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Hayyakum,

Reema

“Third Places” in Dubai

Reema Baniabbasi — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 15:16:45 GMT

Dear City Person,

I walked in my neighborhood and the surrounding ones almost daily, for several hours each day, in Ramadan which was on March of this year. During these walks, I tried to pay attention to where I can find “third places,” which are spaces outside of home (the “first place”) and work (the “second place”) where people can relax and connect with each other. I will be sharing my reflections on this and photos of what most caught my attention in today’s newsletter.

Before I do so, I will share a video by Andrewism on YouTube that provides an overview of what are “third spaces” in urban design, their role in helping people connect with each other outside of work and home, and critiques of that concept.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

If you are new to my free monthly newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab, check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:

Here is the video below.

It already contains subtitles but, if it would be easier to have a transcript because you are using a screen reader, then I would recommend clicking here to be taken to its YouTube page which has a transcript below it.

Questions for readers…

Feel free to respond to them by clicking on the button below to share a public comment or by replying privately to this email on your email provider…

Have you heard about the concept of “third places” before watching this video?
What are past or present examples of “third places” that you have seen in the cities you have lived in or visited so far?
What kinds of “third places” do you wish to see more of where you live?
Do you have ideas to create your own informal “third place” where you live, no matter how small?

Finding Third Places in Dubai

During a webinar hosted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, I got to hear Dr. Pamela Collins, the chair of their mental health department, mention a study she had done with one of her students on what cities can do to be more mental health friendly.

They found that easy access to public spaces where people can meet each other outside of work and home was important in promoting mental wellbeing. They saw that it was not enough to simply have these spaces there. Rather, they need to be in a location that is:

Easy for anyone to use such as being free of cost or low cost
Safe
Comfortable
Welcoming and free of discrimination regardless of one’s background
Easy to get to even if one does not have a car and even if one works at odd hours
Easy to navigate regardless of disability.

During my daily walks in Ramadan, I was thinking of what examples do we have in Dubai that may fit any or all of what makes a “third place” accessible. I often hear from people who have either never lived in Dubai or have done so briefly that there are no non-commercial public spaces to hang out in the city. This is an overgeneralization but I do believe that such spaces are limited and fragmented and thus tend to take effort to find depending on where one lives.

Having said that, I have noticed that this has improved in certain areas and taken a step back in others over the years. I also believe that the public is not aware enough about the many free events and workshops offered by public libraries and creative institutions throughout Dubai—a third space that I would encourage more people to utilize and support. Some are accessible by metro and bus. While most are in English and Arabic, there are certain ones that have events in other languages which I wish to see more of given that more than 200 nationalities live in Dubai alone.

A swing in Umm Suqeim Park that I passed by—and swung on—during one of my longer walks.

I am privileged to be living within a 10-minute walking distance to the beaches in Jumeirah so it has been a part of some of my walks this Ramadan. I had previously written a newsletter and a poem about people watching at one of the quieter parts of the beach which you can read in one of my older posts by clicking here. Here’s a quote below from that newsletter that captures one of the negative aspects of development that I observed in the beaches after moving back to Dubai:

“One of the many things that brought up reverse culture shock for me was noticing how the beaches I used to frequent in my childhood became increasingly commercialized and crowded or privatized by hotels.”

One of my concerns about the increased privatization of beaches by hotels is that people are not allowed to access them without either being a guest or being a customer at one of their restaurants, bars, cafes, or spas. This thus limits these spaces to people from upper middle to upper classes. Jumeirah Road used to be previously called “Jumeirah Beach Road” because the beach used to be visible from the road while driving and it was a beautiful view. As more hotels and buildings crowded up the view, the road was renamed and “Jumeirah Beach Road” was instead used to name a different neighborhood and shorted to “JBR.”

The crowding of hotels further make the beaches less accessible for practicing Muslim women who wear hijab or niqab. I remember growing up in Dubai that more beaches used to have a day or two each week that was designated for women and children only. This allowed these women the privacy and comfort to take off their hijabs and niqabs to enjoy the beach and swim without worrying about male strangers seeing their hair or bodies. Since hotels are mixed gender spaces, as more of them took over more spaces in the beaches, it became impossible to maintain this without the women being easily seen by male hotel guests and staff.

Some women who wear hijab are comfortable to swim in “burkinis” or to even go into the water with their clothes on or to enjoy the water from afar while walking, jogging, or seated on a picnic blanket or chair as I have frequently seen in my visits to the beaches here. However, not all of them are comfortable being in a mixed-gender space due to differing levels of conservatism and understanding of the faith or personal comfort.

Furthermore, certain segments of conservative Muslims, regardless of gender, not only avoid drinking alcohol but also avoid being in any space where alcohol is being served or where it can be easily seen. Since hotels in the UAE are allowed to serve alcohol even in the beaches they own, they tend to be avoided by this specific subculture of Muslims. While I personally do not wear hijab and do not mind being in mixed-gender spaces or in spaces where alcohol is being served even as I myself avoid drinking it, I still wish for the return of designated times or spaces where more people, regardless of level of religious conservativism, can feel welcome to enjoy the beach as they are part of our community.

Aside from the increased encroachment of hotels, I have mixed feelings about certain parts of the beach becoming more packed with restaurants and cafes. On one hand I can enjoy them, on the other hand they are less welcoming for people below a certain income bracket and reduce the amount of free space available for them to enjoy the beach as customers crowd them up.

