Onika L. Dainty

As I waited for the University of Toronto Master’s of Social Work (MSW) students to settle into the classroom, I could feel my nervousness rising. These young people are the future of social work, and I was a woman who had lived through psychosis, invited to offer something no textbook could provide. My role was simple in theory: share my lived experience of mental illness, offer insight into one of its most complex realities, and leave a lasting impact as they prepared to support clients experiencing psychosis firsthand. Simple, right?

Yet as I listened to the professor’s lecture on psychosis, stigma reduction, medication side effects, and intervention strategies, the full weight of my experience returned. How could I capture what it truly means to live through psychosis in such a short time? How could I help them understand that people navigating this form of mental illness are still whole, still human, and deserving of dignity, patience, and compassionate care?

Through my work with the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, alongside social workers and lived experience advisors, I contributed to a Psychosis Simulation Project. Our goal was to bring lived experience into social work education. The initial result was an educational video that bridges clinical knowledge with human reality, highlighting both practitioner perspectives and the voices of those who have experienced psychosis and returned to wellness.

This blog explores why lived experience must be part of social work education. Psychosis cannot be understood solely through clinical language or diagnostic criteria. It must be understood through the lives of real people who live, work, love, and heal beyond their diagnosis.

Humanizing Psychosis Beyond the Label

One of the most important messages I share is this: I am not psychosis. I am not my illness. I live a full and meaningful life.

For many MSW students, their early exposure to mental health is rooted in clinical settings. Clients appear as case files, diagnoses, or mental status exams. In those environments, people can become reduced to symptoms. Their humanity is often overshadowed by hallucinations, delusions and disorganized speech. 

What is often missing is the fuller picture. The person behind the diagnosis may be a mother, a sister, a student, an employee, or a friend. They have identities, relationships, and aspirations that exist far beyond their mental illness.

Sharing my lived experience challenges this narrow lens. It reminds future social workers to see the person first and the diagnosis second. Hearing directly from someone who has experienced psychosis and built emotional stability, structure, and routine in recovery helps reduce stigma and deepen empathy. It brings forward dignity, identity, and the complexity that defines each individual life.

Stages of Psychosis: What to Expect Before, During, and After

Individuals experiencing psychosis often move through distinct stages, each with its own challenges and needs. Understanding these phases is essential for effective mental health support and long-term healing.

Before Psychosis

In the early stage, symptoms such as paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations may begin to surface. Many individuals are still living in the community, often without a strong support system or awareness of what is happening.

In these situations, crisis intervention may occur, sometimes involving police wellness checks. While intended for safety, these interventions can feel deeply distressing and, in some cases, harmful.

For social workers, this stage highlights the importance of early, compassionate intervention. Consistent check-ins, emotional support, and trust-building can make a meaningful difference. Care should not begin only after the crisis peaks. It must start as early as possible.

During Psychosis

During psychosis, individuals are not grounded in shared reality. Their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours may become intense, disorganized, or unrecognizable. Emotional responses can feel overwhelming, often described as a form of emotional hijacking, where the brain’s fear response overrides rational thinking.

It is important to understand that behaviours during this phase are symptoms of mental illness, not reflections of character.

Social workers must respond with steadiness, empathy, and a willingness to look beyond the moment. Supporting both the individual and their support system helps create a foundation of safety and understanding. This foundation becomes critical when the person begins to return to baseline.

After Psychosis

The period after psychosis is just as important as the crisis itself. Recovery does not end when symptoms fade. In many ways, this is where the deeper work of healing begins.

Supporting individuals in rebuilding structure, routine, and stability is essential. This may include sleep regulation, medication management, and reconnecting with daily life.

Social workers play a key role in this phase. They become a steady point of reference as individuals reintegrate into their lives. Care must remain continuous, grounded in patience, empathy, and non-judgment. True recovery is not a single moment but an ongoing process of rebuilding and growth.

Medication Management: Nuance and Non-Compliance

Discussing medication in mental health care is rarely straightforward. My own experience reflects this complexity. There have been times when I resisted medication and times when I recognized its value in supporting my stability and recovery.

For many individuals, hesitation around medication is rooted in real concerns. Side effects from antipsychotics and mood stabilizers can include emotional numbness, fatigue, and significant weight gain. These changes can impact identity, self-esteem, and overall well-being, especially for women navigating mental health and body image.

There is also the reality of forced treatment during acute episodes, when individuals may not have the capacity to advocate for themselves. This can create lasting distrust toward medical systems.

