All Blacks star reveals anxiety battle which left him ‘depressed’ and ‘made living every day tough’

All Blacks centre Anton Lienert-Brown has revealed his ongoing battle with anxiety which had him believing he was having a heart attack at one stage.

Lienert-Brown, who has won 79 Test caps, made his international debut against Austalia in 2016 and is set to be the All Blacks’ vice-captain when they take on Japan in Yokohama on Saturday.

He has also made more than 100 appearances for the Chiefs in Super Rugby, but despite his successes as a professional rugby player, he has had to deal with his anxiety for most of his distinguished career.

The 29-year-old revealed that he spoke out about his mental health issues in a bid to help others.

“It took me a long time to seek help. I should have got it a lot earlier,” he told The F#$%ing News.

‘You struggle to talk about your feelings’

“I’m like a lot of other Kiwi men out there. You struggle to talk about your feelings.

“Struggle to say that you need help and if you say you need help, you feel weak.

“I battled with that for years until I was probably just hanging on by a thread.”

Lienert-Brown opened up about how serious his anxiety battle was and the pain he had to endure on a daily basis due to it.

“Anxiety made me depressed and it made living every day tough,” he said.

He also revealed that he had sessions with a psychiatrist, and received anti-anxiety medication which he is still taking.

“Over the years my anxiety got worse and worse to the stage where daily I was having constant panic attacks and it got really difficult,” said Leinert-Brown.

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“It would spiral and spiral and spiral to the point where I would have a panic attack… It felt like I was having a heart attack, but I wasn’t.”

He said the attacks were at its worst between the age of 18 to 21 during the early days of his professional career and as an All Blacks player.

“Sometimes I could be in a team meeting and be having one and just trying to act like normal,” he explained.

He mentioned one incident as a young All Black after a victory over France, when the team’s former assistant coach Wayne Smith told him “you should aim to be the best rugby player in the World”.

‘All I wanted to do was go home and just sleep’

While it should have been a huge occasion, Lienert-Brown said: “Honestly, all I wanted to do was go home and just sleep and forget about rugby… I was zonked”.

He revealed that in the early days, his psychiatrist prescribed an anti-depressant called Citalopram which can be used to control anxiety and that improved his situation

Lienert-Brown still takes the medication today, albeit a reduced dosage, which he uses as a “safety net”.

He has found ways to deal with his anxiety issues and has gone on to have a successful career as a rugby player.

Lienert-Brown said being a professional athlete has led to him prioritising his mental health above his physical health. He used ice baths, saunas and some meditation to control his anxiety.

“I don’t want to emphasise that medication is the one fix to mental health problems because it’s not, it was the start of my journey to getting better,” he added.

He is currently an ambassador for Mind Set Engage which is a New Zealand Rugby mental well-being initiative.

“When I got through the other side of my mental health battle, I really wanted to share my lived experience because listening to people talk about their struggles and the tools they used to help get through it really helped me,” said Lienert-Brown.

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