'LIFE-CHANGING'
SAS telly show taught me that I really needed to get therapy, says Amber Gill
AMBER GILL has revealed she is in therapy after her stint on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins made her realise she had been bottling up her emotions.
The 25-year-old Geordie, who shot to fame in 2019 as the winner of Love Island with then partner Greg O’Shea, said she was shocked when the other famous recruits opened up about their past traumas.
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Amber had been trying to conceal her troubled history from the Channel 4 show’s ruthless instructors, but says the experience gave her the confidence to let her guard down after she returned to the UK from filming in Jordan.
She said: “The truth is, I haven’t had an easy life. I think that’s my thing. I don’t share the bad things that have gone on in my life that I probably should.
“I learned from the show that I need to share a lot more of myself because I keep this barrier up.
“In camp, people were talking about things they’ve been through in life and I was kind of shocked because I don’t talk about that stuff.
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“So I started going to therapy after being on the show because it’s not normal to not want to share parts of your life — to be closed off and guarded.
“If you’re like that, everyone gets the wrong end of the stick and thinks you have had an easy life. But I just can’t talk about things. I bottle it all up.”
‘Mentally tough’
Asked why that is her default position, she replied: “I don’t know. I’m learning in therapy that it’s something I do to protect myself.
“I bury things away in my mind and don’t really like to feel things. I always want to feel positive.
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“It clicked in my brain when Remi [Adeleke, a show instructor] was like, ‘Oh, the thing is, you’ve just had an easy life’.
“I got really upset and I was thinking, ‘No I f***ing haven’t. How dare you say that? You don’t even know what I’ve been through’.
“But it was because everyone else was sharing and I wasn’t. I was just saying, ‘Yeah, I went on Love Island. That’s basically my life. Thanks, bye’.
“So I’m really working in therapy on how to bring that guard down. And SAS was where it started, so I’m thankful for that.”
The fourth series sees Amber and 13 other well-known faces including EastEnders actress Maisie Smith, 21, Olympian Jade Jones, 29, Calum Best, 41, and reality star Pete Wicks, 33, put through SAS-style training by ex-forces operators from the UK and US.
Filming took place last October when Amber admits she was feeling lost and vulnerable.
The month before she had hinted on social media that she was grappling with her sexuality and was “sometimes” attracted to women.
I don’t share the bad things that have gone on in my life that I probably should. I learned from the show that I need to share a lot more of myself because I keep this barrier up
It came when she was left devastated by Irish rugby player Greg calling off their relationship just days after leaving the Love Island villa and a rumoured fling with Chelsea footballer Fikayo Tomori in 2020.
“But in July, eight months after taking part in the “life-changing” SAS show, Amber came out to her followers by tweeting: “Switching teams was the best decision I made in my life.”
Speaking ahead of the first episode tonight, Amber explained: “I think I’m very mentally tough. But at that time of filming I wasn’t very mentally tough. There was a lot of personal stuff going on at the time.
“That meant I wasn’t in a great place mentally. Normally I believe in myself, I think I could win absolutely everything I do. But at that time I didn’t really feel that.
“I was worried about myself, I was like, ‘Oh God, this is not good. This is not the usual me’. So that was probably one of my main concerns — I’d lost my mojo and I don’t really know why.”
Amber signed up to the super-tough show to challenge perceptions of her as “just a bikini”.
She said: “I wanted to show that I can do whatever I put my mind to, that I can be tough.
“Coming off a show like Love Island, people have a certain perception of me and I wanted to show that I’m more than that.
“I wanted to prove to everyone that I’m not just a bikini — including the SAS.
“I knew they’d be thinking, ‘Who the hell is this girl they’ve brought on here? She’s not going to be very good, whatever’. So I wanted to prove them wrong. I do wish I’d been in a better head space because I would have proved a lot more, but it is what it is.
“I hope people do see a different side of me, even if it’s an angry side.
Life-changing
“If it wasn’t for the others, I would have taken my armband off to voluntarily withdraw from the show immediately. I’m very soft, so when somebody was going, ‘You’re not f***ing good enough,’ I was raging and my face gives away so much. I literally hated them.”
Amber had secretly hoped the tough-talking instructors including Chief Instructor Rudy Reyes and Foxy (Jason Fox) would go easy on recruits when cameras stopped rolling each day.
She said: “I don’t think you can appreciate how tough it is until you are living it.
At that time of filming there was a lot of personal stuff going on. Normally I believe in myself, I think I could win absolutely everything I do. But at that time I didn’t really feel that
“It’s just relentless. I wish it was the case that we went back to a luxury hotel at the end of the day — no chance.
“I would have lasted a lot longer. But absolutely not. It was hell 24/7.”
In spite of the tough challenges and lack of luxuries, Amber insists she has no regrets about signing up as it has given her the push she needed to overcome her demons.
She said: “I felt completely different after the show. I know it sounds like I had the worst time ever but I’m really pleased I did it.
“I feel like it kick-started me into feeling like myself again and looking after myself, making sure I had time for the gym and all that stuff. Afterwards I was like, ‘You know what? All of this ‘You haven’t got time crap’ is just not true.
“So get your ass in the gym and start looking after yourself a bit more’.
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“It kicked me out of the rut I had found myself in. How would I sum up the whole experience? It’s definitely life-changing. It’s a real test of who you are as an individual. You learn so much about yourself. And it’s just really f***ing hard.
“But if you have mental resilience, if you believe in yourself like you’ve never believed in yourself before, you’ll get further than you think.”
- Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins starts tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm.
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