08 October 2023 , 18:00
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She was famed for topless modelling and being a glamour girl in newspapers and magazines, but now Melinda Messenger lives a completely different lifestyle after changing her career. The 52-year-old was a lad's mag favourite always had an end goal in mind and just needed the self confidence to do it.
Melinda, who is currently starring on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, transitioned from a Page 3 model to a psychotherapist in 2015, and has now completed a master's degree on the topic. Three years ago, she opened up to ITV's Loose Women panel about her spiritual side that guided her onto a new career path.
Melinda got to a place where she no longer valued money and materialistic things (ExpressStar)
She has wanted to be a psychiatrist since the age of seven but lacked the self confidence (Ash Knotek/REX/Shutterstock for Channel Four)Although she was still thriving as a model at the time, the TV personality said she didn't want to regret not following her dreams and delved into the world of therapy and psychology on a whim. "In 2010, I started retraining [as a psychotherapist]. I thought, I have children, I have bills to pay. I was working in television and there was no sign of that letting up," Melinda explained.
"I thought, I can carry on doing what I'm doing but how painful would that regret be? I made the decision to go for it and I've been practising for the last five years and I can tell you, it's the best thing I've ever done." But her transition from glamour model to psychotherapist was not an easy one. "It's a big leap. Psychologically, you have all these dependencies and that fear of change is huge," she continued.
Melinda reached a point in her life where materialistic things were no longer fulfilling her, and she wasn't driven by the money to model. "I'd reached a point where money and having fabulous things was not meaningful to me in anyway and I wanted to be of service," she explained. "That desire to be of service oversized everything else. I downscaled everything, sold everything. As everything does, it becomes self-rewarding. The pleasure I get from it is through the roof."
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While it was always her biggest aspiration to become a psychiatrist, Melinda didn't think she was intelligent enough to succeed. "I hadn't started my own therapy before the training. As far back as I can remember, I remember being around seven and thinking I wanted to be a psychiatrist," she recalled. "My mum said, 'oh no you'd have to go to university, you can't do that'. We take in these ideas of what we can and can't do."
She said the challenge was not letting that mindset stop her. "A lot of it is an internal struggle. You can feel trapped by other people's ideas of you," Melinda explained. "That can be an internal struggle. But if you know that's just a perception and not the truth, it's still a challenge not to be held back by that but you can still keep going forward. People will have ideas. The challenge is not to let that stop you."
Celebrity: SAS Who Dares Wins is on Channel 4 on Sunday at 9pm