a teenager completely to herself.
She eventually stopped hiding it, wrote openly about her bipolar diagnosis in her memoir and made mental-health advocacy a major part of her life. But during the height of her WWE career, the woman everyone thought they knew was dealing with a fight that almost nobody around her could see.
What do you make of AJ Lee revealing she hid her bipolar diagnosis throughout her entire WWE career? Do you think WWE and the wrestling business are better equipped to handle mental-health issues today? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