While some may argue that Jumeirah is already a dominantly upper-income area, I have seen middle income and blue collar workers frequent the beaches to relax and socialize at certain days and times so I believe that creating welcoming spaces for their wellbeing is important. Many may not be aware that, per the World Bank, 70% of the UAE population is blue collar worker1—far from being a small demographic—and they contribute greatly to the country. Even if they did not, their wellbeing should still be important to us all as fellow human beings.

All this is not to say that there have not been any positive developments in these beaches. I am grateful for the positive aspects of the developments and hope they are maintained and improved upon. I hope that this progress does not get stalled by private commercial entities so that more people can access third spaces that are necessary for their wellbeing.

Here are the positive developments in the Jumeirah beaches that I have observed that help keep parts of them accessible as “third places:”

the addition of shaded chairs and tables which don’t require people to spend money or buy anything to use them. At night, the shade above the tables/chairs are lit.
designated paths where people using a wheelchair or cane can access the water which also connects to paved parking lots. Parking is free for everyone on Sundays and during public holidays and it is paid in other days. Certain parts of the beaches in Jumeirah are more accessible by certain bus lines than others but not all paths from the bus stops are wheelchair/stroller friendly.
free access to a jogging trail, a walking path (which is also wheelchair/stroller accessible from certain parking spots), and a cycling/scooter path which go parallel to each other. These paths are well-lit at night.
bicycle parking and option to rent a bike or electric scooter
access to free drinkable water using filtering standards set by the World Health Organization. However, one needs to have refillable bottle on hand to use it but I have seen blue collar workers refilling empty plastic bottles they had previously drunk from. I only saw them in limited parts of the walking path and wish there can be more. However, certain households in the immediate neighborhood have donated drinkable water taps for passersby to drink from and keep them by their gates but it is not clear how well these are maintained as it is the responsibility of each household to do so.
designated spaces for swimming at night that are well-lit for a life guard to view from afar. Spaces that are not designated are not allowed for night swimming.
Certain parts having free “beach libraries” which is are small shelved kiosks with books to borrow and a bin where one can donate books to contribute to the library.
certain parts having free exercise equipment which don’t require electricity to operate. I did use some of these during my walks. Here is a photo of two I spotted in my walks below:

Most people who use the beaches do not use them to meet new people but rather to hang out with friends or family or to enjoy it solo. However, I did see a specific intergenerational Emirati neighborhood directly facing the coastline where the addition of walking, jogging, and cycling/scooter paths and shaded seating in part would make it more likely that they would spontaneously run into each other and socialize with one another, which is another characteristic of a “third place.”

I saw their children, teenagers, adults, and elderly utilize these paths by the beach in different ways. They would do so mostly in late afternoon or evening hours as they do not enjoy the heat like Westerners do, especially if they tend to wear traditional attire that can make them feel more hot in earlier hours. This is more so the case in Ramadan when practicing Muslims are fasting from both food and drink during day time hours but I have still observed this pattern outside of Ramadan.

I noticed that another feature that made this neighborhood appear much more well connected compared to my immediate neighborhood is that almost every household has a “majlis” that was not gated to the point I could easily see and overhear the hosts and guests from the beach.

A “majlis” is a traditional gathering space that is separate from the private parts of one’s home for the purposes of socializing with guests and neighbors. It can be incorporated into the same building as the home or be a separate indoor space or outdoor seating area placed in front of the home. This keeps the immediate dwelling private while also having a public space to connect with others at the same time.

The combination of the presence of multiple majlises, the immediate doorstep access to the beach, and the additional facilities added to make the beach more comfortable for daily use were all aspects of the built environment that helped to facilitate social connection between the neighbors.

Aside from the beaches, I also walked in the residential areas and relaxed in the free tiny parks and playgrounds that many neighborhood mosques in Jumeirah have available to the public such as this one I photographed below.

I tend to see young men and boys play in those that have free basketball or football fields in the late afternoon or evening hours. Since I have never seen women use them, I often was never sure if it would be acceptable for me to do so.

As for the mosque playgrounds and parks, I have seen mixed-gender families use them so I would feel more comfortable there. During Ramadan, if a playground was empty I would go on one of the swings and re-live my childhood while getting a good workout!

I find that having a public space to play such as using the swings in these parks or the free gym equipment by the beaches helps me feel a sense of belonging to the space as my inner child feels welcome.

A question for readers before I continue...

When was the last time you were playful or silly in public? What made that possible for you?

What I have shared so far only demonstrated examples of how formal built environments, whether from government/developer or household level contribute to creating third places. But what most caught my attention during my walks was finding what appear to be informal third places added by laypeople in random public areas I least expected. Below is a photo of one informally placed public seating area I spotted while walking in Jumeirah Road.

The placement of this seating area directly next to a busy road on an undeveloped sandy plot away from residential buildings does not appear to make it tied to any home as would be seen with a private outdoor majlis. It was also clearly not part of any nearby restaurant or cafe. Benches placed by the Dubai Municipality seem to follow a specific design and placement pattern, but this was not the case with this one.

The way the chairs, carpet, and potted plants (not all shown in this photo) have been intentionally placed had me think that this is not furniture that was disposed by the neighboring homes. This seating area was hard to pay attention to when driving in a car so I never noticed it until I walked in the area. As I sat on of the the benches while looking up at the date trees, I wondered about what can lay people do to informally create “third places—” one of many ways to care for one another.

I would love to hear from you, dear reader, on what ideas you have and whether you have seen examples of this being done.

