This Morning star Rylan Clark has made an emotional confession about his anxiety following his marriage breakdown last year.
He made the revelation on This Morning today (Tuesday 23 August) during a segment called ‘Can Anxiety Be Good For You?”
Expert Tracy Dennis-Tiwary was making the case that we are trying too hard to banish anxiety when it can be an emotion that benefits us.
She believes we need to reframe anxiety as an ally rather than an enemy.
Tracy says that we are programmed to ‘feel it, fear it, flee it’ and this isn’t the correct response to a natural biological instinct.
She said: “What anxiety helps us do is focus (on challenging situations that could go well or not) and work to make the good things come through.”
Ruth Langsford, who was hosting the ITV show alongside Rylan, asked: “So what do you to turn that into an energy?” She listed a number of challenging circumstances viewers may be experiencing such as the cost of living crisis and exam results.
Tracy went on to explain her rule of ‘The Three Ls.”
She said: “We have to listen to anxiety.”
Tracy continued: “Second, you have to leverage it. You leverage it for purposeful action.”
And then she explained that the third ‘L’ is ‘Learn to Let Go’.
She said: “When we become skilled in anxiety we can use it sort of like a wave. We know how to ride it forward, we can learn to swim, we can learn to surf.”
Rylan stepped in saying: “It can be something so crippling, but listening to you say it in that way, it does make complete and utter sense.”
He went on: “So you’re fearing something that potentially hasn’t happened.”
The star then went on to say to Ruth that she’d seen him in an extremely anxious state last year during his split from husband Dan Neal.
He said: “You saw me last year, I was in a really bad way with it all.”
Read more: Rylan teases Ruth over her appearance on This Morning today
Rylan then gestured to Tracy, saying: “I wish I’d spoken to you beforehand! I might’ve been in a lot better place. But it is that fear of everything.”
Ruth then stepped in, saying: “You felt it was crippling you and you couldn’t see past it, could you?”
Tracy added that a woman once said to her that she didn’t struggle with anxiety, but she struggled with hope.
“Yep,” Rylan said “I absolutely get that.”
Tracy rounded the segment up saying “The only way out is through.”
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