On stepping back from social media and what followed

Image credit: A Persian girl reading sourced online at The Fitzwilliam Museum

Since September 2024, I have taken a step back from social media. This was an intentional decision, made so that I could focus on my MA, create distance from constant visibility, and reflect more deeply on my life and how I want to shape its next phase.

Before this, I was highly active on Instagram, using it as a space for self-expression and to promote my coaching business. As a highly sensitive person, as described by Dr Elaine Aron, the constant stream of information we are exposed to has not served me well in recent times. Recognising this and choosing to step back has been both daunting and, ultimately, the most sensible and nourishing thing to do.

I have always been deeply attuned to beauty and intellectually curious. A lover of art, a deep thinker, and a seeker of knowledge. I am outwardly confident yet often introverted, and I need periods of silence and calm to feel truly grounded.

In recent years, my Islamic faith has become increasingly significant in my life, largely because it has offered me what my external world often could not: a sense of grounding and meaning during times of uncertainty and upheaval. I was born in the UK and into the faith, but my relationship with it has shifted at different stages of my life. For a long time, I did not feel fully comfortable ‘being’ Muslim. It did not seem to align with societal expectations placed upon me, nor with what felt socially acceptable, and I came to recognise that I had suppressed this part of myself.

My spiritual journey has gradually transformed this relationship, and my studies at SOAS University have played a profound role in that change, enabling me to recognise the beauty of my faith without retreating from it. This has led to a deep appreciation of the richness of my Islamic and South Asian heritage, its complexity, its layered histories, and its refusal to be homogenous. Even its inherited and generational traumas have shaped me. The fusion of influences, cultures, and traditions has also nurtured in me a deep love for cultural diversity more broadly.

Living between cultures; British, Pakistani, South Asian, Islamic, and diasporic has been a complicated position to inhabit. It is ever shifting and evolving, at times confusing, yet ultimately a gift. It has kept life interesting, and for that, I am grateful.

This in-between space has taught me how to move between cultures, adapting my language, dress, dialect, and ways of being, and I have come to value that fluidity. I am even grateful for the sense of ‘otherness’ I have sometimes experienced, both within Muslim and non-Muslim settings, as it has allowed me to recognise and empathise with the otherness in others. I do not claim to have always got this right, but I remain open to examining my blind spots and continuing to learn.

I mentioned art and coaching earlier, which have played a significant role in both my personal and professional life. After a fourteen-year career as a fashion and textile designer in London, I retrained in wellbeing and personal development in 2016, going on to deliver workshops both locally and nationally, while continuing to develop my design practice alongside this work.

Over the past five years, I have drawn on my Islamic heritage to create Arabic word art and develop multisensory workshops inspired by Sufi music and poetry. My interest lies in exploring how the harmony found in Islamic art, architecture and philosophy, combined with sound, scent, and visual experience, can shape the psyche and support healing and reflection. In 2024, I began a part-time MA in the History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East at SOAS University, and my dissertation research is focused on these themes.

Whatever form my work takes, it is shaped by an underlying yearning for wellbeing, beauty, truth, and a quiet search for inner peace. These themes give my work meaning and continue to drive me forward.

Returning to the question of stepping back from social media. In addition to what I have described, I realise it has given me a renewed appreciation of community. When the world feels like it is burning, and in many places, it truly is, which I don’t want to lose sight of, it becomes easy to fixate on the threat and forget what we already have. Taking a step back has highlighted a profound privilege: the privilege of safety.

But there is another privilege we hold in the UK, a diverse, layered, living community. While I would never diminish the richness of travel, there is something remarkable about having the world at our fingertips here. If you want to learn about Sudanese culture, you can speak to the Sudanese community. If you want to learn about Kurdish culture, you can speak to the Kurdish community, and so on.

Just last week, in the small city where I live in the middle of England, I spoke to a person from Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Iraq, and Greece. Being at SOAS has only deepened that experience, satiating my hunger to learn about global cultures and perspectives. So, gratitude for community has been one of my strongest reflections, for those in my close circles, and for the wider community that surrounds and enriches us every day.

I look forward to sharing more with you through my writing on the topics I have mentioned, and I hope you’ll enjoy the journey. If you’d like to be the first to hear when new pieces are published, I’d love to invite you to subscribe to my newsletter.

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