Colton Underwood Opens Up About His Battle with Depression and Anxiety Before Past Suicide Attempt: ‘I Was Not Healthy’ (Exclusive).Linh

“I think I knew deep down for a while that I was struggling, but I couldn’t say it out loud,” the former ‘Bachelor’ tells PEOPLE“

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Colton Underwood was struggling with depression, anxiety and a slew of personal issues. Everything in his life was going wrong, he says, and he “didn’t see a way out.”

The former Bachelor was alone in his Los Angeles home when he attempted suicide, which thankfully was unsuccessful. He calls it the turning point in his mental health journey.

“I woke up the next morning and I remember vividly staring into my dog’s eyes and realizing I needed help, ” he tells PEOPLE. “That was my moment of, I have to make some changes because I’m not healthy right now.”

“I immediately loaded my dog into my Jeep and drove 15 hours to Colorado to my parents and I told them everything that was going on,” Underwood recalls. “The next week I was seeing a therapist and a psychologist and getting on a game plan.”

The 32-year-old’s mental health struggles were rooted in him spending years of his life concealing who he was. Underwood came out as gay in April 2021 during a Good Morning America interview. Before that, he hadn’t acknowledged to himself that he was gay — even as he tried to find love with women on multiple shows within the Bachelor franchise.

“I was depressed because I wasn’t living my most authentic life. I was sort of hiding myself and had a lot of shame and guilt around who I was,” he explains, in honor of World Mental Health Day. “And I also had a lot of anxiety because I was so publicly straight and I sort of doubled down so many times in my life and career who I was projecting to be. So that all really caught up to me.”

“I think I knew deep down for a while that I was struggling, but I couldn’t say it out loud. I couldn’t even say it to myself,” he says. “And unfortunately it got to be so much that I had that failed suicide attempt.”

For Underwood, after getting an official diagnosis of his mental health struggles, he required different forms of treatment.

Recognizing that “mental health is always a journey,” over the years the former NFL player has gone to therapy, taken medication and leaned on his loved ones. Now he is at a point where he feels comfortable and healthy.

“I think that for different people, different things are going to work at different times,” he says. “I needed peers at times, I needed a therapist at times, I needed a psychologist at times, I needed medication at times.”

“Everybody can relate to that,” he adds. “They need to be able to be free of the stigma and the shame that a lot of people always carry around the words ‘mental health,’ and get properly diagnosed. I think that’s the first step to healing: being vulnerable enough to ask for help.”

Since going public with his sexuality and mental health struggles — specifically in his Netflix reality series, Coming Out Colton — the TV personality says he’s had a lot of people reach out and confide in him about their own battles.

While he graciously offers support, he also wants to introduce people to other sources of help. That’s one of the reasons why Underwood is the new Chief Community Officer for WhiteFlag, a free mental health app that provides specialized and anonymous peer-to-peer support to those struggling.

“I might be someone they feel comfortable reaching out to but I also understand that I might not be the most qualified in all of the matters. Peer-to-peer counseling was something that worked really well for me,” he shares. “The way that WhiteFlag is built really allows people to take a step in the right direction of healing their mental health without it feeling like they’re all of a sudden diving into therapy right away.”

“For me, it’s so helpful to talk through things with other people,” he continues. “‘Trauma bond’ is the word I like to use. Comparing our healing processes is something that I felt really strongly helped me along my way.”