A Book about Third Places I Stumbled Upon

While looking up research on the link between third places and mental health, I ran into this book which I haven’t read called “Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way)” by Richard Kyte.

Click here to buy an e-book version and click here to get a physical copy. I tried to search if I could find the book on WorldCat website but the page was not working with me today but I would recommend clicking here and typing the name of the book to see if any library near you may have a copy you can borrow.

I am saving this book for future reading but, if anyone has read this book already, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on it whether by commenting on this post by clicking on the button below or sending me a private reply to this email if you are viewing this on your email provider. I would also appreciate recommendations on any other books about third places.

Announcement:

Those of you who read my last newsletter know that I am in the process of switching careers from counseling psychology into public health. Click here and scroll down to the announcement section to learn more if you did not read it already. Below is an update since I had written that announcement:

I got accepted into Johns Hopkins hybrid MPH program and will be starting an in-person orientation and in-person classes in June 1st.

While most of the classes throughout the program will be online which I can do from Dubai, certain classes like the one I will be attending this summer will take place in-person in Baltimore, Maryland. This will allow me the flexibility to network in both cities. I have the option to transfer to a full time in-person format at a later time, as there are certain perks that are only open for that format. But I want to first get a feel for Baltimore and the current political landscape in the US before I decide if it would be worth doing so.

I will be in Baltimore from May 5th to June 25th to get a feel for the city, network, see friends who live nearby, and attend the in-person portion of the summer classes.

I would be open to meeting readers who are in Baltimore/DC area so feel free to send me a private message on Substack or to click reply on your email provider to let me know if you are!

I would also appreciate if anyone can connect me with people in the area who have interests in any of the following: social support, peer support, loneliness, social connection, program development and evaluation, community participatory action research, urban mental health, or preventative mental health from a systemic or dialogic/deconstructionist perspective.

I will be traveling in May and June so won’t be able to publish a newsletter on either of those months. So next newsletter will be on July and will highlight my reflections visiting a community garden by the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

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Hayyakum,

Reema

The World Bank. (2020). Demographic trends and urbanization. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/260581617988607640/pdf/Demographic-Trends-and-Urbanization.pdf

Intergenerational Friendships

Reema Baniabbasi — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:36:56 GMT

Photo by Thuận Minh on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

Growing up, my relationship with people who were significantly older or younger than me was limited to family members. I come from a Middle Eastern culture where there is a hierarchy based on age, with older individuals placed higher in the hierarchy.

While I value respecting elders, I find that this hierarchy limits the interactions between generations to a formal level, building a wall that does not let people fully experience or understand and learn from each other. It makes “respect” into a one-way relationship as opposed to a mutual one.

As the younger person, I often felt that I had little to nothing to contribute in conversations with elders and any disagreement with them was seen as disrespectful.

In my undergraduate years in the US, my relationship with anyone significantly older than me was limited to professors, mentors, internship supervisors, family friends, and anyone who could be seen as a “network.”

This created another wall where my relationship with anyone older than me can only be transactional—again not fully experiencing, understanding, or learning from each other. When I started to become more aware of my transactional ways of relating with people older than me in my early 20s, I started to practice being more curious about the other person’s life which helped me experience them in another light as a fellow human being.

As the older person, I have at times found myself mourning what I assumed the younger generation must be missing out on and positioning myself as their “mentor” and “big sister” instead of being curious about what I can learn from them.

We may assume that being older must mean we have seen more of life. While living for more years will make it more likely that we will “see more of life,” this does not mean that we will not miss things on the way. Perhaps the younger person may have had certain experiences or insights that we may have missed on the way to growing up. With the constant societal, technological, and scientific changes that are hard to keep up with, the younger person may be more up to date than us.

In my US years, I had a culture shock about the lack of respect towards elders. In my return to my home country, I had a reverse culture shock about the lack of respect towards youngsters.

I became an adult in the US but when I returned to the UAE, I noticed that I was subconsciously reverting to a child-like way of relating to those older than me. This reduced as I reacclimated to the UAE and reconnected with my confidence but it still has not shifted much with certain family members.

One thing I miss from my Boston years was how much easier it was for me to find spaces where I can connect with people from different age groups in one place. While my social circles and close relationships outside of family and work are still dominantly millennial like me, I am grateful for the few intergenerational friendships I have made on the way especially during my masters degree and beyond.

You may be wondering what is the value in making friends with people from different generations. I will be sharing some of my thoughts on that question here.

Questions for readers before I proceed…

Have you had similar or different observations about intergenerational relationships where you live?
If you have lived in different cultural contexts, what most surprised you about how people related to each other across age differences in these different cultural contexts?
What factors helped or hindered your ability to form intergenerational connections?

You may share your responses by either replying privately to this email using your email provider or clicking on the button below to post a public comment on Substack.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash

The Value of Intergenerational Relationships

1) Expand your perspectives:

I observe that the limited willingness to form intergenerational connections is one among many things that stops urban dwellers from forming connections with their neighbors. We may assume that because of our age difference we will have nothing to bond over. But this is far from true.

One of my elderly friends told me how connecting with her neighbors after her husband left her was cathartic for her. She started by sitting in her front porch more and greeting her neighbors before decorating her front porch to host them there. As a creative person, she was active with fellow artists and performed with fellow musicians whom I observed came from different age groups. In my last visit, she told me how she stopped recording or taking photos of those performances as she believed that doing so would make them “dead.”

