Rachel Riley, who is appearing on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel tonight (March 28), previously revealed that her experience on Strictly caused her to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The 40-year-old appeared on the hit BBC show in 2013 alongside pro Pasha Kovalev, whom she later married in 2019. The pair became the fifth couple to be eliminated from the competition.
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Rachel Riley revealed ‘stress’ of Strictly gave her PTSD
While speaking to The i Paper in 2025, Rachel revealed the “stress of going on Strictly Come Dancing gave me PTSD” and that “cognitive behavioural therapy has helped me since”.
“My brain was storing information in the wrong place, and CBT has helped me focus on resilience rather than the stress of a situation,” she said.
“Before doing CBT I didn’t realise I was a perfectionist. A psychologist called Michael Carthy taught me that although I thought everything had to be perfect, it actually doesn’t. All my school girlfriends have the same MO; whenever you do anything, you focus on the things that went wrong and criticise that and externalise the things that went well and internalise the things that go wrong.
“Michael taught me to set a realistic target and when that’s achieved to be pleased with it and proud of it, then I don’t have to focus on the negative. There’ll always be things that go wrong, but you don’t have to focus on them. It’s taught me to brush a lot more off, that it’s good to get out of your comfort zone. If you only focus on the things that goes wrong, you just won’t get up there again.”
‘I didn’t realise how bad I was feeling’
In 2023, Rachel told the Daily Mail that she had been dealing with a secret health battle for 10 years. And as a result, it forced her to change her diet.
“In 2018, Pasha and I went vegan and there were loads of reasons but I was ill with food, so I cut eggs and dairy and I started eating in vegan restaurants and realised the food was really good and we didn’t have to eat meat and then we gave up fish,” she said.
“When I got pregnant, I just took a few food supplements, and it was all good.”
Rachel admitted that her doctors were “useless” when she tried to get help. However, it wasn’t until she changed her diet that she saw improvement with her symptoms.
“I gave up some foods and was literally so much better overnight. I didn’t realise how bad I was feeling until I wasn’t feeling bad,” she added.
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