Former BBC Breakfast presenter Sian Williams has opened up about her “lifelong” battle with mental health condition anxiety.
Sian, 61, a regular on BBC Breakfast during the early 2000s, has spoken about how the condition affected her during her time on the broadcaster.
This included during the opening the Diana memorial fountain in London’s Hyde Park in 2004. The event, which occurred on July 6, was due to be attended by the then monarch Queen Elizabeth II.
Sian detailed how midway through the broadcast she keeled over on the blazing hot day having been sat on a stool for hours and just seconds after she lost the live feed at her feet.
She told the Mail: “It is blazingly hot and I've been on this stool and talking for what seems like for ever. Until at last, my director tells me, 'The royals are on their way.'…Just as I keel over, I hear the director shout to our royal correspondent, Nick Witchell: 'Fill! Fill! Fill!'”
Sian added that whilst the BBC’s royal correspondent filled the gap, a producer helped to revive her and recover some of her lost energy with custard cream biscuits.
Later she described anxiety, something millions of Britons live with, as a “lifelong companion” and one she still hasn’t “eliminated” from her own story, but that neither is it something she would want to.
Sian went onto describe how she has since gone from breakfast presenter to a counselling psychologist who now mainly works in the NHS.
This isn’t the first time Sian has talked about her anxiety with the presenter writing a book about the condition called The Power of Anxiety released this year.
In the time since she started qualifying as a psychologist she has come to better understand her anxiety and now views it as something that makes her stronger not weaker.
She said: “Sensitivity I think is the thing that helped me in journalism and certainly helps me as a psychologist. It can be your superpower - it has been mine.”
Sian isn’t the first major celebrity to open up about their anxiety with I’m A Celebrity star Shona McGarty telling the Mirror about her own struggles with the condition.
Last year she talked about how she was determined to face up to her fears head on. Ahead of her entry into the jungle she said: “I am very nervous, but it is just something I want to do to challenge myself and to kind of prove to myself that I am bigger than this anxiety…..I panic and I don’t know why…I am just sort of learning as I go.”
For emotional support, you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.