Prior to hosting international graduate students in her house, she used to live in an intergenerational community co-op where residents frequently cooked and had meals together. She told me how enriching both experiences have been for her and how much she learned from people of different cultures and age groups.

I myself also learned a lot from her. For one, it was my first time hearing about the concept of a co-op with a shared dining space. I also appreciated how she tries to recreate this in how she eats with the international students she hosts in her dining room. I loved learning about this alternative way of living rather than through living in silos in rented apartments or in privately owned homes.

As a younger woman who at the time of meeting her was living away from family, I got to see a real-life model of how else life can be meaningful outside of traditional expectations of womanhood and adulthood. I also got to learn how one can flourish even after experiencing a heartbreak as great as a life partner of many decades suddenly leaving you.

She herself appreciates learning about my cross cultural experiences and at times asks me questions about social issues millennials and gen Z often bring up in social media and the new terms they are using. But our relationship was not built up from our differences. We bonded over our shared love for the outdoors, herbs, meditation, creativity, cooking, and communal ways of living and were introduced to each other via one of the students she used to host.

A question for readers before I continue…

Have you heard of communal housing alternatives to renting or private ownership? If yes, please do share with me whether in private or in Substack comments!

Click here to read the following article on Vox which confirms how age need not be a barrier to friendship. It also shares tips on how to navigate intergenerational friendships.

Also click here to read another article on Women’s Health that mentions more individual benefits to intergenerational friendships and how to form them. This quote from the article most stands out to me:

“…friendships with those around your age ‘can be challenging because you’re wondering if you’re keeping up with friends’ in similar life stages, says Charlynn Ruan, PhD, a clinical psychologist and founder of Thrive Psychology Group. Like, if you’re single but your friends are all getting engaged, you might have anxiety that you’re “falling behind” in life. However, this pressure doesn’t exist with friends in a different generation because you’re on separate life paths.
Additionally, ‘we may feel the need to change our personalities or behavior because we’re expected [to] show up a certain way around our peers,” says Minaa B. People naturally seek a sense of belonging amongst peers, so you may feel more pressure to abide by your peers’ cultural norms, fashion trends, and hobbies.” —Jacqueline LeKachman (2024), Intergenerational Friendships Offer Countless Benefits—Here’s How to Form your Own, Women’sHealth

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

2) Create a better workplace environment:

Holding biases about our younger or older work colleagues can hurt our ability to work as a team. Friendships or at least friendly interactions with colleagues across generations can help bridge this divide.

According to a Harvard Business Review article, today’s workplaces are the most age diverse compared to the past. Unfortunately, as the author states, not many managers are well versed with how to lead such a generationally mixed workplace which can increase age-based discrimination and poor job satisfaction, teamwork, and performance. What most stands out to me in the article is the following quote:

“Research indicates that younger individuals particularly prefer working with people in their age range. Older individuals also have reasons for not actively seeking age-diverse friendships at work. As seasoned workers climb the organizational hierarchy, their responsibilities and demands increase, limiting their time and interest in connecting with younger colleagues. These trends contribute to a natural age polarization within organizations.
Once established, however, intergenerational friendships can provide a less judgmental or competitive relationship than employees may experience with coworkers of a similar age. Research shows that when we consider someone a peer, we are more threatened by their chances for upward mobility, especially when compared to our own, than with people who are in different life stages and at differing levels of their careers.” —Megan W. Gerhardt (2024), Why We Need Intergenerational Friendships at Work, Harvard Business Review

Click here to read the full article and to find tips on how managers can foster better intergenerational relationships between team members.

Click here to read another article on how to navigate intergenerational clashes in the workplace. This article especially emphasizes the importance of getting to know your colleagues personally “to build trust and find common ground” across the differences which are essential in navigating these clashes.

Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash

3) To improve our communities:

In a world where life expectancy continues to grow at all ages1, we need to learn how to live together across our generational divides. As our world faces and will continue to face political, economic, climatic, and health crises, we need to learn how to collaborate across our differences, including our differences in age, as it is impossible to tackle any of this in isolation. Friendships, or at least friendly dynamics, across generations are essential in sustaining collaboration through mutual trust and common ground. There are consequences at both an individual and collective level when we operate in silos by age.

For a collective example of one of these consequences, click here to read this 2011 article by David Kingman from Intergenerational Foundation. The article discusses the Arab Spring from the perspective of intergenerational clashes and notes how it parallels with other times in history in other societies. To me this illustrates the importance of listening to and integrating young people’s voices, especially in societies like the Middle East and North Africa that are experiencing a youth bulge unlike in Western countries which are following a different trend.

While the article focuses on the macro impact of excluding youth, I imagine that it would have implications at smaller levels too. Imagine how the people who set policies and lead workplaces and organizations and communities will change what they do if they had more mutually respectful relationships with people across age groups outside their hierarchal family circles. It is hard to care for others whose stories are not a part of your day to day relational circles.

