therapy

MUSIC star Lily Allen has made a shock confession that she’s now in therapy for her addiction to spending.

The 40-year-old admitted that she can’t stop shopping after purchasing designer handbags and an £120,000 Porsche.

Following the success of her latest album, West End Girl, the singer has revealed that she has put herself into therapy over the last four months to cope with her spending habits.

Speaking on her podcast Miss Me? alongside co-host Miquita Oliver for a Christmas special episode, Lily opened up about EMDR therapy.

She said: “I actually did EMDR therapy yesterday on my spending and how it’s related to my sense of self-worth and we tried to separate the two. So let’s see how that goes.”

Lily admitted: “I think I try and get rid of it (money) because I don’t think I deserve it.”

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Miquita later quipped: “What is EMDR again?

Lily replied: “EMDR therapy is a special type of therapy. There’s like, what do you call it? Like stimuli that stimulate the left side and the right side of your brain and basically try and create new pathways in relation to certain behaviours or traumatic experiences or traumatic interactions with certain human beings or anything really. 

“I started doing EMDR about four months ago, five months ago and it’s like been life changing. I just absolutely love it.

“I am not a doctor and I am not qualified to give that kind of advice but this is what is working for me currently,” she added.

Speaking about how the therapy works for her own addiction, Lily continued: “You usually start by sort of deciding on which area you’re gonna focus on during that session and then you visualise the experience. 

“If you’re trying to change your attitude towards a traumatic event, you try and think about how painful that event is from one to 10 and then you activate the stimuli, which in my case is these two vibrating balls that I put in each hand and you sort of close your eyes and put yourself in that situation and then try and identify what the feelings are that are coming up actually in your body, and in your mind. 

“And then you do that sort of five or six times and you find that the pain level associated with it goes down and down and down.

“If you’re trying to get rid of a negative behaviour like spending or drug taking or drinking or addiction to sex or whatever it is, you do the opposite.

“In my case a handbag, you try and separate yourself from thinking this handbag is going to make me a better person. Its really interesting type of therapy and I’m not clear on the science of how it works but its working for me so I’m very happy about it.”

Earlier in the episode Lily revealed she had bought herself “a little present”.

She said: “I’m just playing with my huge diamond and emerald ring, I bought myself a little present but it’s not that little.”

And earlier this week the star was snapped getting out of her new £120,000 porsche and £16,500 Hermes handbag in London.

Lily’s shopping revelation comes during a significant year for the star, who has launched new music widely described as a “revenge” album following her split from husband David Harbour. 

The record, West End Girl, draws on heartbreak and betrayal after Lily publicly accused the actor of cheating. 

Fans have praised the record for its raw honesty and cutting lyrics.

Singer Lily split from Stranger Things actor David, 50, in December 2024 and it was later reported that he’d had a three-year affair.

The details of her open marriage and split were laid bare on her 14-track West End Girl album.

On the album, Lily took aim at David and claimed how he allegedly ­bedded a woman called “Madeline”, which was later revealed to be single mum Natalie Tippett.

She came forward recently with a statement to categorically deny having a three-year affair with the actor.

REALITY TV star Sam Thompson has opened up about his painful split from Zara McDermott and why the end of their romance left him seeking therapy.

Fans of the couple were left shocked when Sam and Zara abruptly ended their five-year romance in January of this year.

Zara quickly moved on with One Direction heartthrob Louis Tomlinson, but Sam has now admitted he was left struggling in the aftermath of the break-up.

Insisting he neglected himself amid the pain of the break-up, he suggested he was left struggling more than people realised.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Sam said: “Look, I can’t speak about Zara out of politeness, and I respect that we’ve both kept it that way.

“But I don’t know one person who enjoys going through a break-up. I needed therapy to help me process that change in my life.

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“I worked so hard last year, I neglected friends and family, even myself a bit.”

Sam continued: “One of the big takeaways was to give myself some time, otherwise the danger is you get ill.

“We like to think we’re superheroes but then we burn out.”

