Shakira Akabusi is the daughter of elite athlete Kriss Akabusi, a name you’ll recognise from top-level track-and-field events in the 1980s. He managed to instill a love of exercise in his daughter, while removing any pressure and taking the emphasis off performance. And it was so great that he did; running later became an invaluable coping mechanism for Shakira when she was suffering with postnatal anxiety and OCD. We talked to her about it all, and about her brilliant, app, website and YouTube channel, Strong Like Mum.

“My dad instilled a love of exercise in me from an early age”

Shakira is the daughter of Olympic and World Champion sprint and hurdling athlete, Kriss. It’s pretty amazing that Shakira was brought up with such a strong emphasis on the fun of sport considering that her dad competed at the very highest level.

It could have been intense and stressful, but it wasn’t. “Running just meant the world to my dad,” says Shakira. “It became a family to him, and it was something that got him out of a really tricky situation.” Kriss was born in Paddington to Nigerian parents who were studying in the capital, but was put in foster care in London at the age of four when they returned to Nigeria.

“Of course, my dad was serious about sport. He was an Olympic athlete, after all! But he always had a lighthearted approach to it. Growing up, I saw that he absolutely loved it. He had a great time at the track with his friends, laughing and joking and always having fun.”

“I suffered with really extreme postnatal anxiety and OCD”

When Shakira had her first baby, she expected to feel joy and love – and, of course, exhaustion! What she didn’t anticipate was the relentless mental noise that followed postpartum.

“After the birth of my first child, I suffered with really extreme postnatal anxiety and postnatal OCD,” she explains. “It was so extreme that from when I opened my eyes in the morning to when I shut them at night, I had this constant anxiety talk in my head.”

“Every area of my life was controlled by obsessive compulsive disorder,” she says. “It affected my parenting, my marriage, my friendships, my work. It began to affect so many areas of my life.”

“OCD is a lot about control and needing to feel like you have some form of control over a situation,” she explains. “I expected to love my children. But I didn’t anticipate how protective I would feel, and that really terrified me. I felt so much responsibility was on me as a mother and I didn’t want to miss anything.” That overwhelming responsibility fed the disorder, Shakira explains. “It gave me the illusion that I was able to have control over the situations, which of course I didn’t have.”

If one of her children had a temperature, Shakira’s thoughts would spiral. “I would escalate into anxiety.  It would always result in, ‘Oh my gosh, I think he’s going to die. But if I tap on this five times that won’t happen and I’ll be able to keep him safe’.”

Logically, she knew tapping a wall could not alter reality. But emotionally, it knocked her about. “To ask someone to not follow through with a compulsion – it’s almost like playing Russian roulette with your child’s life,” she says. “I know that doesn’t sound logical, but the feeling felt real.”

“A seven-minute walk would take me three and a half hours”

At the time, Shakira was working in London for Adidas, leading run sessions. After each run club, she faced a short walk from the studio in Brick Lane to Liverpool Street Station, a journey that should have taken seven minutes.

“It would take me three and a half hours,” she reveals. “After every session, which finished at 8pm, it would take me three and a half hours just to get from the studio to the train station, with the amount of compulsion I needed to do.”

Totally debilitating, but one evening, a ray of light appeared. A hypnotherapist offered the run club members a 15-minute anti-anxiety session, and Shakira took her up on it.

After the session, she walked from the studio to the station in seven minutes. It was such a massive moment that she rang her mum immediately to tell her. But of course it wasn’t an instant cure for something that had been plaguing her for years. She says: “I can’t say, ‘Oh that was it, I never had OCD again.’ That obviously is not the case. It still took me years to recover. But within that 15 minutes, it was the first glimmer of me realising there might even be a hope.”

“Worry is protective; anxiety is when that alarm system misfires”

Alongside hypnotherapy and running, Shakira took part in some NHS talking therapy sessions. “He really took the time to explain to me why the human brain worries,” she says of her therapist. “He was talking about the fact that our ability to worry is actually an instinct that has kept us at our place in the food chain for so long.” Worry, he explained, is protective. It helps humans perceive danger and avoid threats; anxiety, however, is when that alarm system misfires.

For years, Shakira had thought her brain was broken but suddenly she understood that it wasn’t. She understood that she is a really instinctive human and that she needed to separate which thoughts were instinct and which were anxiety.

At first, distinguishing between the two was painstaking. “I’d stand for ten minutes on the spot, breathing, palms sweaty, trying to figure it out. And then eventually I’d be like, ‘Oh, don’t do that, OCD.’” And over time, the process became faster. Although she still has anxious thoughts, she now knows they are anxiety and she lets them go.

“Running gave me a way to outrun my anxiety”

“When I ran, it slowed the rate of thoughts enough that I began to be able to distinguish between what was a real thought and what was an anxiety thought,” says Shakira.

In fact, running was so powerful, she could almost feel the anxiety loosening its grip. “I almost felt like I could outrun my anxiety,” she says. “And when I was running, the hormonal response of running allowed me to change my perspective to a point where I could take a calmer, clearer perspective on things.”

What began as short local loops evolved and her distances have grown slowly over the years. “I always had a track background, so it was like 100m, 200m and 400m. Now I can run five miles, but it’s taken me years to build up to that. I’m not the type of runner who aspires to running a half marathon in the mountains!” she laughs.

“Sometimes the worst thing we can do for our body is pile on more intense exercise”

These days, Shakira’s relationship with running is gentler. “If I haven’t been for a run for a week, and I’m feeling really stressed, I know I just need to go out for 20 minutes. There’s a big thing for me of being out in nature, being around the colour green and getting fresh oxygen.” You won’t find Shakira obsessing over step counts, Strava performance or the dial on the scale either.

“We are judging our health by our numbers and statistics,” she says. “Whereas actually, we’re losing the ability to feel our health. That’s what I’m all about – realising that sometimes the worst thing we can do for our body is pile on more intense exercise. Sometimes, we need rest and that’s the best thing we can do in that moment for our health.”

“I really want to pass on to my children a love of exercise or movement as part of their day-to-day lives”

Shakira has four children now but she still remembers the wagging fingers and well-meaning but erroneous advice she was given when she had her first.

“I remember people telling me about all the things I’d never do again now once I was a mum,” she says. “‘You’ll never sleep again. And you’ll never have time for yourself. You’ll never wear a bikini. You’ll never run as fast.’”

Shakira didn’t believe it, so she started Strong Like Mum as a way to document her return to running and health after childbirth. She read that only 5.5% of fitness professionals were qualified in pre- and postnatal exercise at the time which was a massive failing for women so she trained in the area herself, later adding qualifications in peri- and postmenopause training.

“I really want to pass on to my children a love of exercise or movement as part of their day-to-day lives,” says Shakira.

“I love that they see me going out for a run and enjoying it. It’s one of the things I’m so grateful to my parents for giving me; it was all about loving sport regardless of pressure and performance – it was about fun!”

Through her Strong Like Mum app, website, book and YouTube channel, she now offers both expertise and empathy. “Yes, you’ll get expert support from it,” she says, “but it’s also about discussing mental health, talking about the challenges around parenting, being a woman and just real life.”