For another collective example, click here to read a 2024 article by David Schultz on The University of Michigan Press Blog on political polarization in America. While the author mentions different economic, historic, and political, and demographic changes that have lead up to polarization, he also emphasizes the strong role that intergenerational clashes have played as illustrated in this quote from the article below:

“The demographic and political orientations of the older Silents and Baby Boomers clash with those of the Millennials and Gen Z. It is this generational clash that is one of the powerful contributing causes of political polarization in the US today, carrying over into partisan identification and policy.” —David Schultz (2024), Generational Politics and Political Polarization in America, University of Michigan Press Blog

A 2022 US national survey of 1,549 respondents aged 18 to 94 on intergenerational collaboration had the following findings I quote below:

“More than four-fifths (80.6%) of survey respondents say they want to work with others 25 years older or younger than themselves to improve the world around them. Majorities say that working together across generations will be good for individuals and the nation. More than half of adults of all generations “strongly agree” that working together is important because it helps generations better understand each other (71.4%), enriches the lives of older and younger (67.7%), and produces better solutions (67.0%). Well over half (60.0%) “strongly agree” that America can better solve its problems if younger and older work together.” —Cogeneration, March 2022 Report, Page 4

However, all participants across all age groups in the survey cited lack of opportunities to connect with people from different generations as the top barrier that prevented them from acting on their desire for intergenerational collaboration. I wonder how much political polarization would be impacted if more people had such opportunities. Click here to read the full report.

Two questions for readers before I end…

Do you have experiences with intergenerational friendships whether with someone significantly older or younger than you? Feel free to share with me and let me know if you would like to have your story featured in a future newsletter!
What other benefits would you say intergenerational friendships can have individually and collectively?

I will be taking a break from posting on March 2025 to focus on resting after resigning from my job by end of this month. I will also be taking a break from tech with a few exceptions so I may not be immediately responsive to emails or messages until after April 1st. I wish all who celebrate an early Ramadan Kareem and Eid Mubarak!

April’s newsletter will explore the notion of “third spaces” and “right to the city” and what can we do to create them.

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You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2023) - “Life Expectancy” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy' [Online Resource]

What Would Help You Feel Connected in 2025?

Reema Baniabbasi — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 11:17:58 GMT

A collage I made on May 29, 2020 using: mod podge, torn and cut-out pieces of papyrus, teabag labels, and parts of Dubai urban nature I found during different walks: a pair of feathers, dried neem tree leaves, dried flame tree flower petals, and a dried flower I am not familiar with.

Dear City Person,

I am hoping that the first week of 2025 has been kind to you and that the rest of the year brings you more opportunities to co-create and co-sustain meaningful connections with yourself, with fellow human and non-human kin, and with whatever places you have lived in/are living in or are passing through.

I had originally wanted to write about intergenerational friendships for today’s post. But as I was writing it, I thought of how this is the first post of the year and that it would be more meaningful to me to acknowledge this and to connect it with the topic of belonging rather than to rush through it.

So in this post, I will instead be sharing a set of reflective questions and my responses to them to help us set our intentions to connect with each other and with the places we inhabit both individually and collectively in this year.

If you are new to my free monthly newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab…

Click here to read about how I am defining belonging (which I recognize may evolve the more I explore this topic). You can check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:

Collage I made on August 21, 2024 using a Distress Inkpad, mod podge, washi tape, and cutouts of different artwork featured in an Art Dubai catalogue.

I have some reflective questions to ask readers before I share my own responses to them

These are invitations for us to reflect on how do we want to nurture our sense of belonging this year. Consider using them as journaling prompts.

If writing is not your cup of tea, consider instead responding by drawing a mind map, creating art, audio/video recording yourself responding to these, using them as conversational prompts with other people, or mentally reflecting on them.

You may share your reflections either privately by clicking on the reply button on your email provider or by commenting publicly on Substack by clicking on the “leave a comment button” below the questions.

What intentions do you want to set that can support you in finding opportunities to connect with people, places, or nature?
(urban nature counts, even if you have no “green” spaces near you as I have written in one of my past newsletters that you can click here to read)
How do you want to act on those intentions each day or week, no matter how small the action and no matter how large the obstacles you may face on the way?
What will help remind you to stick to these intentions and actions and notice when you have drifted away from them?
Think of one or more past experiences when you felt most connected. What made that possible for you and how can you recreate some semblance of that now?
Aside from what you can do individually, are there any collective efforts you can be involved in to help others feel connected and that they matter and belong?

Me with my cousin’s/childhood friend’s dog, Bonnie, during our first walk in Dubai Water Canal on December after years of losing touch with each other.

What intentions do you want to set that can support you in finding opportunities to connect with people, places, or nature?

I have recently reconnected with a cousin/childhood friend whom I had lost touch with for many years. I am grateful that she has been taking the initiative to reach out and to plan outings with me. I want to make sure that I reciprocate her emotional labor so that it does not become a one-sided connection while also honoring the introvert time I need to recharge my social batteries in between.
1. This cousin also happens to have a new dog! See the third photo in this post above :-D
Going back to writing nature based poetry, people watching poetry, and creating collage out of found stuff and fallen leaves/flowers. While I often do this stuff at home, I would like to find one or two non-consumerist public spaces I can do this in more often to feel better connected to the community outside my home.
making the most out of what remains from the lovely weather in Dubai by sitting outside where possible even if it is my balcony or opening the windows to let the breeze in to feel connected to the world outside

How do you want to act on those intentions each day or week, no matter how small the action and no matter how large the obstacles you may face on the way?

