Holly Willoughby has said she felt “numbed” and “adrift” before she tackled her buried feelings using alternative therapies and sessions with a psychologist.
The This Morning star, who has three children, Harry, 12, Belle, ten, and Chester, seven, with her husband Dan Baldwin, said she was prompted to make a change three years ago when she was asked to co-host I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! with Declan Donnelly, after Ant McPartlin was admitted to rehab.
She found herself away from her family in Australia and decided to explore.
She told the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine: “I stumbled across all these different places that offered tarot readings and kinesiology and I thought, ‘I’m going to do everything and see what happens’.
“And there was – not an awakening, because when you say things like that people think you’re completely mad – but an opening up.
“When I came back I didn’t want it to be a holiday romance; I had scratched the surface of something I wanted to dig deeper into. I’d always enjoyed things like this, but life gets in the way and you don’t always have time. Now I wanted to continue.”
She said that she had often “felt numbed and a bit adrift,” adding: “I wasn’t unhappy but I felt I was missing out on something.
“The busier I was and the more plates I kept spinning the less time I had to sit in silence and listen to myself.
“We give ourselves high-fives for multitasking. People say, ‘I don’t know how you do it’ and you think, ‘I know’.
“I was quite happy on the hamster wheel. I never crashed, I never fell off. But you can’t sustain that forever.”
Willoughby said she re-engaged with her buried feelings using a mix of alternative therapies and sessions with a psychologist, adding: “I was unravelling and unplugging myself, taking a long, hard look into dark corners and the range of emotions I felt – good and bad – was huge.
“Once the plaster was ripped off I felt so angry. Anything that happened to me – for example, someone underestimating me – I felt massively. Someone said, ‘It’s a hormonal thing’, but it wasn’t, it’s just that I had taken off a filter.”
Willoughby also spoke about her feelings about getting older after celebrating her 40th birthday.
She said: “I’m not afraid of getting older. The older I get the more confident and stronger I am.
“In my twenties I was terrified of everything. I’d just started my career and was trying to fit in to what was expected of me.
“Rightly or wrongly, you adapt and change to the opinions people have of you.
“My thirties were better. With more experience you have a voice, and the more you use it the more comfortable you feel tapping into it.
“Now my forties are better than my thirties. It’s like, ‘Let’s do it’, so I’m just going to keep riding that wave until… I can’t.”