For social workers, advocacy is essential. This means asking thoughtful questions, listening without judgment, and helping bridge communication between clients and psychiatric teams. Medication management should be approached with empathy, collaboration, and respect for the client’s lived experience.

Lived Experience Reflection: The Social Worker Who Helped Me Trust

In 2016, during a severe episode of psychosis, I was hospitalized at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto following a traumatic wellness call. What followed was a period marked by isolation, restraints, medication challenges, and a deep mistrust of the system. At the same time, I was experiencing homelessness.

It was during this time that I met Tarak, the social worker who would change the course of my recovery.

Our early interactions were difficult. I was fearful, reactive, and guarded. I pushed him away with anger and mistrust. Yet he remained consistent. He showed up daily, calm and present, even when I tried to drive him away.

What I did not realize at the time was that he was listening, not just to my words but to the pain beneath them. He recognized my trauma, my fear, and my desire to heal, even when I could not express it clearly.

At one point, he made me a simple offer. Give him a month. If I was not satisfied, he would step aside. That consistency, paired with empathy, allowed me to take a chance on trust.

Tarak supported me in finding housing, rebuilding structure, and reconnecting with life. He sat with me through small moments that became significant turning points. Over time, he became more than a social worker. He became a steady presence in my healing journey.

He saw beyond my Bipolar disorder and psychosis. He saw possibility. He helped me reconnect with my sense of self, my creativity, and my potential. That belief changed everything.

Final Thoughts

Speaking with MSW students was deeply meaningful. It felt like an opportunity to shift how future social workers understand mental health, not just as a clinical field but as a human experience.

Lived experience brings depth that textbooks cannot offer. It adds context, emotion, and reality to the study of mental illness. It reminds us that behind every diagnosis is a person with a full life, not defined by their most difficult moments.

Psychosis is part of the story, but it is never the whole story. Healing, growth, and emotional stability are possible. And when social workers are trained to see the whole person, not just the symptoms, they become far more effective in supporting lasting recovery.

For years I was told hearing voices was a symptom of the mania I experienced with Bipolar I disorder. I accepted that. But the voices I heard during calm moments did not fit. They whispered in between episodes, in the quiet. Eventually, someone listened long enough to give it a name: Schizoaffective disorder.

Schizoaffective disorder is a complex mental illness that blends Schizophrenia symptoms with a mood disorder, in my case Bipolar I disorder. Since childhood, I can remember hearing voices in my head that made little sense. At times they were muffled, more like noise in the recesses of my brain than clear speech. During stressful periods, they grew louder and sharper, delivering messages that questioned my self-worth and chipped away at my confidence.

Hearing voices can feel terrifying, isolating, or strangely familiar. It becomes even more confusing when your diagnosis does not fully account for it. When I was first diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder, I believed the voices were simply a symptom my medication was not strong enough to quiet. To be fair, I had lived with them so long they felt woven into my mental landscape. I trained myself not to question them and, for the most part, not to acknowledge them.

At their worst, the voices guided impulsive and disruptive behaviour, sometimes through religious ideation. At best, they were static in the background, white noise I could ignore. This blog explores what it is like to live with auditory hallucinations through the new lens of Schizoaffective disorder after years of living under a Bipolar I diagnosis.

The Voices That Didn’t Wait for Mania or Depression

Auditory Hallucinations: Bipolar Disorder vs. Schizoaffective Disorder

Auditory hallucinations in Bipolar disorder with psychotic features usually occur only during severe manic or depressive episodes and tend to resolve once the mood episode ends. In Schizoaffective disorder, hallucinations can persist for at least two weeks outside of a mood episode, which reflects a more chronic psychotic profile.

In Bipolar disorder, hallucinations often match the mood state. During depression, they may attack your self-worth. During mania, they may feed grandiosity or urgency. In Schizoaffective disorder, hallucinations are more independent of mood and can continue even during relatively stable periods. They may also feel more chronic, more intrusive, and less tied to a specific emotional state.

I learned early in my mental health journey that hallucinations, whether auditory or visual, were only supposed to happen during psychotic episodes. My reality, however, has always been different. I hear voices during periods of stability as well as during stress and crisis. They are not always constant, but they are familiar. Until recently, that left me feeling disconnected from my original Bipolar I diagnosis because the criteria did not fully reflect what I had been living with for most of my life.