Sam was linked to Love Island star Samie Elishi after they were spotted snogging in the street after it was revealed that Zara had been secretly romancing Louis.

But he has now admitted he won’t date anyone unless he sees it going far into his future.

He added: “I’d love to have kids and I refuse to date unless I can see a long-term future in it.”

Sam is now dating DJ and model Talitha Balinska, whom he first met on a photoshoot in 2023.

They reconnected earlier this year after he invited her to be his special guest at his Staying Relevant live show with Pete Wicks at the O2 Arena.

Just days ago, Sam flaunted her online for the very first time.

Sam announced at the beginning of December that he and Talitha had made things “official”.

Speaking to his best pal Pete Wicks on their Staying Relevant podcast, Sam confirmed they had taken their romance to the next level.

He said excitedly: “I’ve got a girlfriend. I’ve got a girlfriend!”

Therapy often gets mined for comedy but we don’t often see comedy treated as sincere therapy. “Is This Thing On?” from director and co-writer Bradley Cooper, makes the case that glum dad Alex (Will Arnett), new to Splitsville after he and his wife of 20 years, Tess (Laura Dern), mutually agree to separate, may have figured out an ideal coping mechanism by signing up for open mic night.

Not that we see this by-day finance guy reject professional help in favor of some untapped passion. (Vamping for five minutes in front of strangers negates the cover charge.) But in bringing his marital woes to the stage and getting some chuckles, Alex believes he’s hit upon something: a talking cure that comes with a fresh identity, new friends, an acceptable level of risk and a way out of unhappiness.

It’s such a frisky, alluring idea for a character study — meeting failure with the potential for more failure (and night after night to boot) — that when the movie proves to actually be about whether the marriage can be saved, instead of the granular, temperamental world of stand-up newbies, it almost feels like a bait and switch. Fortunately, the divorce saga is interesting too, featuring Dern at her best, and is plenty intelligent about the nuances of couples who have built something solid (stable lives, nice 10-year-old twin boys, etc.) at the same time they’ve grown apart. “Is This Thing On?” is that rarity: a perfectly worthy dramedy that sometimes feels off because it’s trying to cram two good movies into one.

The confidence comes from Cooper, who, after only two films in the director’s chair (“A Star Is Born,” “Maestro”), has shown himself to be not only a powerful chronicler of artistic lives but especially couples in the showbiz sphere. This time, he tantalizes us with the milieu of nightclub self-expression and a group of regular amateurs Alex gets comfortable hanging with. But over two hours Cooper makes it clear he’s simply followed his protagonist into a safe space of encouragement (featuring Amy Sedaris as a helpful veteran comic), not necessarily a complex world of personality types to be navigated. It’s codified by Cooper’s visual approach, a handheld intimacy reminiscent of European movies, in which Matthew Libatique’s camera rarely strays from tight shots of Arnett’s face, looking for change — circling it, centering it, trailing it when Alex is on the move.

Though Alex is earnest if a tad hacky with his relationship jokes, Arnett (credited as a co-screenwriter with Mark Chappell, from a story they created with John Bishop) captures a fizzy, awkward energy of midlife discovery. Invariably, the movie is unconcerned with whether Alex might be any good as a stand-up because soon it’s about how this new pep in his step registers with Tess, who’s struggling with her own sense of personal fulfillment as a former volleyball legend turned mom and how it affects their on-the-brink married friends, Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper, hilarious as a spacy actor). Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds, as Alex’s parents, humorously weigh in too on what long-term togetherness entails.

After a narrative coincidence that’s entertainingly handled, “Is This Thing On?” aims to be a more serious-minded, less rom-com-ish “It’s Complicated,” with Tess and Alex seeing if there’s a new way for them to acknowledge where they went astray. The actors sell it, especially when Dern is unafraid to mix revitalized pleasure with pushing for answers. But the stand-up storyline, so promising, is dropped and it feels like a missed opportunity. Still, the highs and lows of marriage aren’t merely a punch line in “Is This Thing On?” — and that’s good.