AJ Lee has opened up about the emotional challenges she faced ahead of her return to professional wrestling and how a decade spent focusing on her mental health helped prepare her for stepping back into the spotlight.
The former WWE star discussed her journey during an appearance on State of Mind with Maurice Benard, where she candidly reflected on the fears she carried before making her comeback in 2025.
Away from wrestling, Lee has long been an advocate for mental health awareness and serves as an ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. During the interview, she explained that returning to wrestling after ten years away was not a decision she took lightly.
“A big fear was coming back to the spotlight and like wrestling again,” Lee said.
She recalled how difficult the final year of her original WWE run had been despite appearing to be at the peak of her career from the outside looking in.
“My last year wrestling, I think we talked about this on the last podcast, there was so much happening in my life.”
“You have all these eyeballs on you. It’s really high-stakes and high-pressure performance.”
Lee admitted that while she was enjoying tremendous professional success, her mental health was struggling behind the scenes.
“My brain was at my lowest when it seemed like I was on the top of the world. I was a champion, and all this stuff.”
Following her retirement, Lee spent the next decade focusing on her health, personal growth, and developing strategies to better manage anxiety and pressure. Looking back, she believes that time away ultimately gave her the confidence to return.
“Taking 10 years, really taking care of myself and feeling the healthiest I’ve ever felt, then being like, ‘Okay, now go back into wrestling.’”
Even with that preparation, she admitted she still had concerns about how the demands of the wrestling business might affect her.
“I was really scared, like, ‘What’s that pressure going to do?’”
However, Lee said the difference now is that she possesses the tools and coping mechanisms she lacked earlier in her career.
“But I felt so proud of myself for like, ‘Oh, I have the tools now.’”
Rather than trying to eliminate anxiety entirely, Lee explained that she has learned how to work through it when it arises.
“If I can wake up anxious, or I can be anxious behind the scenes and about to go out through the curtain. But I know how to work with it.”
For Lee, her comeback became a personal test of everything she had learned during her years away from the ring.
“So that was like the test was this year.”
After a decade-long absence, Lee returned to WWE in September 2025, making her in-ring comeback at Wrestlepalooza alongside her husband, CM Punk. The return generated significant attention from fans, with Lee scoring a victory by forcing Becky Lynch to submit.
Her comeback run eventually led to a reign as Women’s Intercontinental Champion before she lost the title to Lynch at WrestleMania 42.
While championships and victories remain part of her story, Lee’s latest comments suggest that her greatest accomplishment may be something far more personal: returning to one of the most demanding environments in sports entertainment while feeling healthier, stronger, and more prepared than ever before.
For a performer who once struggled under the pressures of fame and expectations, stepping back through the curtain after ten years away was about more than wrestling—it was proof of how far she had come.
