Faye Winter was in a "really dark place" after finding fame on 'Love Island'.
Faye Winter struggled with her mental health after Love Island
The 28-year-old TV star competed on the hit reality dating show during its seventh series in 2021 but has now claimed that the whole experience took a toll on her mental health but she didn't want to speak out about it at the time.
She told The Sun newspaper's Fabulous magazine for their new YouTube series 'Shamed': "At one point, when I came out of Love Island, I thought I was the worst person in the world. Not many people get to see their flaws played out in front of everyone.
“Did it impact my mental health? Yes. Was I in a really dark place? Yes. Do I think I deserved the hate? No.
"But I didn’t want to come out and talk about that side of it . . . I didn’t want to sound like a cop out."
The former 'Celebrity Masterchef' contestant also claimed that she "felt so alone" after her time in the villa and turned to therapy after finding that the "stress" of everything had caused her to lose a drastic amount of weight.
She said: "It was bad. Especially when I lived away from my friends and family. I felt so alone. That was a dangerous time for me. I wasn’t doing it because I thought I was fat. I was really stressed.
“I never thought I was one of those people. I didn’t even know what anxiety was.”
During an infamous moment from her time on the ITV2 series Faye had had been seen accusing then-boyfriend Teddy Soares of lying during the Casa Amor stage of the show in a rant that sparked 25,000 Ofcom complaints and admitted there were "other ways" she could have handled the situation but claimed that the trolling she received as "horrendous" even though she had tried apologising to her former co-star.
She said: " I apologised to him numerous times and I spent 18 months of my life trying to make it up to him.
"I wasn’t in a good place mentally. I started to believe (the comments) and that’s difficult. It’s one thing getting trolled and thinking, ‘OK, you think that, but I see myself differently’ but when you start to question it yourself, that’s when it’s really difficult."
Despite their explosive row - during which Faye had said the word "f***" a total of 57 times - the couple eventually finished in third place of the show and dated until February 2023, but Faye confirmed that they now no longer speak to each other.