Shakira Akabusi On OCD, Anxiety And Motherhood

A seven-minute walk was taking Shakira Akabusi three and a half hours. From the outside, nobody had a clue. In this episode of Help! My Child is Anxious, Vanessa Feltz and child therapist Saskia Joss sit down with women's health expert and StrongLikeMum founder Shakira Akabusi to talk about body anxiety, OCD, and what happened when pregnancy pulled the floor out from under her. Shakira grew up in a sporting family with an Olympian father, and still ended up with obsessive-compulsive disorder so severe it cancelled a family holiday at the airport check-in desk. She talks openly about the compulsions, the isolation of new motherhood, and how she recovered through hypnotherapy, talk therapy and movement, without medication. Then the conversation turns practical. Saskia explains why compulsions are really an attempt to control something uncontrollable, and why pregnancy so often brings buried fears to the surface. Shakira shares what actually works for families: the after-dinner walk, the indoor obstacle course, the kitchen dance, and why the word "workout" puts most parents off before they start. If you are the parent holding everything together and quietly running on empty, this one is for you. Anxiety does not only live in the head. It lives in the body too, and that is often the easier door to open. Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/dJKxakAG5F0