Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver has opened up about her struggles with “negative” thoughts and anxiety.
During yesterday’s instalment of This Morning, co-hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley asked the actor about her upcoming exit as Eileen Grimshaw, after she announced in January that she would stepping away from the ITV soap after 25 years.
“I’m leaving now – I’m 61 and this is what my new book is all about,” Cleaver began. “I think we get to an age where society wants us just to shuffle off quietly and I really want to encourage other women that we have so much more to give.”
She continued: “We have experience, we make great mentors, we make great resolution makers, we’re great teachers – we have so much life experience.
“I think a lot of women lose their confidence and their belief in themselves. I think we spend too much time looking after other people and we haven’t spent enough time prioritising ourselves.”
Cleaver then shared that she has struggled with “negative” thoughts throughout her life, but she now wants to “help people realise that you don’t have to listen to those thoughts, they’re just background noise”.
“I was listening to my own self-criticism,” she continued. “I thought, ‘I’m not good enough, I’m an imposter, I’m going to get found out, I’m a horrible person’. Then I realised that thoughts come and go. We take our thoughts as fact and they’re not.
“We get wrapped up with the thoughts, the problems, the what ifs. Anxiety, which is a big one of mine, is always future-based. It’s always about ‘could this happen?’ It’s our imaginings and as we know, that’s not real.”
𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 “𝑭𝒂𝒏𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆 & 𝑾𝒆𝒃𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒆: 𝒇𝙞𝒍𝙢𝒔𝙥𝒐𝙞𝒍𝙚𝒓𝙨.𝙞𝒏𝙛𝒐” 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧-𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐞𝐬.