Though I had grown used to hearing voices and learned to block them out, I could not explain where the symptom was coming from or how to gain the right tools to cope with auditory hallucinations that seemed to follow me regardless of mood.

The Moment It Made Sense, And Still Hurt

Everything changed for me when I discovered the Schizoaffective disorder diagnosis. I knew very little about the condition except for a few patients I had met during past psychiatric residencies. I remember one young man explaining that he constantly heard voices or noise in his head, sometimes giving him instructions, and that he had learned not to obey them. He said, “Just because they’re there doesn’t mean I have to listen.” That stayed with me.

My own voices often attack my self-worth and amplify everyday fears during periods of stability. When I am unwell, they shift and become darker, leaning toward suicidal or religious ideation.

During my residency at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, I underwent a psychiatric re-evaluation and my diagnosis changed. While I did exhibit symptoms of Bipolar I disorder, deeper observation brought to light symptoms that had previously been overlooked, especially the continuous and intrusive auditory hallucinations. When I stumbled upon my new diagnosis of Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, I felt many things at once. I felt grief, confusion, and anger. But I also felt relief. At last, I had a diagnosis that included all of me, all the symptoms that had gone unexplained and untreated for years.

Still, I mourned the loss of my old diagnosis. For more than twenty years, Bipolar I disorder had framed my experiences, my advocacy, and the way I understood myself.

The question I kept asking was simple and painful: How am I supposed to move forward on my journey to wellness if I do not even know my diagnosis? How am I supposed to navigate this world if I do not know what I have?

It was my support team that reminded me that a diagnosis is a label, not my identity. They let me grieve, but they also reminded me that new information is not a punishment. It is a tool.

Living with Voices, Not Just Silencing Them

The most valuable lesson I have learned while managing auditory hallucinations, long before Schizoaffective disorder was formally added to my mental health profile, is that I am still in the driver’s seat. Not all voices are commands. In my experience, they are often commentary, echoes, or emotional mirrors that feed fear and anxiety into my mind.

Instead of feeding the noise, I have learned to interrupt it. A few things help me:

Practice grounding techniques.

Listen to music, often.

Adjust medication when needed.

Talk about the experience.

Coping with voices when you live with Schizoaffective disorder is not easy, but it is possible. Talking about them instead of pretending they are not there was one of the first steps in taking away their power. The more honestly you share your lived experience, the less likely shame and stigma are to define it. This is your journey, and you get to choose who you share it with. But there is support in families, communities, peer spaces, and professional care if you are willing to reach for it.

Final Thoughts

Reclaiming Power Through Understanding

People say knowledge is power. I believe knowledge also brings understanding. When it comes to auditory hallucinations, no two experiences are exactly the same. That is why safe spaces matter. Whether in peer support, therapy, or a hearing voices group, being able to speak honestly about what you hear can shift the experience from fear to understanding.

Voices may be part of your condition, but they are not your identity.

The more I understand what I experience, the less power those voices have over me. And that, in itself, is a form of healing.

When the Diagnosis Changes: Living Through a Shift from Bipolar I to Schizoaffective Disorder

After Twenty Years Everything Shifted

For almost two decades, I shaped my identity, routines, and survival around being someone with Bipolar I disorder. Then one day, after another hospitalization and a deeper evaluation, I was re-diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, with borderline traits. The experience left me feeling off balance.

What shook me most was not only the discovery of the new diagnosis, but the lack of communication from my care team. In mental health care, there is often a strong focus on stabilization and symptom management, while psychoeducation and transparency are left behind.

In my case, the diagnosis change occurred during my residency at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences. I was still deeply in my illness when it was presented during a clinical case conference, delivered in medical language without explanation. No one took the time to help me understand what this shift meant for my treatment, medication plan, or future as someone now living with a different diagnosis.

A new diagnosis after living so long under a familiar label can feel like losing your footing. Yet it can also bring clarity, relief, and the opportunity to rebuild. It invites reflection on the past, intention for the present, and planning for the future with honesty rather than fear.

This blog is a deeply personal look at what it means to be re-diagnosed after years of living with Bipolar I disorder, how that shift impacted my sense of identity, and what I learned from beginning again with a new language for my mental health.

The Diagnosis That Defined Me for a While

For nearly twenty years, Bipolar disorder became my identity. It was the lens through which I understood my moods, my choices, and my challenges. At first, I resisted it. Later, after learning to manage my illness, I came to call it my superpower. I even tattooed the word Bipolar on my left forearm as an act of defiance in a world that misunderstood what living with this condition truly meant.

