More than one million plays on TED.com have carried Dr. Shara Ally’s TEDx talk, “Freeing Yourself From the Opinions of Others,” far beyond the stage where it began. The subject is familiar to anyone who has replayed a conversation long after it ended, rewritten a message before sending it, or questioned a decision because of what someone else might think. For Dr. Shara Ally, DNP, PMHNP-BC, those moments show how easily the desire for approval can shape confidence, anxiety and the way people see themselves.
That idea now sits at the center of “See Yourself First,” a video series Dr. Ally is developing around the everyday habits that reveal how we treat ourselves. Each episode begins with a recognizable situation. Someone rewrites a text six times. Someone says “I’m fine” when they actually want support. Rather than lecturing, Dr. Ally uses these small moments to bring viewers closer to the thinking behind their behavior. Every episode ends the same way: she closes a gold compact marked with an S, then leaves viewers with a question about the pattern they just watched. The click is their cue to reflect.
The series grows directly out of her work as a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She provides psychiatric care to teens, young adults and mature adults through Mental Health Practitioners, and her clinical practice includes mood and anxiety disorders, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, trauma, substance use disorder and women’s mental health across the reproductive lifespan. “I wanted to understand what people are carrying when the rest of the world sees only how well they’re functioning,” Dr. Ally says.
Her path into psychiatric nursing runs through more than a decade of healthcare and education across Canada and the United States. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from McMaster University in 2008 and a Master of Nursing from Ryerson University in 2016. In 2020 she completed a Doctor of Nursing Practice in Strategic and Operational Leadership at Western University of Health Sciences, along with an MBA in Healthcare Innovation from the University of Fredericton. She went on to complete her psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner education at Western University of Health Sciences in 2024.
Teaching has run alongside the clinical work. Dr. Ally was a professor at Mohawk College in its Collaborative Nursing Program with McMaster University, held an adjunct teaching role at the University of Toronto and served as a teaching mentor at McMaster. From 2018 to 2020 she was President and Executive Officer of the Doctor of Nursing Practice Association at Western University of Health Sciences. A teaching fellowship in India took her into university and hospital classrooms and led to a meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It changed how she thinks about the role culture plays in the way people understand mental health and care for one another.
Her writing reaches both academic and general readers. In 2018 she was lead author of research on improving the transition to adulthood for adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, published in Canadian Family Physician, and a co-author of that year’s Canadian consensus guidelines on primary care for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is also the author of the book “You Should Have Known Better” and contributed to The New York Times’ Tiny Love Stories in September 2025. Through NEUROorganics Inc., the company she founded, she brings mental health education and support to a wider audience.
Pageantry gave her another stage. As Ms. Canada United World 2022 and Dr. World Canada 2025, she used the platform to talk about confidence, approval and what it means to be seen, the same ground her TEDx talk covers. It sharpened a point she returns to often: a person can look accomplished from the outside while privately wondering whether they said the right thing, made the right choice or let someone down.
That gap is what “See Yourself First” is built on. The series is still in development, but its format brings her message into ordinary moments. A hesitant text becomes a way to look at self-doubt. An automatic “I’m fine” becomes a reason to ask what stops someone from asking for help. After a million-plus plays for a talk about escaping the weight of other people’s opinions, Dr. Ally is turning to the small moments where that weight is felt most, and the click of the gold compact leaves viewers with a question to take with them: whose opinion are they listening to when they decide how to see themselves?
Learn more about Dr. Shara Ally at sharaally.com, watch her TEDx talk, or follow her on Instagram at @dr_shara.
