Daniel Bryan had a breakdown at one point during filming of Total Bellas.
He spoke to Peter Rosenberg on his podcast about the situation.
"Oh yeah, I did have a breakdown," he said. "It was 100% legit and actually I'm very thankful to the production people and probably WWE had a big hand in this of they made it less than it was, right? So I was very thankful for that."
He said that the breakdown was over a number of things, mostly that Brie wouldn't be around as much during filming as she was the road. Plus, as part of the concept, everyone in the Bella family had to move to John Cena's house during filming, which bugged Bryan.
"It was multiple issues at once," he said. "It was being forced to retire, kind of against my will type thing, but also, you get forced into this. So ideally, in this situation, you would be surrounded by people you love and who love you. And I do love Brie's family and they love me, right? But this is a different environment. You're forced to relocate to this thing. And then, there (are) cameras around you 24/7. And then, my wife was on the road full time, so she would leave on Fridays and she would be gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, come home Wednesday. Wednesday/Thursday would be days spent entirely filming. And then, she'd leave again on Friday."
The tipping point was when he asked for a week off filming to take time to visit his own family, but eventually had to leave while filming because the anxiety was about to get the better of him.
"I never got that week, two weeks, a month, to just be, like, around my friends and family and to where I felt like I could say, 'help me through this,' he said. Now, I ended up getting that because I left John's house while they were filming. I was literally like, 'I'm close to the edge and so I'm out of here.' I went to Phoenix first with our dog, I think. And then, I went to Washington for a month without Brie, right? Before she met me up there because she had things that she had to do and that sort of thing."
Bryan eventually got through the filming. The second season switched things around, with Nikki Bella and John Cena moving into Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella's house to help Brie through her first pregnancy.
