Strictly Come Dancing star Susannah Constantine has opened up about her 30-year battle with anxiety, and shockingly admitted that at her lowest, she wanted to "end it all". Appearing on Wednesday's This Morning, Susannah told hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford that she started suffering from anxiety as a child: "I would wake up as a child every morning drenched in sweat and that came from, looking back now and that's only something I've done very recently, my mother was manic-depressive and I guess I would wake up every morning scared of how she would be today. There was that feeling of uncertainty. Was I going to be abandoned to her illness that day? So I think it stems from that."
Susannah Constantine spoke out about her anxiety battle on This Morning
The star continued: "I would pray that my car would be driven into a lorry or something, so that I could put an end to it all. But it was just a thought that flashed through my mind. I say that. That is over-dramatic but it was at that moment something [to] take the pain away and then it would go." The What Not To Wear presenter admitted that she hadn't confided in anybody about the way she was feeling over the years, because it was a "very personal thing." She said: "I kept it in because for me it was a very personal thing and because I was able to function. And so I started doing things for myself, I believe it has got to come from within you."
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Susannah admitted that she had kept her feelings to herself for many years
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Now, Susannah copes with her anxiety by thinking of it as something that will pass. She said: "I now look at it as a haunting. I look at it as the ghost of anxiety that has come to visit me and it's going to pass." When Eamonn asked her whether she thought part of the problem was that she is such a high achiever, Susannah divulged: "I don't see that. It's interesting you say that. I will do something, so I wrote my first novel. It's done, that's in the past and so I'm already looking towards the next thing. The people I know who suffer from anxiety are highly achieving individuals and I think you can use it to your advantage to push you."
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