Dr. Ruchi Mishra Sharma: White Coat, Open Heart: The Dual Calling of a Trauma Healer

Guiding Women to Overcome Trauma While Serving Patients as an Ophthalmologist!
The moment we face our deepest fears, life has a way of showing us who we truly are. Pain can feel like a prison, yet it can also be a doorway to strength, clarity, and purpose. For Dr. Ruchi Mishra Sharma, this doorway came after years of professional success and personal struggle, forming the journey that defines her today.

Dr. Ruchi grew up in a household where academic success defined a person’s worth. As a studious and obedient daughter, she learned early that discipline and achievement were the paths to respect and recognition. She trained to be a medical doctor, specializing in ophthalmology, and dedicated herself to serving patients. For over ten years, she has been part of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, restoring vision and touching lives with her expertise.

Her path was far from simple. When she moved to the UK in 2011, her Indian medical qualifications were not recognised. She started from scratch, studying for and clearing the PLAB 1 and 2 exams in 2012. Revisiting fundamentals she had already mastered, she faced the challenge with determination.
For Dr. Ruchi, obstacles were chisels and hammers shaping resilience and strength.

Yet, even with professional success, personal struggles arose. Four years ago, she battled post-partum depression and a sense of purposelessness, forcing her to confront the long-hidden scars of childhood sexual abuse. The process was painful but transformative.

Through Rapid Transformational Therapy, coaching, and heart healing practices, she found her way back to herself. She trained under Marisa Peer, became a Level 2 Heart Healing Practitioner, and certified as a Life and Success Coach through the Jay Shetty Certification School. What healed her became her purpose, to guide other women toward reclaiming their lives.

Today, Dr. Ruchi not only restores vision but also empowers women to face their shadows, transform their pain, and discover purpose. Her journey is an example to the power of courage, resilience, and the choice to rise through shadows.

How Personal Struggles Formed a Leadership Philosophy

Dr. Ruchi was a burnt-out medical doctor struggling with postpartum depression after she gave birth to her son in 2021. The postpartum depression was only the surface issue. It pushed her to face what she had buried deep years back, as a five-year-old child, when she experienced childhood sexual abuse for months without telling anyone about it. She thought she had buried it so far deep inside that it could not affect her life.

The reality was that the shadows of it gripped her; she was living in a cage. After thirty-plus years, she did not know who she really was or how to carry the weight of it any longer.

She could not continue anymore. She remembers looking deep into her son’s eyes, with the heat of uncontrollable tears streaming down her cheeks, as she felt completely helpless. She had hit rock bottom. She struggled with low self-confidence, low self-esteem, and non-existent self-worth. She did not know who she really was and what she really wanted to do with her life. She did not feel enough. She was struggling to find meaning in her life. She wanted to be a conscious, present parent. She knew she could achieve that only if she kept herself together.

She felt broken.

Having hit rock bottom, there were two choices: to stay there or to make her way up. To make her way up, she had to face the chains on her back, the weights of guilt and shame. This felt like a deep dark hole she might never emerge from. Yet she kept going, wanting to be there emotionally, mentally, and physically for her little boy. She started her journey of self-awareness, going deep inward to seek answers rather than looking outside. This is when she came across inner child healing, rapid transformational therapy, and coaching. She could see and feel the transformative shifts, the healing, and the light returning to her life. She chose to help other women weighed down by trauma to break free and find their voice and life again by training in rapid transformational theory with Marisa Peer and becoming a Jay Shetty Certification School certified coach.

Staying True to Core Values in Challenging Times

Speaking the truth to herself and others has been really important to Dr. Ruchi. Freedom and honesty have been her top core values. Her core value of being honest at all times, both to herself and everyone around her, has evolved to ensure sensitivity toward herself and others while maintaining honesty.
Becoming her own loving parent and releasing the search for outside validation has made hard decisions easier. Her to-do lists used to be endless. Now, she chooses to let her doing come from her being, with aligned action.

Her clients have shared after the first rapid transformational therapy session: “I feel light. I feel seen. I feel heard.” She observes that the light, the fire, and their purpose lie beneath the pile of disconnection that trauma has created. She derives great joy and fulfillment in helping clients move from disconnection with themselves to healing and wholeness, always reminding them that they are in charge of their healing while she facilitates it.

Among many life-changing testimonials, she chooses to share her own. Dr. Ruchi would not have been doing, being, and living her purpose, touching and transforming lives on world stages as a global transformational speaker, healer, and best-selling author, while recovering from postpartum depression, if she had not herself lived the magic of rapid transformational therapy and inner power access coaching.

Finding Strength Through Truth

Dr. Ruchi stayed silent about the childhood sexual abuse she endured at the age of five for thirty years. Speaking out and embarking on the journey of finding her voice and her truth at the age of thirty-six was a life-changing and life-path-altering decision. When she wrote her chapter in the anthology Voices of Impact, Volume 4 in 2022, and later her own book Unleashed: Breaking Free – A Journey of Healing and Freedom, she experienced sleepless nights because her parents did not know about the sexual abuse she faced as a young child, and here she was writing a book open to be read by anyone.

