Bake Off ’s Nadiya: My battle with pandemic panic attacks
... and fears for my mum and sisters on the Covid front line
BAKE-OFF star Nadiya Hussain today reveals how her lifelong battle with anxiety has been rekindled – by fears for her mother and sisters who are working on the front line in the battle against coronavirus.
The TV presenter tells You magazine she has been ‘dipping in and out of anxiety quite frequently’ while the nation has been in lockdown.
‘I have been trying to find the happy side to everything,’ she adds. ‘But sometimes I find that draining in itself. I have to allow myself to be s ad occasionally in t hose moments where I need to make myself feel relatively normal.
‘If I feel panic rising, I find a spot in the house or the garden where I can feel the sun on my face, and I stand there for a few minutes. It’s such a simple thing, but it helps.
‘When I feel my anxiety rising, I think, “Hold yourself together: you are safe, well and happy, with food in your belly; there’s nothing to worry about.” ’
Nadiya, who won the baking contest in 2015, says she is ‘really proud’ of the work her mother does, cleaning hospital linen during 12-hour shifts. ‘While I want her to be at home, safe and protected from this virus, she has to do her job,’ she says. ‘It’s not about her being a hero or keeping the country running, it’s a job she needs so she can get paid.’
The 35-year-old also worries about her sisters: one works at a pharmacy, another as a doctor’s receptionist and the other as a key worker at a school.
‘The amount of abuse my sisters have received is unbelievable,’ she says. ‘Stressed-out patients coming in, flouting rules, getting far too close – my sisters have to tell them to follow the guidelines, and they get abuse for it.
‘ My sisters worry about their families and getting sick. The effect on their mental health is like nothing I’ve seen before. Every day is like a counselling session with each sister.’
Nadiya hopes the pandemic might leave at least one positive legacy – ‘that we don’t forget the important people who helped to keep us afloat. That those “low-skilled workers” are celebrated and we don’t forget what they did.’
Last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed how Nadiya had suffered a sexual assault by a relative when she was five. The attack left her with post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic anxiety.
She credits Abdal, her husband of 15 years, with helping her career blossom after she won Great British Bake Off, and for helping her get through lockdown at their home in Milton Keynes with their three children. She says that every night they score their parenting efforts for the day out of ten. ‘Sometimes I’m a two,’ she admits. ‘Say in lockdown, having a panic attack. So I aim for at least a six the next day.
‘We’re just trying to work it out. We’ll never get it totally right, but I can learn from my mistakes.’
DON’T MISS NADIYA’S FULL, FRANK INTERVIEW IN TODAY’S