This episode features host Riera in conversation with Nikki Lambert, founder of the online support business Yogi Mum. Nikki's work is born from her personal experience navigating her teenage daughter's severe self-harm, which began four years ago during the pandemic. Her daughter's self-harming was discovered by her father in Dubai when he saw marks on her body, leading to an 18-month period of intense struggle.
Nikki describes a pivotal moment sitting in a British hospital's A&E ward, seeing the extent of her daughter's injuries and realizing she needed to change her approach radically. She initially made mistakes by treating the self-harm as a problem for her to fix, pressuring her daughter with therapists and conditional promises like getting a puppy if she stopped. Nikki explains that the superficial self-harm was not the core problem but a symptom of deep underlying distress and trauma her daughter was experiencing. She emphasizes that parents are often met with judgment and shame, and she lacked support systems when she needed them most.
A crucial insight was Nikki's realization that she could not control her daughter's actions, only her own reactions and behaviors. She began a profound journey of self-work, examining her childhood and parenting patterns to break reactive cycles. Nikki shifted from a pressure-filled, questioning dynamic to one of unconditional love and acceptance, explicitly telling her daughter she was loved whether she was self-harming or not. Her personal healing practices included yoga, breathwork, EFT, Access Consciousness, and ancestral pattern clearing to regulate her own nervous system.
Nikki discusses the concept of co-regulation, where a parent's calm presence can help a child regulate their own heightened nervous system. She stresses that self-care for the parent is not selfish but essential to creating a safe, calm home environment. Statistics she mentions indicate one in five teenagers in the UK will try self-harm at some point, a problem exacerbated by social media. Nikki's daughter has now been "clean" for over two years, and their relationship has deepened profoundly, with her daughter now aspiring to be a teacher.
The conversation is raw, deeply personal, and educational, blending a narrative of maternal crisis with practical advice. The tone is compassionate and non-judgmental, with Nikki repeatedly affirming that parents do their best with the information they have. This episode is essential listening for any parent, caregiver, or educator facing a child's mental health crisis, particularly involving self-harm. Listeners seeking purely clinical, detached analysis of adolescent psychology might find the spiritual and energy-focused healing modalities less aligned with their preferences.