The choice was difficult, but it helped her move away from the victim mindset. Sharing her story aimed to reach every girl and woman reading it, helping them feel seen and heard. She had an all-night conversation with her mother after her mother had read it. This brought her heart more healing and deeper compassion for her mother as a parent herself. Her mother had never thought childhood sexual abuse could happen inside a household. She had gone to work believing her child was safe at home.

The Most Underestimated Quality of a Leader

The most underestimated quality of a truly admired leader, according to Dr. Ruchi, is patience, speaking one’s mind with honesty combined with sensitivity, and seeing the possibilities and abilities in people she meets and works with that they cannot yet see in themselves. She emphasizes learning to step back and respond rather than react, as this approach can improve any situation, conflict, or misunderstanding at home, at work, with patients, or with clients.

Dr. Ruchi lives by these principles on a daily basis, and they have helped her meet and work with like-minded people, creating beautiful collaborations and inspiring remarkable transformation stories from clients. On a lighter note, she admits she persists to learn to respond rather than react when dealing with her dear husband.

Balancing Bold Ideas with Team Support

Tuning in and brutally and honestly understanding her strengths and weaknesses, and striking the right balance, has been the key to ensuring she is the leader who can envision growth for herself and her team.
Strengths:

• Grit
• Perseverance
• Continuing to believe in herself
• Self-compassion
• Self-belief
• Empathy
• Investing in her healing
• Investing in her learning growth through courses and coaching

By equipping herself with the tools to manage her thoughts, emotions, and feelings on tough, challenging days, she balances her needs and practices compassion toward herself while embracing motherhood and being loving, nurturing, present, and emotionally available for her son, who is now four years old.

Weaknesses:

• Wanting to do everything in her business by herself was a very big challenge.
• Learning: Focus on her gift and delegate the rest to maintain the joy of purpose and sanity.

• Being too hard on herself when she failed, when a client did not proceed to sign up after the breakthrough call.
• Learning: Working on her heart-felt pitch, her power of belief in her offer, and how it can truly heal and transform her client’s life. Learning the lesson and moving on, treating it as a stepping stone.

Moving away from the employee mindset. She was a full-time medical doctor in the National Health Services UK for over ten years before steering away and working two days in the hospital while dedicating the rest of her time to her business.

She initially retained an employee mindset in her business. The learning and drilling in was that no service manager is going to come and help her solve issues. Embodying a problem-solving mindset, she either solves the problem at hand, finds personnel with the right skills to solve it for her, or learns the required skills herself.

Inner Traits That Drive Growth and Leadership

Dr. Ruchi believes authenticity guides her through every phase of growth and transformation. She emphasizes kindness in all interactions. Forgiveness is central to her approach, acknowledging that each person is doing the best they can at that moment, and when one knows better, one does better.

She chooses to become better rather than bitter when faced with tough life experiences. She maintains awareness of her strengths and weaknesses and celebrates herself every day, recognizing both small and big wins. She loves herself for who she is rather than for what she does.

Dr. Ruchi understands that healing is a journey and practices patience with herself and others.

Leadership in 2025 and Beyond

In the age of artificial and augmented intelligence, human connections and potential become even more relevant. Dr. Ruchi believes that focusing on what is unique to each person, recognizing that every individual has unique gifts, and being able to identify, value, and nurture them will become the greatest asset for a leader in taking their team to unforeseen heights and in remaining relevant and inspiring.

Mentors Who Shaped a Leader

Dr. Ruchi has had multiple mentors and coaches, each bringing their own unique flavour and light to her life. She mentions Marisa Peer, Natalie Ryan Hebert, Tim Han, Jay Shetty, Elizabeth Ocean, and Lara Odeshegun, among others. She explains it like climbing a mountain: when a person is ready to grow, the right teacher appears. Most importantly, she expresses heartfelt gratitude to her school teacher, Mrs.
Ruby Khurana, who believed in her when she did not.

Each mentor appeared at different parts of her journey. Her learning, growth, and journey to her inner self would have taken a different path without their guidance.

Leading with Empathy in High-Pressure Environments

Empathy and emotional intelligence lower stress levels for Dr. Ruchi and the people she works with. She believes that everyone is a human being, not a machine. She leads with a heart-led, inclusive approach.
When people truly feel valued for who they are and not only for what they do, they inevitably overdeliver. She emphasizes reminding the team of the big-picture vision and celebrating wins, small or big, every single day. Creating a collaborative rather than competitive mindset diffuses pressure in the work environment, as everyone is celebrated for the unique qualities, perspectives, and strengths they bring to the table. She provides a daily reminder that each individual is valued.

