Rylan Clark treated himself "like a toddler" when he was recovering from a breakdown.
Rylan Clark hit rock bottom in 2021
The 34-year-old TV presenter hit rock bottom when he separated from his husband Dan Neal in 2021 after six years together, and found the key to his recovery was to praise himself every time he accomplished a small task, such as switching on the kettle or getting into the shower.
He said: "I couldn’t make my mum a cup of tea. I had the fear.
"I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t listen to music and I couldn’t watch TV.
“What I look back on is little things. You need to look at yourself like a toddler.
"Going to the kitchen and pressing the button on the kettle is a step.
“The day that you go, ‘I’m just going to press the button — I’m not making the tea, let it boil, f*** it off’.
"The day you do that, that’s a little step.
“And the reason I say toddler is because you sit and applaud yourself for that.
“I remember I didn’t want to clean myself. I didn’t want to shower.
“I remember the first step, another step on that ladder, I would turn the shower on then go away then turn it off.
"That’s one step. I’d turn the shower on, I’d put my leg in and turn it off and go away.
"My mum was on at me, ‘You’ve got to have a shower’, and I didn’t want to make her upset.
“I just went under the water, come out — like when you’re faking it as a kid — and come out in a towel and sort of pretended I’d had a shower.
“I didn’t wash myself, I didn’t have shower gel, I didn’t wash my hair, but that was a step.
“A few days later I did put shampoo in my hair.”
And the 'Supermarket Sweep' host knew he was the only one who could help himself, no matter how much support he had around him.
Speaking on the High Performance' podcast, he said: “I know that feeling of people trying to help you, your loved ones, like my mum, my family, my friends trying to help me.
“People saying, ‘Snap out of it’ ain’t going to help you.
“But the one thing I know and I can say, hand-on-heart, is the only person who’ll get you out is you.
“If you’re not at that point, that’s all right. Sit there and stew.
“Being in that situation, you might as well be deaf and blind at the same time because you cannot see and you cannot hear.”
The former 'X Factor' contestant has learned to worry less about "the small stuff" after going through his difficult period.
He said: “Before I went through my episode, things would really bug me.
"But now — I hate the term because it’s such a cliche term — but it’s a full-on case of ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’.
"I just remind myself, ‘Listen, that’s not going to happen, not a problem, you’re all right, you’ve got your health, you’ve got your house, you’ve got your car, you’ve got some money in the bank, you’re all right’. "
Tagged in Rylan Clark