Going on weekly or biweekly walks with my cousin as she shares my love for long walks. I find it less socially draining to do a shared physical, creative, or playful activity with someone as opposed to going to a restaurant or a coffee shop where the only activities are eating, drinking, and talking. If weather is not pleasant, we can walk in a mall.
Starting the day by opening the windows if the weather is nice and slowing down to appreciate how the breeze is touching my skin. If weather is not good, I could start the day by looking out in the distance and at the birds from my window.
I find it helpful to use the current outing or when I get home after a given outing to plan for the next one. However, I may not always be able to do this whether due to scheduling issues or needing more introvert time to recharge. So it helps to discuss alternative ways of connecting while setting boundaries where needed. Here’s an example:
On December, I was socially drained from many back to back family gatherings while a friend of mine needed support. Given how unpredictable the month was, I could not promise to go out with my friend or to schedule a call and it is important to me that I can be fully present with her when I engage with her.
I let my friend know this and that I can exchange voice notes during the week if I cannot do so the same day. I also checked in with myself to notice when my body is asking for introvert time instead of rushing between a family gathering and messaging her. Generally slowing down and noticing any temptation to respond out of a sense of urgency helps me.
As a fellow introvert, she was very understanding and we both found our voice note exchanges to be mutually supportive and connecting.
If the weather is good, I can do creative activities during a weekend at a small park or beach near me. If the weather is not helping, I will go to a library instead but since most of them in the UAE are closed during weekends, I would have to plan for a weekday morning or afternoon depending on when I am starting work. This has me wish that more libraries operate in the weekends as not everyone is lucky to have spare time to visit a library during a weekday. I don’t find the nearest library to me to be an aesthetically appealing space but I do appreciate what it offers to the community and want to support it. However, there are other libraries that I have either not yet explored or have not frequented enough, one of which is within a 10-20 minute drive from me, so I will plan to visit them. My favorite library in the UAE so far is in Sharjah (House of Wisdom) which is a longer drive from me and the traffic can be discouraging at times.

What will help remind you to stick to these intentions and actions and notice when you have drifted away from them?

being compassionate with myself when I don’t always follow through my intentions, and allowing myself to start again and again even after a long gap as each re-start adds up and is better than not starting at all.
ensuring at minimum that I allow the first few minutes of my day to be fully “me-time” (without screens, as those drain me fast!) so that I can be minimally charged enough to engage socially. To me it can be as small as looking at something far from my window and stretching for 5 minutes (especially as I am nearing my mid-30s and more easily injuring myself, I have found this to be more necessary!). Ideally I would like the first half of my day or full day for “me-time” but this may not always be possible. I acknowledge there are days I need much more than that, so I will focus on doing what is possible and being compassionate with myself when this is difficult. I find it helpful to schedule in my planner the night before how I will start my day. Even if I don’t follow through it 100%, having it visually in front of me helps me start somewhere even if it is a minimal version of what I had originally planned.
having my creative tools ready in a bag and using my Fridays to plan when and where I will go to create so that there is less effort for me and less likelihood of me making excuses on the day of.
Noticing signs in my body, mind, and actions that indicate that I am feeling disconnected and using them as cues to review what I wrote here. The signs I notice for myself are:
1. lacking in physical energy (this may at times indicate I need more time alone, but if I notice that I am feeling this way after having had enough time alone then it may indicate I need more time to connect (even if not with people, then at least with my plants, the stray cats, or watching the world outside my window)
2. having difficulty focusing or being present
3. feeling “foggy” in my head
4. being more prone to negative judgements about myself or others

Think of one or more past experiences when you felt most connected. What made that possible for you and how can you recreate some semblance of that now?

I miss how much more access I used to have to spontaneous places I could “just be” in without needing to spend money for either alone time or to meet interesting people if I was up for it. This happened less often after my university and graduate school years and more so after I left Boston.

I remember for example stumbling upon the Cambridge Women’s Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and loving how I could randomly drop into their living room or join one of their free classes or pray in their basement in between commutes. It was one of the rare spaces, outside of family and professional relationships, where I could see people interacting across different generations over shared interests. It had me feel that I had another “home” I can turn to even when I didn’t talk to fellow visitors or staff much.

I also remember once stumbling upon a free typewriting event (which was a lovely surprise for someone obsessed with stationary like myself!). I had multiple conversations with the person who used to facilitate it who then invited me to join art events and one opera performance (now this person happens to be one of my readers!).

I miss a neighborhood crepe place I used to frequent that was next to a church in the neighborhood I stayed in Boston. While being there involved me spending money, the fact that most visitors, including the owner, were members of the church next door made it into a small community except they were not cliquey and they never tried to force their religion on me. This made it easy for me to talk to strangers there while also having introvert time when I needed it. One of the frequent customers there used to live in Al Ain in the UAE and then later moved to Oman with her family. While I have lost contact with them and the cafe has shut down, I still remember my times there quite fondly.

I found all these spaces and more by walking around the city while paying attention to flyers, bulletin boards in cafes, libraries, public transportation, and street lamps or feeling drawn to a random alleyway or signboard and following that. Once while visiting Hartford, Connecticut, I stumbled upon an open art studio and the artists there were quite friendly unlike others I have been to where I felt a more elitist vibe. When I used to be on Facebook, I posted about my experience there and one of my contacts who used to live in that neighborhood for 20 years was astounded at how I found out about this place when she never knew it existed despite being an artist herself.

The built environment, the safety of the neighborhoods I walked in especially for someone who is perceived as “white” in America (until they hear my accent, name, and know where I am from or the religion I practice), and people’s openness to connect all played major roles in my ability to feel connected in the examples I have shared. I also used the times I felt lonely as cues to take action as opposed to listening to shame that was beating me up for feeling that way and that would have kept me stuck in inaction if I followed it.