There was duality in that identity. During manic and psychotic episodes, I felt euphoric and fearless, as though past trauma could no longer touch me. I believed I was unstoppable. Yet those same episodes led to destructive decisions, strained relationships, and repeated hospitalizations marked by isolation, loss of autonomy, and deep emotional loneliness.

Still, familiarity offered comfort. After fourteen hospitalizations, I knew my bipolar cycle well. Anxiety and depression would arrive first, often triggered by trauma, stress, or insomnia. Hypomania followed with excessive energy, impulsive spending, and risky behaviors. Eventually, mania and psychosis would take over, ending in hospitalization. This cycle became my normal.

Looking back now, I can see there were signs that something did not fully fit the bipolar framework. There were symptoms that lingered outside mood episodes, pieces of my experience that never quite aligned with the diagnosis I carried as my identity.

The Day Everything Changed

I remember with startling clarity the day everything shifted. I had just begun a trauma informed treatment program through Ontario Shores and was required to complete weekly questionnaires through the hospital portal. For the first time, I was granted access to my medical records.

Out of curiosity, I began reviewing past psychiatric notes, assessments, and daily reports written during my residency. Then I opened a psychosocial assessment dated February 2, 2024.

It read:

Ms. Onika Dainty is a 41 year old woman with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, with noted borderline traits.

I read it once. Then again.

My first thought was disbelief. Then anger followed. I was almost a year out of hospital and this was the first time I had seen this diagnosis. Questions flooded my mind. Why was I never told? How many people knew? How was I supposed to move forward if I did not understand what I was living with?

At that moment, what little trust I had in the mental health system fractured. I reached out to my support circle in tears, mourning the loss of an identity I had carried for twenty years.

My cousin and Grama Judie reminded me of something grounding. Nothing about me had changed. The diagnosis was words on paper. I was still Onika, still resilient, still equipped with tools that had carried me this far.

When I met with Dr. A, my outpatient psychiatrist, he acknowledged that he had been aware of the diagnostic shift. He explained the reasoning behind it. My prolonged psychosis outside mood episodes, treatment resistance, and complex symptom presentation during my residency had led clinicians to re-evaluate my diagnosis.

Suddenly, pieces that never fit before began to make sense.

Grieving, Reframing, and Relearning

It has been nearly a year since discovering my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, and I am still learning how to hold it. Processing a diagnosis change requires grief. I had to mourn the identity I built around Bipolar disorder, reframe familiar pain with new language, and unlearn the stigma attached to a condition I once feared.

In 2019, I publicly advocated for Bipolar awareness through national campaigns, interviews, and speaking engagements. I proudly told my story as a Caribbean Canadian woman living with a severe mood disorder. I often said Bipolar disorder was my superpower.

Learning that I had been misdiagnosed shattered me. I questioned how I could have built a platform, a voice, and a sense of purpose around something that was never entirely accurate. I felt like an imposter frozen in uncertainty.

Grief followed its familiar stages. Denial gave way to anger. Bargaining convinced me that schizoaffective bipolar type still meant I belonged in the bipolar category. Depression left me immobilized. Acceptance came slowly.

What I ultimately realized was this: the failure was not mine. The failure lay in a system that prioritizes crisis stabilization over patient education and informed consent.

Once acceptance arrived, I returned to what has always grounded me. Education. I studied the DSM 5, read everything related to schizoaffective disorder, and finally saw my lived experience reflected clearly. Symptoms that once confused me now had context. Knowledge gave me power and peace.

Final Thoughts

You Are Allowed to Evolve, Even in Diagnosis

After more than twenty years of living with severe mental illness, I carry invisible battle scars. I have learned painful lessons and received unexpected blessings. Perhaps I was not meant to learn of this diagnosis while still fragile and newly discharged. Perhaps I needed stability first in order to receive truth without collapse.

Today, I believe this diagnosis was not the end of my journey but an evolution of it. I was never broken, only misunderstood. When treatment finally aligned with the truth of my experience, my healing deepened.

My mental health diagnoses are part of my story, but they are not the entirety of who I am. Identity, like healing, is fluid. It changes as we grow, learn, and survive.

A new diagnosis does not erase your past, your progress, or the strength it took to reach baseline. It simply clarifies the path forward.

To my readers:
Have you ever had to let go of an identity in order to step closer to the truth of who you really are?

