To mark World Mental Health Day (October 10) four celebrities share what’s helped them find balance and happiness.
Rick Astley: Therapy
“I think therapy was the best thing I ever did, because I had things brought to my attention and explained to me in a way that the reason I felt like X, Y and Z could well be because of other factors in my life when I was growing up,” says Astley, 58, whose new memoir, Never, charts his life. He had therapy in his late 20s, after stepping back from his pop career a few years after the success of 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up.
“Also, you’re in an ego monster of a situation where every single person that you come into in contact with for about four years, or even in the white heat of it during the first year of Never Gonna Give You Up, is only talking to you because they want something or because you’re famous.
“They’re talking to that guy in the stripy shirt and blazer. They’re not talking to me. They don’t want something from me, they don’t want to even sit next to me. They want to sit next to him. And I am him, of course, but that was the painted picture of me that was presented to the world.
“I hadn’t done a lot of maturing. I hadn’t grown up. I hadn’t become an adult, really, but I’d done a lot of living. I’d experienced way more than sometimes people possibly do in a lifetime. There was a lot crammed into that four or five years. You’re being pushed through a sausage machine and you have to find yourself and your sanity.”
Kelly Holmes: Baths and walks
“I give myself me-time, so I have an un-negotiable time in my bath – bubble bath, put my candles on, music on and chill out. And I don’t care, I’ll do that if I get in at one o’clock in the morning from work or something, I’ll still do that,” says the double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes, 54. “Or really early I’ll do my training and have a bath. Everyone goes, ‘Why don’t you have a quick shower?’ No, because sometimes I just need to switch off.
“And I think people owe it to themselves to take time, literally just for them. So yeah, me-time, that’s one thing I learned to do – I didn’t used to do that for myself, I started doing it during lockdown, when I was kind of losing the plot a little bit.
“And I started doing more walking as well. I used to always think ‘Why am I walking when I can get there 10 times faster running?’. Literally, that was my attitude,” explains Holmes, an ambassador for supplement brand Ancient & Brave.
“I didn’t do walking before – people used to go are you coming for a walk? And I’m like, ‘No thank you, I’ll come on my bike or run’. And starting, I suppose, from lockdown. I used to walk around the park where my mum’s bench is, which we put in after she passed away. And I just love that.
“I live in the country, so have the privilege of listening to the birds and the environment around here, or feeling the wind and just talking to myself or to my mother or whatever.
“Having those moments where I just feel that I’m switching off is absolutely vital, because everyone has ‘Go, go, go, go’, whatever their life is consumed with – whether it’s consumed with hurt or anger or coping or working or kids or whatever it is – consumed every day with everything. And when do we actually be in the present and just go right, this is now my time? That’s what I do now.”
Venus Williams: Saying no
“I think one of the best things is definitely staying true to myself, and in that sense, that means telling the truth, even in the hard situations – whatever that may be, how you feel – something at work, your relationships,” says tennis legend Venus Williams, who has just published Strive: 8 Steps To Train For Success (Piatkus, £22).
“Telling the truth to myself, and being true to myself too, in terms of not being pushed into doing things that I don’t want to do. And I learned that at a young age.
“I just woke up in a city once, and I didn’t really want to be there, but I was there because, you know, I got pushed to be there, and I was like, ‘This is not me’,” says the 44-year-old.
“And then I realised the power of ‘no’ as well – if it’s not something that’s true to me, authentic to me, something that I want to do, it’s OK to say no to those things. So those things have definitely helped me to be balanced and know who I am, and know what direction I needed to go in to try and get there.”
Dawn O’Porter: Writing
“The single best thing I’ve ever done for my own mental health is writing fiction. You can pour yourself into fiction and explore things about yourself that are complicated, and getting things down on paper is just so helpful,” says Dawn O’Porter, 45, whose latest book Honeybee focuses on female friendship.
“I always tell anyone going through something, if you can manage to write it down, you will find clarity. I find that incredibly freeing. There’s so much of me in all of my books, of stuff that I’ve experienced or felt that’s difficult to talk about, or that I’ve never really dealt with, and just put it all down. That really cleanses me.”
