Hayden Panettiere found Nashville to be a "different way of doing therapy".
The 36-year-old actress played troubled country singer Juliette Barnes in the drama series and she identified with a number of issues she had to tackle as her alter ego, including battling substance abuse and post-partum depression.
She told Entertainment Weekly: "It's definitely kept me more in tune with who I am and what's going on with me. It was kind of like a therapy session sometimes — we get to emote and we get to touch on those points that are topics that are really hard for us. It's kind of a different way of doing therapy.
"But it has served me well, and I'm proud of the characters that I have gotten the chance to play, and the topics that I've been able to touch on. And I hope to continue to do that."
Hayden didn't always find filming certain scenes easy but she hopes they helped viewers.
She said: "[If my performance] helps somebody out there to not feel so alone and to feel understood, then I'm all for it."
Although the connection she felt with Juliette was a large part of what attracted Hayden to the role, she admitted sometimes playing out those similarities could be "terrifying".
She said: "When I read this role and I read the scripts I was like, 'If there's been a character in my career that I could play and do justice, this is the character.
"I could relate to her so much, and went through everything that she went through.... It was just a character that had everything that I was dying to portray...
"Like when I was dealing with postpartum depression, the fact that I got to go out there and had to perform through it — it was terrifying, and very emotional.
"There was a lot that I related to, sometimes a little bit too much. It hit really close to home."
The former Heroes actress - who has 10-year-old daughter Kaya with former partner Wladimir Klitschko - previously admitted working on Nashville had been "very traumatising" at times because she "felt like [she] was acting out [her] own life".
And she admitted some storylines had been based on her own experiences.
She reflected: "When I was on Nashville, they really wrote my life into it. So on the show, one of the storylines was that I was playing an alcoholic. Another storyline was that I was pregnant on the show, and then I got postpartum depression.... So I had to go to work every day and be acting out what I was truly going through."
