I used to pray a lorry would hit my car, reveals TV’s Susannah
SUSANNAH Constantine has revealed how her anxiety would get so bad she would pray that her car would be hit by a lorry to end her pain.
The television presenter and Femail columnist said she started experiencing mental health issues when she was a youngster but kept the condition a secret.
She told ITV’s This Morning that at her worst, she ‘would pray that my car would be driven into by a lorry or something, so that I could put an end to it all’. The fashion expert added: ‘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.’
She said: ‘I kept it in because for me it was a very personal thing and because I was able to function. I now look at it as a haunting. I look at it as the ghost of anxiety has come to visit me and it’s going to pass. I use it as a motivator now.’
The star, 57, who rose to fame as part of stylist duo Trinny and Susannah on BBC show What Not To Wear, said she still experiences anxiety and had woken up that morning ‘with a snowball in my stomach’. It’s now starting to melt. Usually by 11am, 12pm it’s gone and I’m okay,’ she said. Miss Constantine said she believes her depression stems from the fact that her mother had bipolar disorder while she was growing up.
She said: ‘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.’
Miss Constantine, who also appeared in Strictly in 2018, has revealed how going through the menopause had affected her more mentally than physically. She described how ‘blue moods’ left her feeling ‘consumed by fear’ – and admitted her 24-year marriage to Danish businessman Sten Bertelsen came ‘near to breaking point’.
‘Put an end to it all’