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."
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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."
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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".
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"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."
Coronation Street airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
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