While the built environment is not something I can recreate here in Dubai, I can still use these experiences to remind myself about approaching my feelings as invitations to act in ways that meet my needs and that are aligned with my values and to notice when I am out of alignment with that. This is different from approaching feelings as things to “fix” or distract from which would not have allowed me to take constructive action where possible.

Aside from what you can do individually, are there any collective efforts you can be involved in to help others feel connected and that they belong?

A colleague recently launched a regional based trauma association and has invited others to propose thematic workgroups. In the first conference by this association, I heard multiple presenters talk about how access to community support and social connection are essential to individual and collective resilience to trauma. This idea was also reflected throughout my training and work as a counseling psychologist. So I proposed to start a workgroup on helping people build connections to each other and to community resources as part of building community resilience.

It is not confirmed whether I will be doing this as my colleague is working to figure out the structure and funding of the association and the workgroups so I cannot share much about it just yet before these are further clarified. Even if this never materializes, at the very least I will come up with initial ideas and questions to explore that may take me somewhere.

I will be involved in collective work in the long-term as I am currently in the middle of a major career shift. I have recently announced to my employers and active psychotherapy clients that I will be resigning from my job as a counseling psychologist on February 28th of this year to start pursuing a degree in public health.

During my studies, I want to explore how to develop and evaluate peer support programs for migrant communities especially for those based in cities that have largely transient demographics.

My long-term goal is to develop a research and development lab that can:

collaborate with urban communities in finding solutions to loneliness and social isolation
offer consultancy to organizations and businesses on how to improve sense of belonging in their office cultures
offer networking opportunities for members who can be fellow researchers, practitioners, and grassroots community members. The membership fee can help support the center.(which can be offered at sliding scale or bartering to increase accessibility).
host peer support groups and social events for the public, both free and paid ones

I hope to start this out remotely before raising enough funds to create a physical space. During the times the physical center is not open, it can be used as a free public drop-in gathering space and can also be rented for events. I am also thinking of incorporating a small “library of things” into the physical center (where people can borrow or swap essential things, not just books on belonging, as a way to cut back on waste and improve access) and a community garden but not sure how logistically possible either of these would be.

I would appreciate if readers can let me know of any similar initiative they are aware of so that I can learn from them or if they can connect me with possible networks, resources, or other ideas that can support me

A family desert barbeque Mleiha, Sharjah, UAE last month

So far I have gotten accepted to two online MPH programs but I am waiting to hear back from the in-person, US-based, DrPH programs before confirming my admission. I have also applied to one counseling psychology PhD as my advisor from my alma mater recommended it as they have had people do dissertations that were based on program development. My advisor also told me that he has known someone who did an online MPH while doing the counseling PhD at the same time.

I hope to hear back from the doctorate programs by March 15th the latest if not sooner. Even if I end up only doing an online MPH, I will use the extra time to continue my EdX coursework on data analytics using programming languages (will be focusing on R, Python, and SAS) and in taking part in potential initiatives like the one I have described above.

I am feeling both excited and anxious about this shift but I see it as a career “progression” as opposed to a “pivot” as it builds up on my experience as a clinician and shifts from approaching mental health from an individual and intervention perspective to a collective preventative one. I will be sure to keep you all posted on what happens next!

A final question for readers…

Is there anything about my reflections that stood out to you? How come these parts stood out to you?

Plan for Next Month’s Post and an Invitation for Readers to Reach Out

I will keep the topic of intergenerational friendships for next month’s post which will mark a year since I have launched this newsletter! I still cannot believe how I have been able to maintain it for this long as I usually tend to come up with many ideas that never materialize or sustain themselves even when they do.

I am grateful to the for giving me the tools, community, and motivation I needed to start and to keep going. I am grateful to each of you for making this newsletter possible as your presence means a lot to me even if I have not directly connected with all of you one-to-one.

Having said that, I have enjoyed the one-to-one conversations I have so far had with some readers and I am open to having more of that whether over email, Substack direct message, or an audio/video call even if just to say hello. So don’t be shy to reach out by either replying privately to this newsletter by clicking on your email’s reply button or by private messaging me on Substack by clicking on the button below.

Before I wrap up…

I am ending each of my posts with a randomly drawn conversational card that you can consider using to deepen your conversations with people this week. So here’s today’s card drawn from a deck called Scenario Cards:

“What if you could wake up tomorrow with a complete mastery of one of the arts? Which one would you prefer it to be?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

Click the link here to learn more about Scenario Cards. I currently earn an affiliate fee for every purchase from this link. This is so far the first affiliate partnership I have and I only plan to do so with products I genuinely benefited from. I had previously written a post about conversational cards in general prior to being invited to Scenario Cards’ affiliate program. Click here for the link to the post.

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Connecting with the "Other"

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:02:10 GMT

Photo of Dubai Creek by Soheil Jei on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

“The other acts as a mirror (…) without which you cannot see your self. “

I am loving this quote which is from a story one of my readers shared with me about his conversations with a stranger in Dubai. This quote especially resonates for me because working as a psychotherapist with people from a diversity of life experiences, ages, and backgrounds continuously helps me come face to face with my own strengths and vulnerabilities in a way nothing else can do to the same extent.

In our day to day lives, it can be easy to get stuck within our intellectual, political, and cultural silos that we forget how to fully see “the other” and thus how to fully “see” ourselves. We all have aspects of ourselves that we may have “othered” and stigmatized, so having an inclusive view of humanity can help us have a more self compassionate view towards ourselves, even the parts we dislike and even the societally rejected parts, which are still part of this larger humanity.

