Take the Michigan-born swimmer Allison Schmitt. After winning five medals, three of them gold, and setting a world record in the 2012 London Games, Schmitt sank into a hole from which she couldn’t emerge. She had no idea why she felt depressed—especially considering her undeniable success—but realized she needed counseling. The decision didn’t come easily; depression is still a dirty word in the locker room.

“I didn’t want to show my weakness,” she said in an interview with Channel 4 in Detroit. “I didn’t want to ask for help, but in this situation I found out … that I couldn’t keep fighting it by myself. … There’s this thing that they call post-Olympic blues and I think I had a little bit of that and I kept isolating myself and isolating myself.”

Before the Rio Games, in which Schmitt picked up two more medals (a gold and a silver), she elaborated in the Huffington Post on an athlete’s way of thinking: “We’re taught we can push through anything, we can make it wherever we want to go, and we’re always told to not ask for help. At the end of the race, we’re not having our coach finish for us, anyone finish for us.”

Schmitt’s was far from an isolated case. Her U.S.A. teammate Michael Phelps took an emotional dive after winning a record eight gold medals in Beijing, in 2008. “I took some wrong turns and found myself in the darkest place you could ever imagine,” he told Bob Costas days before Rio. He said he barely trained for the 2012 London Games, but after a DUI in 2014, checked himself into rehab and was able to reignite his passion for competitive swimming.

Mark Spitz, the Michael Phelps of the 1970s, won seven gold medals and set seven world records in the ’72 Munich Games. Perhaps the most telling statement made by Spitz—in that it exposes an athlete’s internal mind games—was his comment to ABC’s Donna de Varona before the start of the seventh race: “I know I say I don’t want to swim before every event, but this time, I’m serious. If I swim six and win six, I’ll be a hero. If I swim seven and win six, I’ll be a failure.”

Spitz, of course, won that race. He then retired at the age of 22, and spent years trying to find his identity outside of the swimming pool. He scrapped plans for dental school. He tried acting. He started a real estate business. At 42, still hungry for Olympic competition, he attempted a comeback but failed to qualify.

Caroline Silby, a sports psychologist and former competitive skater, spent 14 years training to make the National Figure Skating Team. “Some athletes go through a period of time … where they feel like an impostor,” she says. “They recognize that with a blink of an eye the result could have possibly turned out differently. … The instant idolization of their achievements can lead to intense and constant worry about rejection, criticism, and being ‘found out’ that they aren’t as good as everyone thinks—or that they themselves think.”