We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nikki Roy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Nikki thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. undefined
As I enter year 5 as a post grad therapist, I’ve had extensive experience working in both private and public mental health care in Canada. I was seeing the same problem occurring, accessing therapy and mental health services was becoming increasingly more and more difficult. Hospitals and community mental health were over run with long waitlists, and often had very limited capped sessions or time allowed in program. The issues coming up in private was lack of benefits/insurance coverage, and expensive sessions. Many people were falling through the cracks, left wondering how they could afford or access any type of mental health or support that they were needing. I started brainstorming how I could serve more people, and provide high quality mental health care at accessible rates. Out of this came The Wellness Club. The first of it’s kind mental health membership program. The platform hosts LIVE and recorded workshops breaking down mental health topics, diagnosis, and tangible takeaways and learnings. Followed by support and growth sessions, therapist check ins, and accountability prompts. The Wellness Club is not a replacement for 1-1 therapy, rather an expansive space to learn, understand, grow, and immerse in a healing environment. Building out diverse methods of support and healing is crucial to wellness longevity. Immersing and blending mental health and wellness into people’s lives in a seamless matter is so important to me. And as a therapist, it is my job to innovate and push the mental health space into modernized methods of healing so we can reach more people and create ease and accessibility to healing.
Nikki, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m Nikki (she/her) and I have always described myself as a healer. From a very young age I was beyond curious in what makes humans and the world we live in. And after surviving a severely abusive domestic relationship as an adult, I was left with no choice but to face myself in the most vulnerable ways. Throughout this process I returned to grad school, and started my journey of what it took to heal myself, and work with others on their own healing journeys.
Throughout my 5 year career thus far as a therapist, I found myself specializing in eating disorders and body image. This led to a large connection to self esteem, confidence, identity, emotion work (lots of anger), living authentically, creating a life of alignment, and breaking free from the oppressive systems the world operates on. I weave in a large influence of nature and creative expression to my work, as I believe we are all connected and creative individuals. Our pain and stories need somewhere to be expressed and felt, if they remain in our bodies they will manifest into depression, anxiety, and a diminished sense of self.
I currently provide virtual 1-1 therapy for Canadian residents, as well as running The Wellness Club; my mental health membership. In here I provide these beautiful live and recorded workshops, support groups, check ins, accountability prompts, and many other connection points. I don’t believe 1-1 therapy is necessary or needed for all individuals and providing diversity in wellness is crucial for meeting people’s needs in our modernized world. In the short term future I am going to start offering longer intensive in person sessions for people who are looking for an expansive, immersed, and more intense healing space where we dive right into exposure and action work. Very excited about this!
My therapeutic work on Tik Tok and Instagram has reached virality with millions of people relating and sharing my methods and understanding of mental health and healing. I deeply value my ability to break down large concepts into easy understandings so people feel like they have a greater sense of understanding and receive applicable skills they can do in their life to promote healing. In the past year I have been featured in BuzzFeed, HUFFPOST, NEWSWEEK and MORE.
My clients come to me typically in places of despair, anger, low self esteem, a sense of ‘not knowing who they are,’ lost in the world, constantly worrying about what others are thinking of them, desiring control, disliking themselves and their bodies, and wanting to live a life that feels more aligned and authentic to them. Together we go on the journey of understanding their own unique identities and the systems that impacted their self view, how to uproot and use anger as motivational healing, develop a deep and compassionate relationship to themselves, and figure out how to manage all of their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours that feel very disruptive and controlling. Learning how to live IN their life, rather than just exist on the path that was laid out for them. We work hard to understand the ‘box’ they were told they had to live in (why it feels good to stay there), and how to come out of that box with a sense of confidence and capacity.
I remember what it felt like to be lost in my own life, silenced by my mental health symptoms, and feeling little to no hope in it changing. The reason why I love to do this work is not only because it saved my own life, but because I deeply know that when we are informed and aligned with ourselves, we are beyond powerful. As a therapist I am constantly doing the work in my own life, and as an entrepreneur, I am always striving for more. Modernizing and pushing the limits as to what it means to be a therapist and what it looks like to help others along their healing journeys is important. Breaking down big concepts into tangible ways of healing is necessary for people to believe in their own capacity. And with a world that is moving and changing as fast as ours is, I am so proud to be creating innovative and modernized ways in the healing space to meet as many individuals needs. Because we all deserve to have access to healing and mental health if we choose it.
My work is rooted in an anti-oppressive lens, acknowledging and incorporating the impact that systems and socio-cultural oppression has had on individuals, families, and communities. There is no individual healing without recognizing the impact our communities and identities have experienced.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As a survivor of domestic violence I am constantly facing myself, my own triggers, and the healing journey of what it takes to come back home to myself after such an intense and traumatic experience. Experiencing this in my mid 20’s was not on my horoscope that year (lol), but regardless it was something I went through and experienced fully. I went into a couple year period of numbing, pretending I was fine, focusing on keeping myself busy, and operating at a low frequency. For a hot minute I thought maybe I would be someone who just ‘wasn’t’ affected by it. I was quickly proved otherwise. I started experiencing my wide range of triggers, bodily senses, high emotions, substance use, and relationship struggles. This forced me into a lengthy healing journey of my own, learning how to heal my nervous system, detangle from the damaging narratives of this relationship, and building compassion and healing towards myself. Ultimately I had to learn who I was. And I say that because when I reflect now I see that I was absolutely not living a life in alignment with me. I was still in the box of who I ‘should’ be, who I was told I had to be, and the role I had to play in the world. The journey I went on healing myself after consisted of more than my DV journey, it was an entire journey of learning who I was authentically as me.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn many lessons, but most importantly I had to unlearn and detangle from the intense impact of sexism and anti-fat bias/diet culture. Because of how rampant and pervasive these socio-cultural systems have on individuals, it often becomes imbedded into our blueprints and identity. For me, it was holding onto the fact that men were above me, my role was to smile, be quiet, be ‘pretty,’ take up less space, always be on the pursuit of thinness, deprive myself, hate on myself, push away my own needs for mens comfort, take care of men, and sacrifice my own dreams and body for men. This impact led to many struggles in my life – dieting, body and self criticism and hate, sexual assault, trauma, emotional and nervous system traumas, and keeping my own life small. Learning how all of this impacted my identity and my relationship to myself was one of the most profound moments on my healing journey. It then led to the journey of un-learning, and re-aligning with who I wanted to be. The journey of understanding how my own identity was developed, what systems impacted me, and how it created a narrative and identity that was not helping me live in the ways I wanted to was truly life changing. I can now acknowledge and validate all of my natural default modes, why things bother me, why I get hung up on certain things, and how to show up for myself when this happens. The goal was to never erase any of the hard things I went through or was impacted by, the goal was to learn how to show up for myself when those things happen and how I navigate it now living the life that feels much more authentic and aligned.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thenorycollection.ca/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikkiroy.collection/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nikki.roy.collection
- Other: TIk Tok – https://www.tiktok.com/@nikkiroy.collection
Image Credits
René Pierre – Pierre Production
Rachel Hunter – Rachel Hunter Photography