S2E10: with Reena Ruparelia : on Support, Love & Choosing Yourself

When I first came across Reena on Instagram, I wasn’t ready to hear her message.

Our chat was really grounding for me, it reminded me how hard it can be to hear the message of self-love, acceptance and compassion in the face of chronic illness, especially when we’re always being persuaded to believe in the opposite. It also confirmed how bloody powerful and transformative those things are, if we can get on board with them.

Chatting with Reena was like connecting with an old friend. She’s a warm soul, and we totally get each other. She’s an inspiring and passionate Speaker, Mindfulness Guide and Skin Positivity Champion, and on a mission to show people it’s possible to transform their lives through radical acceptance and unconditional self-love. She’s the voice behind the Insta community @psoriasis_thoughts and has been featured in Women’s Health, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dove Derma Series & more. 

Links:

Instagram: @psoriasis_thoughts  

Website - reenarup.com 

My Links:

The Inner Healing Wisdom Experience 

Episode Notes: 

5:30 - Intro to Reena & @psoriasis_thoughts 

6:40 Reena’s story - through denial, surrender, desperation & acceptance 

16:30 - Healing in community - not doing it alone. 

17:45 - Reena’s first experience of showing her skin in public and leaning on her community to help her through it. How she prepared fro such an event with ‘cushioning’. 

19:00 - Being honest with yourself about why you choose to do - or not do - something. The changes experienced as a result of that honesty. 

20:30 - The shift from wanting to hide away, to wanting to be seen & express oneself…who am I as a result of that? What in my life does that open up? 

25:00 - Challenging your assumptions of others thoughts about you & challenging your own thoughts about yourself. 

27:45 - The habit of excusing yourself & what that says about how you feel about yourself. 

29:00 - How lack of love, compassion & acceptance cause you to pull back on life ‘because of your chronic illness’, when really your chronic illness isn’t the thing getting in the way. 

29:30 - Pinning everything on becoming ‘healed’ & the freedom that comes when you take that option off the table. 

31:00 - The process of moving from feeling betrayed by your body to hearing & understanding the conversation it’s having with you. 

32.50 - The shift from being treatment free to having treatment - why Reena made that decision and what it’s done for her. 

36:40 - Mindful conversation, sweet language and talking to yourself with compassion. 

39:50 - With the cards you’ve been dealt, how do you show up in the best way possible for yourself? 

39:30 - Reframing the same experience to mean to completely different things. How you can go from feeling victimised to empowered. The power of a change in perspective. 

42:00 - Acceptance & complacency are not the same thing. Life goal: to be satisfied, content, happy, at peace and to inhabit ones life as it is. 

43:30 - Approaching life & health with a curious and expansive mind. 

51:00 - Cancelling, expectations, validation, acceptance, rejection & choosing yourself. 

55:00 - The people you choose to have in your life & only being able to give what you first give to yourself (understanding, compassion, acceptance). 

59:30 - Making yourself a priority & how you communicate that. 

60:00 - The discovery of self through chronic illness, the lessons learned through choosing yourself. 

01:04:00 - Finding the right exercise for auto-immune conditions & chronic illness. 

01:09:00 - The development of chronic illness & the effect on how you present yourself to ‘make up for it’.