A Diagnosis I Didn’t See Coming

It was January 2025 when I started a group trauma informed treatment program at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences. For the first time in the history of my mental illness, I was given access to my personal medical records from my stay at the psychiatric hospital. I was curious about what the medical staff, social workers, psychotherapists, and psychiatrist had observed while I was deeply unwell during my three month residency in 2024. When I began exploring the daily, detailed reports about my behaviour and activity on the unit, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It all appeared to fit my experience of mania and how I remembered behaving.

Then I opened a Psychosocial Assessment dated February 2, 2024, and something shifted inside me. It felt like the identity of my illness had changed, and with it, the way I had understood myself for over 20 years. The report read:

Ms. Onika Dainty is a 41 year old woman with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, with noted borderline traits.

The ground beneath my feet shook. I knew it was not a medical error. I felt confused and betrayed, but also like I had just been handed another piece of the puzzle that makes up my complex mind. I knew very little about this diagnosis, yet I was determined to face it head on.

Being newly diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder can feel overwhelming, isolating, and hard to explain, even to yourself. This blog explores what schizoaffective disorder is, how it overlaps with diagnoses like bipolar disorder, and what it can mean to live with a layered mental health condition.

What Is Schizoaffective Disorder? A Blended Symptom Profile

What is Schizoaffective Disorder?

Schizoaffective disorder is a complex mental illness that blends symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, with symptoms of a mood disorder, such as depression or mania. This combination can disrupt thoughts, emotions, and daily functioning. There are two main types: bipolar type and depressive type. It is often misdiagnosed early because the symptom profile overlaps with both schizophrenia and mood disorders like Bipolar disorder.

Schizoaffective vs Bipolar vs Schizophrenia

Schizoaffective disorder is a hybrid condition with a blended symptom profile. Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder have distinct clinical categories, with schizophrenia typically defined by psychosis and Bipolar disorder defined by episodic mood shifts. The overlap becomes especially confusing when someone experiences manic psychosis and continues to have psychotic symptoms after the mood episode begins to stabilize. In other words, the mood may calm down, but hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized thinking can linger beyond the manic phase.

The Emotional Weight of a Complex Diagnosis: A Formally Bipolar Woman’s New Blended Reality

The biggest challenge I faced with my new diagnosis of Schizoaffective disorder-bipolar type, was the feeling of being misled by my medical team. I was almost a year out of hospital when I discovered it. If I had not been curious enough to read my medical reports, I would have continued living under a label that no longer fit the full picture of my mental health.

I was angry, ashamed, and afraid. The moment I read Schizoaffective disorder in my file, I felt like I had lost my identity. I felt like I had walked down the wrong path on my journey to wellness and that I was too far in to turn back and start over.

And yet, there was also relief. I had always felt pieces of my mental health puzzle were missing. When I am in psychosis, I have experienced auditory delusions, visual hallucinations, and extreme disorganized thinking. My Bipolar disorder framework could not fully explain those symptoms, so I told myself they were simply part of my manic episodes. After being in and out of psychosis for almost a year, unable to manage on my own, admitted and discharged from units whose main mandate was to stabilize me, I eventually became a resident of a mental health hospital with the time and resources to observe me properly.

When I saw the new diagnosis, I thought I should feel gratitude, but instead I mourned. I mourned the woman who had fought for almost 20 years against stigma, discrimination, and misunderstanding related to Bipolar disorder. I became an advocate, a peer support specialist, and a woman who learned the language of mental health so I could move through a world that often saw me as broken. How would I keep moving forward if I did not even know what I had? If my care team was not being transparent with me?

That evening I called my cousin in tears, and he asked me a profound question: Are you a different person than you were yesterday? Are you still the woman who has the tools to manage your mental illness, regardless of what it is called?

The answer was a resounding yes. My diagnosis had changed, but I had not. I was still Onika. I was still determined. My goal has always been healing, emotional stability, and a full, joyous, robust life. Nothing changed except that I now had a more complete picture of my symptom profile. I had to let go of the person I thought I was, close the door on the diagnosis I believed was mine, and make space to learn and grow within this new blended reality.

Learning to Manage the Dual Sides of the Diagnosis

Once I moved through the initial shock of my Schizoaffective disorder diagnosis and began educating myself, I was able to take my power back and rebuild a management strategy that spoke to all parts of my mental health. I started by looking at treatment options and realized they were similar to what I already knew. A combination of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and psychotherapy was recommended by my mental health care team.

