Rachel Stevens still has therapy to cope with her time in S Club 7.
Rachel Stevens has therapy
The 43-year-old singer shot to fame in 1999 as a member of the 'Don't Stop Movin'' hitmakers - who went their separate ways in 2003 - and she admitted she used to put on a "show face" in the spotlight while keeping her true emotions hidden, and has been working hard at being able to bring her feelings to the surface.
Speaking on The Sun newspaper's Fabulous podcast 'Things I Told My Daughter', she admitted: "I got very good at putting on a show face and putting a lid on things.
“You just kind of push it down and get on with it and suck it up. And that does take a bit of a toll.
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to learn to undo that. It’s something I have to work on every day. I still speak to a therapist. That really helps.”
Rachel - who has Amelie, 11, and Minnie, seven, with husband Alex Bourne - previously admitted she wasn't "confident" when she was in the band.
She said: "Looking back, I wasn’t confident really. I’m definitely much more confident now. I know what I want.
"You just get to know yourself and what you need, don’t you? I want to bring my girls up to be confident in who they are and the decisions they make. I want them to have self-belief ... as rounded human beings. I’ll always be very honest with them. Kids are so emotionally smart - sometimes more so than we are as grown-ups."
And the 'Sweet Dreams My LA Ex' hitmaker felt it was hard to figure out who she was because of the group's clean-cut image, particularly in their early days.
She said: "When you’re a teenager, you don’t really know who you are. You're just working yourself out and that’s the time I got into the band. We were so protected and managed. So there was a lot of learning and growing to do.
"I'll never forget our first FHM shoot with all the girls, the four of us. We were marketed at a very young audience, so we had always done Smash Hits, Top Of The Pops and all those magazines before that. This gave us an opportunity to be a bit more grown-up and not be so smiley, happy, bubblegum. It was a nice opportunity to show another side."
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