I was burnt out by work addiction at 34... but bounced back by learning to nap

AS A competitive ballroom dancer, Camilla SacreDallerup is an expert at putting her best foot forward. The former star of Strictly Come Dancing has been, since the age of just five, a performer – and an award-winning one at that.

As the years went by, her dancing achievements duly multiplied.

But at 34, heartbroken by the very public break-up of her relationship with Strictly co-star and fiance Brendan Cole and exhausted from work addiction, she found herself burnt out.

Camilla, now 43, had, like many Britons, fallen victim to stress and was barely able to function. For a year, she rarely left the house, let alone worked. And the thought of returning to the career she had once lived for filled her with dread.

‘Basically, I didn’t work for a year – I couldn’t,’ she tells me. ‘I was exhausted and burnt out and at the time thought I had nothing left to give.’

It may have felt like it, but she was not alone. Last year, the World Health Organisation warned that stress, particularly that linked to the workplace, was the ‘health epidemic of the 21st Century’ and a risk factor in the development of a host of illnesses from diabetes and heart disease to asthma.

More than ten million work days are lost to stress in the UK each year, at a cost of £6 billion to the economy.

Often, stress is imposed by outside forces, but in Camilla’s case it seemed her own inability to slow down was exacerbating her problems. She admits she was a workaholic, adding: ‘Work can be an addiction, for sure. I was an athlete, and there was always something to improve on or a new goal. All I did was dance and compete. I never took time out, and I never said no.

‘I was afraid of not being busy because if I stopped for a minute, I would notice I wasn’t happy.’

NOW, after much soul-searching, she has bounced back and is on a mission to help others improve their lives. It may sound strange to some, or like the ultimate indulgence, but Camilla reveals her key to inner peace is… napping.

She explains: ‘Whenever I’m really tired, I’ll find a place – it could be in a parked car or a changing room – and close my eyes.

‘I never need more than 20 minutes and afterwards I find I’m so much more productive. It’s quiet time to reset. Some people take a walk, I nap.’

She also regularly meditates to keep her mind calm and describes her recovery process as ‘reinventing herself’.

Her methods are covered in her new book, published this month. The pocket-size guide, called Reinvent Me, is aimed at helping those who find themselves at a difficult crossroads in life.

It contains easy-to-follow mental exercises and questionnaires to help readers decide what’s most important to them and what they really want in life, so they can set about making those things happen.

The advice is coloured with Camilla’s own personal experiences of putting it into practice. ‘All the methods in the book are ones I have used myself,’ she says.

I speak to Camilla prior to her book launch and she is strikingly upfront about her post-Strictly experiences and why she turned her back on showbiz – in marked contrast to her mood when we first met two years ago.

Even then it was more than a decade since her relationship with Cole imploded during the first series of the show after rumours surfaced of an affair with his celebrity partner, TV presenter Natasha Kaplinsky. To make matters worse, the pair went on to win.

Despite heartbreak that she later admitted was ‘like a death’, the show went on – for five years.

Camilla continued to appear on Strictly until she finally held aloft the coveted glitterball trophy in 2008 with her partner, Holby City’s Tom Chambers. She then quit – and disappeared from public view.

In 2010 she married Hollyoaks actor Kevin Sacre and then, in 2014, seemingly from nowhere, she resurfaced, publishing a memoir-come-self-help manual, Strictly Inspirational. It was a guide to overcoming obstacles in life and finding inner strength. It transpired that Camilla had hung up her sequined gowns and cha-cha heels for good and retrained as a hypnotherapist and life coach.

Now, recalling the end of her professional dancing days, she admits: ‘I left Strictly because I lost my drive. I couldn’t have cared less about the only thing I ever loved doing. It was hard to admit.’

The hiatus triggered intense

self-doubt. ‘I don’t think I was depressed, but I was suffering the effects of chronic stress,’ she says. ‘I remember my husband and I went on holiday but I was so tired I could barely leave the hotel. Back at home, there would be days when I could barely get out of bed.’

Early on in Reinvent Me, Camilla asks readers to fill in the blanks: ‘My name is [blank], and I’m [blank],’ she writes.

She explains: ‘I used to say, “My name is Camilla and I’m a dancer.” My work defined me. But if I wasn’t a dancer any more, who was I? If someone had asked me that year after leaving Strictly who I was, I’d have said, “My name is Camilla, and I’m lost.”’

Recovery was a slow process. ‘I did a few jobs to make ends meet. But I was mainly recuperating and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I’d found a lot of comfort and inspiration in self-help books and decided I wanted to help others who had been through tough times. So I retrained.’

Unlike many ‘gurus’ of a similar ilk, she is happy to say she is still a work in progress. ‘I’m good now – it’s why I teach everything I teach. But it didn’t happen overnight and I have to make sure I don’t slip back into my old ways. If I work for seven days, I make sure I have some time out. I still work hard but I take our dogs out twice a day, and go for a massage or meditate.’

Next on the cards is a tour to promote the book, while Camilla recently revealed in an interview that she and Kevin had considered adopting. She says: ‘We’ve never ruled out being parents – it’s just not happened yet. But for the first time in my life I’m not rushing about so much, so everything is possible.’

So, if she was asked today to complete the sentence ‘My name is Camilla, and I’m…’? She responds immediately. ‘Content.’

Reinvent Me, by Camilla Sacre-Dallerup, Watkins Publishing, is out now, priced £8.99. For details of the Reinvent Me LIVE Tour, visit zenme.tv.