Mental health in high-demand contexts

“Think that this is luck and that you can't give up” (Carolina Deslandes in Tiredness ).

The seemingly simple phrase is a snapshot of a profound, if often obscure, reality: those who passionately pursue their profession—athletes, artists, leaders, entrepreneurs—are often the ones who least feel empowered to say out loud that they are tired or in need of help.

We live in a society that idolizes performance. Producing more, showing more, yielding more—we all want (or "society" pushes us to...) to be protagonists in a scenario where we are the central figure of an unshakable personal and professional life. An almost childish attempt to experience firsthand what it's like to be in a high-performance context, but we rarely possess the resources that truly high performance demands. Among them, the unequivocal truth of the role of rest and recovery as an essential strategy for a successful life (and career).

Instead, we leave rest to the (very) young or the "old," because for everyone else, the word "tiredness" is a taboo subject that isn't spoken about. We confuse it with laziness, lack of motivation, or weakness. Saying "I'm tired" doesn't fit the narrative of success. But fatigue—physical, emotional, or both—can be the first sign of a more dangerous process: burnout.

One day, a friend jokingly said to me, "A man after death can still crawl fifty meters." We laughed. But beneath the joke, we observed the culture that (unfortunately) surrounds us: the social validation of exhaustion as proof of worth. Taking care of yourself, stopping, regenerating? It seems weak. It seems wrong.

And yet, burnout is just the other side of the resilience coin. A resilience taken too far, to the point where the ability to endure becomes an inability to live.

The stigma of privilege

When we talk about burnout, the collective imagination almost always transports us to the business world: long hours, demanding bosses, toxic environments. But we rarely talk about burnout in so-called top performers —those who thrive on the stage, in major sports venues, or in decision-making rooms. In these cases, the pressure doesn't just come from above. It comes from within.

This self-imposed pressure, seasoned with the enthusiasm of those who live a passion (in this case, the profession to which they dedicate themselves), turns into a locomotive without brakes, all too often on the verge of a profound derailment.

The stigma of privilege—"If I'm lucky enough to do what I love and am successful on top of that, how can I dare complain?"—is a profoundly devastating myth. It prevents artists, athletes, and leaders from acknowledging their suffering. It drives them into silence. And in silence, the symptoms grow.

Simone Biles, perhaps the greatest gymnast of all time, said at the Tokyo Olympics: "I have to protect my mental health and not risk my health and well-being." Naomi Osaka, one of the best tennis players in the world, confessed in 2021 that she couldn't handle the media pressure and stepped away from the circuit. Closer to home, several Portuguese musicians—from Carolina Deslandes to Diogo Piçarra—have already publicly expressed their extreme fatigue and the need to stop. Fortunately, just in time.

The silent signs

The body and mind warn us before they collapse. But the signs are subtle: persistent fatigue, insomnia, loss of pleasure in previously rewarding activities, irritability, emotional emptiness. Symptoms that become normalized—"it's just a phase"—until they become chronic and plunge us into a deep anesthesia.

Just as in sports, where an ignored micro-injury can end a career, in mental health, small signs, when ignored, tend to turn into larger breakdowns.

In Portugal, nearly 23% of the population lives with a mental disorder, with anxiety being the most prevalent (OECD, 2023). Among young people, the numbers are even more alarming: around 31% report symptoms of depression, and 20% of children and adolescents already live with a diagnosed mental disorder. These data are not statistical abstractions—they are schools with teachers who drag themselves through a daily routine of endless fatigue; students who cannot learn; exhausted families; teams that are falling apart from within; leaders who cannot lead and who, all too often, are themselves vehicles for the emotional exhaustion of others.

The Portuguese paradox

The Portuguese case is paradigmatic: we are among the European countries that consume the most psychotropic drugs and, simultaneously, have one of the lowest mental health literacy rates. In other words, we try to silence the symptoms, but we fail to "train" prevention. It's like taking painkillers every day without ever treating the underlying inflammation.

The problem isn't just structural—it's also cultural. We've grown to believe that mental health is synonymous with illness, not an integral part of health. We continue to value discourses of overcoming challenges while devaluing consistent recovery practices.

We continue, in a very ignorant way, to be unable to recognize that resilience is not an innate talent, but a "muscle": it requires training, rest, and recovery. And this is the individual responsibility of each of us.

Train your mind as you train your body

No one would consider running a marathon without preparing physically and psychologically. But many believe they can lead companies, create art, or compete at the highest level without training the psycho-emotional skills that underlie the performance (or career) they desire.

But the truth is increasingly unquestionable: living in highly demanding contexts requires building a robust psychological architecture—an internal structure comprised of self-awareness, energy management, frustration tolerance, and the capacity for regeneration. It is this architecture that sustains long-term performance without compromising mental health and the meaningful relationships we maintain with those closest to us, and that prevents passion from becoming a burden.

In truth, language also needs to be part of the change. Speaking of burnout as overload without recovery, or resilience as a "muscle," not only transforms complex concepts into clear images but also removes the burden of stigma, demonstrating that training psycho-emotional skills is not a luxury—it is a necessity and an individual responsibility.

Science also confirms this: numerous psychological training programs have demonstrated improved mental health and well-being indicators, reduced anxiety levels, and improved performance under pressure (e.g., Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016). And we're not just talking about Olympic athletes—these strategies apply to students, healthcare professionals, executives, and anyone living in demanding environments.

There's just one "little problem": training, properly speaking, and of whatever nature, doesn't come from any magic pill... it comes from the will and, often, the determination that arises in the absence of that, to make different choices, to accept the initial discomfort and believe in the old saying that "at first it feels strange (to train), but then it becomes ingrained".