Since my discharge from Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in 2024, I have not experienced psychotic symptoms, but I have noticed longer mood shifts. I track these mini episodes in my daily planner because structure and self awareness help me stay grounded.

Managing Schizoaffective disorder has its challenges, but I prioritize routine, healthy habits, and stability as a form of protection. Sleep hygiene has become a primary pillar of my care plan. I am still a 5 a.m. person, but now I take my medication earlier so I can get eight to ten hours of sleep consistently. My second pillar is stress management. I use meditation, breathwork, and daily movement to reduce anxiety and support emotional regulation. My third pillar is medication adherence and transparency with my healthcare team. I take my medication as prescribed and check in monthly, or sooner if I feel a crisis on the horizon. The final pillar is self care, self compassion, and grace.

I feel brand new in this diagnosis, so I keep reminding myself that once upon a time I was new to Bipolar disorder too. I felt helpless and alone then. Over time, I learned to advocate for myself. I learned to lean on my support team. I learned that healing is a process, and that psychoeducation, routine, and community can hold you steady when your mind feels loud.

Final Thoughts

It’s Okay to Be in the Process

With this new diagnosis, I have had to accept a few hard truths. First, it is okay to be in the process, as long as I am an active part of the process. This diagnosis is part of my reality, but it is words on a page in the next chapter of my life, not the entire book and not how my story ends.

I have also learned to stop chasing the “right” label and start listening to my lived experience. Schizoaffective disorder is simply terminology for a cluster of symptoms I have always carried. In many ways, it is not a detour. It is a more accurate map for the journey I have already been on.

Whether it is Bipolar disorder, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, or Schizoaffective disorder, I have always fought for a better life while living with mental illness. None of these labels define me. They guide me toward understanding the unique, and often beautiful, trappings of a complex mind.

To my readers: If a diagnosis could be a doorway instead of a definition, what kind of understanding might you find on the other side?

Life Lesson #14

“The only validation I need is my parking.” – Onika L. Dainty

Learning the Weight of Validation

Validation is a complicated concept. By definition, it means “recognition or affirmation that a person or their feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile.” For some, that recognition from others—family, friends, colleagues, or even strangers—is at the very core of their identity. Without external approval, many find it hard to move forward, change, or grow. I know this because, for much of my life, I was one of those people.

From an early age, I allowed trauma and low self-esteem to dictate my path. My sense of self-worth was tethered to someone else’s star of approval. Whenever I was the lead in my own story, fear crept in, whispering that without cheerleaders—or critics in disguise—I would fall flat. And yet, the rare times I did validate myself, I discovered something unexpected: empowerment.

Losing and Rebuilding Self-Acceptance

When I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder in 2006, the fragile spark of self-acceptance I had been nurturing disappeared. Once again, I turned outward, seeking guidance from others—many of whom, though well-intentioned, only confused and discouraged me. Their voices drowned out my own, and my self-esteem plummeted.

It took years to untangle myself from this cycle. Ironically, the breakthrough came when I asked the right person the wrong question.

The Conversation That Changed Everything

In 2017, while brainstorming a mental health podcast with my cousin, I asked him what I thought was a simple question:

“Am I doing this right? What do you think?”

His response:
“If you’re looking for validation, Onika, you’re not going to get it from me. This is your show. You’re the one with the lived experience. I’m just the sound guy. Stop looking for validation in other people. We’re grown—validate yourself.”

His words hit like a mirror held to my face. Brutally honest, yes, but spoken with love. My cousin had always pushed me to believe in my abilities, to trust the possibilities of my future. That night, his refusal to validate me became the greatest validation of all.

Choosing to Lead My Own Story

After reflecting on his words, I felt something shift. My confidence grew, my self-worth blossomed, and the desperate need for approval from others began to fade. I realized I needed to be the lead in my own love story—the one where I finally fell for myself and the strength that had always been within me.

Today, I still value the perspectives of those who care for me, but I no longer need their validation. I validate myself. My feelings, decisions, and opinions are valid simply because I exist. That belief has given me an unshakable confidence, allowing me to make bold and brave choices on my mental health and wellness journey—choices I never would have dared to make before that late-night conversation.

Gratitude for Brutal Honesty

For every moment of honesty that challenged me to grow, I am deeply grateful. To my cousin—my cheerleader, my truth-teller, my mirror—thank you for helping me realize that the only validation I truly need is, indeed, my parking.