Raveena Arora is a content creator who has turned vulnerability into a powerful tool for change. She began her journey on Instagram in 2020, speaking openly about mental health at a time when such conversations were still whispered. What followed was an outpouring of connection—people who felt seen, heard, and finally understood.
As her platform grew, Raveena shifted her focus to conversations around toxic parenting, the healing of adult children, and the deeply rooted challenges women face in their everyday lives. Her content doesn’t just raise awareness—it creates safe spaces. Alongside this, she openly shares her journey of singlehood and self-love, encouraging her audience to honor their own paths without shame or comparison.
When did you started your journey?
Hi! I’m Raveena Arora, 31yrs old content creator on Instagram & YouTube. I create content around spreading awareness on toxic parenting, healing adult children of toxic parents. Spreading awareness on women empowerment, raising questions on issues that women face in their life. I also like to share my single hood journey, empowering people to love their own journey.
I started making videos on Instagram in 2020. I shared videos about mental health, because I wanted to spread awareness about it and encourage people to talk about it. Then I started talking about toxic parenting, people resonated with my work and felt heard. That gave me the push to keep making more content and help people along the journey. It makes them feel heard, safe, and validated.
In what ways do I measure my worth, and are those measures truly mine—or inherited from society, family, or past experiences?
I measure my worth by my emotional intelligence, maturity and awareness. I see how far I’ve come in life, by working on myself and growing in terms of getting better as a human being. I don’t measure by society’s standards. I’ve learnt this the hard way.
What parts of myself do I suppress or apologize for, and what would happen if I allowed them to exist without judgment?
I still criticise myself somewhere, I suppress myself in some places, although I’ve come far enough but it’s still a work in progress. For example if I’m amongst my relatives, I still can’t be fully myself or say anything. Sometimes I do, sometimes I’m silent. I don’t apologize for anything, because I’ve accepted myself the way I am. So I push myself to just exist freely and let people think whatever they wanna think. I’ve come long way, so most of the times I’m carefree.
If I treated my inner voice as a separate person, how would I describe our relationship—and what would I want to change about it?
I would say that it’s a best friend’s relationship, because she talks to me like that. She’s there to call me out if I do anything wrong, she questions me, she comforts me, she makes me feel like home. Yeah sometimes she gets too much critical, because that’s my parent’s voice that speaks through it. But overall it’s a beautiful relationship.
What would my life look like if I made decisions from self-respect rather than fear, guilt, or external approval?
Oh it would have been sooo much different. I would’ve been living the life of my dreams. Very happily and not caring about others. I’ve given too much to my family that I ended up being abandoning myself in many places. Sometimes I’ve hurt my self respect & self worth as well. But I learnt my lessons. And then I’ve started prioritising myself over everything. I’m glad that I did that.
How can adults differentiate between personality traits that reflect their authentic self and those that developed as survival mechanisms in response to toxic parenting?
You’ve to notice the patterns. Why are you behaving in a certain way? What triggered you? What makes you happy from the inside?
If you are making a choice, is it out of compulsion or you will be happy with it? When you live in survival mode, you catch up a lot of survival traits that makes you feel safe. Ask yourself- if you’re doing it out of fear or you wanna do it because you know you are safe? Observe how your body reacts. Do you feel calm or anxious? Notice what happens when the trait isn’t rewarded. Toxic parenting conditions children to earn love. Your personality wasn’t formed in freedom, it was shaped in survival. Healing is learning which parts you no longer need to carry.
In what ways do toxic family dynamics shape an individual’s early understanding of love, boundaries, and self-worth—and how can adults consciously reconstruct healthier definitions in their later relationships?
Toxic family dynamics teaches you that you’ve to perform in a certain way to earn love. So the children of such families believe that no one will love them for who they are. Love is conditional & inconsistent in childhood, love must be earned. Love hurts, but that’s normal. If someone treats me badly, it means they care.
Children are punished and love is withdrawn.
So the child learns that- “My needs are inconvenient.” “Saying no is dangerous.” “I’m responsible for others’ emotions.”
Toxic families damage self worth. So the child internalises that- “I am valuable only when I’m needed.” “Something is inherently wrong with me.” “I must shrink to be accepted.”
Adult children of toxic family can reconstruct & redefine their understanding of love, boundaries & self worth by:
LOVE-
•Separating what feels familiar to what’s the healthy feeling.
•Learning that consistency, calm, and respect are not “boring”, they’re safe.
•Noticing discomfort with kindness.
•Reminding themselves that if love costs them their mental peace, it’s not love, it’s repetition of their idea of love that they learnt from childhood trauma.
•Choose relationships that feel emotionally safe, not adrenaline inducing.
BOUNDARIES-
•Boundaries are important to protect themselves. It’s not being selfish, it’s finally recognising your self worth.
•Reminding themselves that boundaries are not walls. They are instructions for how to love them safely.
•Redefining boundaries as self-respect, not rejection.
•Being okay with feeling discomfort when setting boundaries with family or friends.
SELF WORTH-
•You don’t heal self-worth by proving your value, you heal it by no longer questioning it.
•Practice receiving without earning it.
•Validating your emotions without justification.
•Grieving the childhood they didn’t get.
•Comforting their inner child that it’s worthy of love without performing for it.
