‘Both our families are riddled with mental health issues. We’re acutely aware of the potential for both of us to suffer’
both the children and me because they are so exposed to our anxiety. It is genetic and there are mental health problems including anxiety on both sides of our families.’
For Izzy, salvation has come in the form of mindfulness, a mental state achieved by focusing on awareness of the present moment.
She began it as a therapy during her pregnancies but abandoned it in the early days of motherhood, believing she did not have time. She revived it on Harry’s insistence after Kit’s illness precipitated her freefall into panic.
Now, she has written a book, Mindfulness For Mums, in which she shows that it is possible to find moments of serenity even in the busiest lives.
She also demonstrates how young children can be encouraged to take part in simple exercises that induce peacefulness during times of stress or fear, alongside their parents.
Lola, now four, is already comforted by doing them. Izzy says: ‘It was Harry who packed me off on a local mindfulness course aimed at mothers, and it was the thread of hope that saved me. I thought I wouldn’t have enough time for it with two small children. Then I realised I could incorporate small pockets of time into my schedule and that Lola would join me and follow my example.’
Harry, she says, has other strategies for stilling his anxious, racing mind. ‘Exercise is his therapy,’ she says. ‘He goes to the gym. If I see the signs that his anxiety is coming on, I’ll cook him a nutritious meal, get him to drink plenty of water, encourage him to go for a run.’
I wonder how they deal with the prospect that both of them will panic simultaneously. ‘Actually, it doesn’t happen,’ she says. ‘When I had the miscarriage, we tagteamed being upset.
I think you make yourself strong if you have to cope.’ Izzy’s anxiety dates back to early childhood. ‘I dreaded bedtime; not because I was afraid of the dark or monsters, I just didn’t want to be alone in my bedroom,’ she says. ‘I’d wake up in what I now know was a panic. My heart would be racing, my legs would shake. The only place I felt safe was in my parents’ bed.’ Then, when she was 12, Rupert, the eldest of her three older brothers — a talented French horn player and star student at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama — suffered catastrophic brain injuries in a car crash. Today, so severe is his cognitive impairment, he still needs roundthe-clock care. ‘The enormity of our family tragedy felt like confirmation that there was a reason to worry,’ she says. ‘Life as I’d known it had changed overnight and I felt completely out of control. That and fear of change have been the two biggest worries that have remained with me ever since. At the time I just thought my problems were minor compared with Rupert’s. Today, I might have had counselling; then, I didn’t want to add to my parents’ concerns.’
By her 20s she was so consumed with fear she could not even shower alone: ‘Mum would stand in the shower with me,’ she says, ‘And on one Escala tour, I was so transfixed with panic I couldn’t get out of the car.’
I wonder if being on stage in front of huge global audiences exacerbated her anxiety but she says it was the opposite. ‘I loved performing; even as a child. What I feared was being alone and not being in control.
AND I’ve always had a vivid imagination that would conjure up the worst eventualities.’ She believes talking about anxiety helps diminish its potency and is determined to do all she can to raise her children to be confident, happy individuals.
‘I can sense Lola is worried at bedtime and I don’t want her to go through what I did,’ she says. ‘So I try to prepare her for sleep by doing little exercises that will soothe and settle her, things I know I’d have benefited from as a child if they’d been accessible.
‘To ease her into a relaxing sleep we go in our imaginations to her favourite park. We visualise it and I tell her a calming story.
‘She loves it when I say, “Mummy and Lola have a hot chocolate,” and then, when we’ve walked through the park in our minds, I ask her to imagine a leaf or a feather falling on to her and it helps her relax into sleep. She knows everything passes.
‘Even at the age of four she’ll say, “It’s a grey day today but the sun may shine tomorrow” and I explain that, like the weather, the way we are feeling also comes and goes.’
Izzy is confident she will give the children the tools they need to be happy adults.
On the day we meet, she seems happy, unflustered, quietly selfassured. Before we begin our chat we take a moment to close our eyes, breathe deeply, still our racing thoughts.
I wonder if she is worrying about the children.
Actually, she isn’t. Harry is at home with them and her trust in him is absolute. Will they try for a third? ‘We have one more frozen embryo left from our IVF cycle,’ she says. ‘I often think about it but I also feel my life is very full and busy. So we’ll see.
‘At one stage I thought we might not even have one child. To have a boy and a girl makes me feel very lucky indeed.’
■ MINDFULNESS For Mums by Izzy Judd is published by Michael Joseph, €21.