Jennifer Morrison felt she "was starting to dissolve as a person" as her dedication to work left little space for the star's life away from her career.

The 47-year-old actress wished she could have found a better balance between dedicating herself to projects, including the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and Fox's medical drama, House, and making time for herself away from acting and directing.

Appearing on the latest episode of 35-year-old TV personality Danielle Robay's the Question Everything podcast, Jennifer admitted: "I felt like I was starting to dissolve as a person, because I was so committed to the things I was doing but had no space to be myself."

She added: "I've been on, like, 350 episodes of television, and just been able to truly, like, live an insane dream and have loved every second of that. But I also could feel this tugging of, like, a true self that just was constantly being pushed away because I was sacrificing to succeed."

Director Jennifer - who is married to Gerardo Celasco, and has a child with the 44-year-old actor - struggled to understand who she was due to being so consumed by her acting career.

The Euphoria contributor shared: "I was never seeing my friends. I was never seeing my family. I was always missing every event. I was spending every hour of the day being someone else and no hours of the day even knowing who I was."

Jennifer could not even answer simple questions about her personal preferences because she felt she had lost her own sense of self after spending years playing various characters on-screen.

The Once Upon a Time alum said: "You know, people would say, like, 'What's your favourite music?' I was like, 'I can give you the character's playlist? I have no idea what I want to listen to.'"

These experiences made Jennifer turn to directing because she "started to feel like I was going to have a breakdown if I didn't do something that was mine, not because I didn't love what I was doing, but because I just didn't have anything that felt like it was mine".

The Warrior cast member added: "I started to realise that I could be myself and be creative while I was directing. I didn't have to give myself up to do the creative thing.

"So that felt incredibly motivating."

The experience made Jennifer realised that she needed to make more space for her personal life alongside her acting and directing career.

The Warrior cast member said: "I knew I had to make changes, or I wasn't gonna be OK, based on how I was feeling, was completely life changing.

"It's probably why I can say any of the things I've said, while I've sat here today, is because of the realisations that's starting to happen from that change."