Alexis Ren ON: Breaking Negative Cycles and Letting Go of the Lies We Tell Ourselves

She describes being homeschooled as giving her space to go “deep” into creativity, and she credits her mom’s approach of learning through whatever interested her (like history through ballet) for making learning feel exciting rather than forced.

She links ballet’s discipline to an intense work ethic, but also to trauma and a “please, please, please” mindset that later bled into her career and relationships, eventually making her feel like she was losing her identity.

She recounts her mom collapsing on Mother’s Day 2014, being told her mom had terminal cancer, and later losing her; she describes her mom as her “first reflection” and says the loss contributed to a breakdown in her sense of self.

She says social media attention and public life pushed her into “playing a role,” creating an online “perfect” character she wanted to be while privately feeling like “a wreck,” and she describes dissociating from large parts of 2015–2017.

She describes returning to tools her mom taught—like repeating her name until her voice “drops back” into her identity—and doing intensive self-reflection (journaling, identifying patterns) to decide what to keep or release.