Defining a Legacy of Leadership and Healing

Ruchi helps people see the possibilities and potential in themselves that they could not yet see. Her kind heart lights up every room she enters.

She views trauma as the disconnection from the true self, and healing as the journey of coming back and embracing wholeness. Ruchi helps women uncover their inner light and purpose that trauma and its impacts had hidden, guiding them to live a purposeful, fulfilling life.

Her talks create a ripple and stir much-needed awareness about childhood sexual abuse, establishing safe spaces for people to feel truly seen, heard, and healed.

Rituals That Anchor in Responsibility

Dr. Ruchi practices a daily self-love mirror exercise and reviews her proud list while looking into her own eyes in front of the mirror, because she believes self-love and self-acceptance are the foundations of self-belief.

She follows daily grounding and meditation. She takes one tiny step each day as the antidote to overwhelm, keeping herself moving forward.

She engages in kind self-talk and self-compassion, knowing that it opens doors of the heart and provides clarity on her purpose. She remains clear on her definition of success, guided by her own standards rather than anyone else’s.

She reflects on life as if it were her last day. Looking back, she wants to have lived like a warrior, falling, taking chances, experiencing hurt, facing near destruction, and, like a phoenix, rising from the ashes stronger each time she fell.

Call to Action for the Next Generation of Leaders

Dr. Ruchi emphasizes the importance of becoming the most authentic version of oneself. She believes that removing the mask and embracing true identity allows leaders to attract the right collaborations, aligned clients, and unexpected opportunities. Authenticity, she asserts, is a superpower that shapes meaningful connections and professional growth.

She encourages continual investment in oneself, highlighting that personal development is the greatest asset. A business, she notes, reflects the individual behind it. Leaders should ask themselves: Do I feel successful? What does success truly mean to me? Dr. Ruchi stresses that life must feel successful from within, aligned to personal purpose, rather than measured by outward appearances.

Healing is a crucial part of this journey. Subconscious blocks such as fear of failure, fear of judgment, and visibility challenges can hinder growth, success, joy, and peace of mind. Addressing these blocks allows leaders to move forward with clarity and confidence.

Dr. Ruchi also underscores the value of aligned resources, such as podcasts, books, and audiobooks, for learning from influential minds and gaining inspiration. She recalls a defining moment while listening to Lewis Howes on the School of Greatness podcast, interviewed by Mel Robbins, in her kitchen. Hearing Howes share his childhood experience of sexual abuse and his journey of healing became a life-affirming experience. It inspired her to move away from victimhood and embrace her own voice and change. This moment ultimately led her to contribute to Voices of Impact, Volume 4, and to publish her solo work, Unleashed: Breaking Free – A Journey of Healing and Freedom.

Dr. Ruchi’s message for future leaders is clear: embrace authenticity, invest in personal growth, pursue healing, and seek inspiration from those who illuminate the path.

Professional and Personal Achievements of Dr. Ruchi Mishra Sharma

Dr. Ruchi is a medical doctor and ophthalmologist with MBBS and MS in Ophthalmology. She is registered with the General Medical Council UK (7242965) and currently works at Eastbourne District General Hospital, UK. She is also a clinical hypnotherapist (Cl Hyp), Rapid Transformational Therapy Associate (RTTA), certified Level 2 Heart Healing Practitioner from The School of Healing Mastery by Natasha Bray, and a trauma-informed therapist. She holds fellowships including FACCPH (Fellow of Accredited Counsellors, Coaches, Psychotherapists and Hypnotherapists, UK) and FIIOPM (Fellow of International Institute of Psychological Medicine, UK, USA, Australia).

Her professional recognition includes the Hoinser Award for Extraordinary Leadership, Best Transformational Clinical Hypnotherapist Award by the Hoinser Group 2023, and a feature in Hoinser Business Magazine 2023. She received the Rising Women Speaker Excellence Award 2024 at IDIAS Global Congress, Paris, and the Courageous Pinnacle Award 2025 at the Women Leadership and Women Health Congress, Paris. She has been interviewed and published in The Life Coach Code Magazine and is certified as a Life and Success Coach by the Jay Shetty Certification School. She hosts a podcast, The Best Version of You, available on YouTube, and authored the Amazon bestseller Unleashed: Breaking Free – A Journey of Healing and Freedom.

On a personal level, Dr. Ruchi’s greatest achievement is her journey from being suicidal at thirteen to reflecting on her growth, learning, and self-discovery as a forty-year-old. She overcame post-partum depression, embraced her healing journey, released guilt and shame held for over thirty years, and reclaimed her voice. Sharing her experiences on world stages has allowed multiple women to feel seen and heard for the first time in their lives. Hearing her story gives them hope and joy, showing that healing is possible. Dr. Ruchi’s life purpose manifests through these transformative moments, empowering women and inspiring change.

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