WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion Sasha Banks was the most recent guest on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions where she discussed several topics, including how WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon reacted to when she initially requested to leave the company, as well as her five-month hiatus.

“At Elimination Chamber, I know how important that match was for Bayley, but at that time, I still was slowly going down and not happy. Depression, depression was taking over, my mind was taking over, my thoughts were taking over, this place was being bigger than me and I really, really lost myself, because for a good seven years, I didn’t even hear my real name, I didn’t hear Mercedes anymore, all I heard was Sasha Banks and travelling on the road, we only get one to two days off, so I’m home, not even seeing what my real hair looks like, all I see is purple hair every single day, there were just so many things that were just, I let it control me, I let it take it and be like, this is too much, instead of being like, you know what, everything’s good, breathe, everything’s fine.

I couldn’t even look at myself, I didn’t even know who the hell I was, how I was going into work, how angry I was going in, how sad I was, I was not the person that I dreamt to be, it hit the fan and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose myself, so I said, you know what, I’ve got to take a step away and find myself again and I’ve got to be brave about that and that was probably one of the hardest things I had to do, ask to leave the WWE. I asked to leave and Vince was like no, he said no, he said I’m going to give you 30 days to think about it and I took more than 30 days.”