The reader I mentioned earlier shared his story in response to my last newsletter where I reflected on my conversations with strangers in Dubai and Boston. You can read that post by clicking here.

As promised in my last post, I wanted today’s newsletter to feature a story by one of my readers on their experiences with encountering strangers and what they learned from that. I am grateful for this readers’ generosity in sharing his story and insights with us. I especially appreciate his ability to “…take the risk and treat strangers as inherently good” even as he comes from a country that is experiencing civil war. It has me think about what values and qualities one needs to stay close to in order to take that risk in the midst of collective trauma or adversity.

Before I share the story, I have two questions for readers…

What stories, images, thoughts, or feelings come up for you when you read the above quote?
What values and qualities do you believe a person needs to stay close to in order to take a risk in connecting with others in the midst of collective trauma or adversity?

You may respond by either privately replying to this email or posting a public comment on Substack by clicking on the button below

Also some house keeping before I share my reader’s story…

Photo by Dubai Travel Blog on Unsplash

A Reader’s Story

“I came to Dubai around 5 months ago and used to live in Deira District where I would walk down its streets at late night when the busy city rests a bit. Beside physical exercise, I walked to get familiar with this old part of Dubai and to visit some historic and heritage site there. Moreover, walking always assisted me in releasing negative emotions and making me feel refreshed and relaxed. I had several generally positive encounters with strangers during this daily routine so I will narrate one of them.
One night, a thin short youth, seemingly in his late twenties, stopped me and asked about the nearest metro station after he greeted me. As I offered to guide him to the nearest metro station, he insisted that I only showed him the general direction and remarked that would had been quite enough. I explained to him I had been wandering and roaming about without a clear destination, so I guided him to Salahaldeen Metro station which was around a 10-minutes walk from where we were.
He was very grateful for this gesture from me, though it is a very simple one indeed. As we headed towards our destination, we had a casual conversation from which I learned that he is an Indian national working as a sales associate for some medical company (if my memory serves me right). He was living in Bur Dubai close to the old Grand Souk. We exchanged phone numbers and farewells as he stepped inside the metro station.
I contacted him afterwards to help me find a room in Bur Dubai as I wanted to navigate and explore that part of Dubai after having learnt that many historic sites are located there. He tried his best but we couldn't find an unoccupied room dedicated for a bachelor like myself; the area is very populated and reserved for families seemingly. We stayed in touch for a while though we never met in person again and now unfortunately we are no longer communicating with each other.
The lessons I learnt from such encounters with strangers is that, first and foremost, we need to drop the prejudices we all have about others which tend to glorify our own cultures and races and dehumanizes others. These mostly false pre-judgements are the most single obstacle in my opinion that prevents connection.
We need to also take the risk and treat strangers as inherently good (which is the case quite often in my opinion) until we are proven wrong. Sadly people distrust and discredit strangers. While this attitude would help them be more safe, they would miss valuable opportunities to enrich their life with new experiences, stories, and encounters with human beings.
I believe that through encounters with the other, one comes to realize the flaws of his own culture and nation and then work on to overcome and improve them. The other acts as a mirror in this context without which you cannot see your self.
One more lesson I learnt from such encounters with strangers is that we shouldn't rely entirely on social media platforms without in-person engagements as otherwise relationships tend to loose much of this initial momentum.”

Questions for readers before I wrap up…

What most stood out to you in the above story? What aspects of it speak to you?
How come those parts of the story stood out to you or resonated with you the most?

Feel free to respond by either replying privately to this email or posting a public comment on Substack by clicking on the button below.

In next month’s newsletter, I will be opening 2025 with a reflection on my experience with intergenerational friendships and on articles about that.

An advanced Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who celebrate!

Before I wrap up…

What if you had the power to teleport to one place on a daily basis? Where would you go?

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Conversations with Strangers

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 13:53:09 GMT

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

Everyday we pass by strangers whose stories we will never know. If we are lucky and open, we may get the chance to talk to one such stranger, perhaps even learn something new or share a good laugh. I will write about some of such encounters that I can remember before highlighting the work of Sidewalk Talk and how you can get involved in your city, wherever you are in the world.

Do you have a story about a conversation you had with a stranger, whether on a bench, in a bus/train, on the plane, while passing each other by, or with a waiter or cashier? What was this experience like for you?

Feel free to share your story by either replying privately to this email or posting a public comment by clicking on the button below. Also let me know if you would like me to feature your story in a future newsletter.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

If you are new to my free montly newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab, check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:

Also an announcement of an upcoming event this month by AlSerkal Art Foundation if you happen to be in Dubai. I plan on attending so we may run into each other!:

“How do we carve our path against forced movement? Can we stay mobile in a constrained world? Join us on 23 November, 2024 as the recipients of the Alserkal Arts Foundation Research Grants 2022-2024 present compelling, multidisciplinary projects that address permanence and belonging, urging us to reimagine how we relate to our lives and land(scapes) when faced with slow ecocide alongside disruptive political violence. In This land (is ours, yours, whose?) (هذه الارض (لنا, لكم, لمنو؟ architects and urban researchers Khalda El Jack and Zainab Gaafar document stories of three settlements of south Khartoum to examine how the harsh realities of war unmake and reconfigure our relationships with land. Artist and researcher Lubnah Ansari’s Tracing Temple Ties studies burgeoning dynamics between India and the UAE, where fissures born out of colonial legacies mutate other relational worlds. Through Can we be(come) nomadic?, social scientist Natasha Maru and environmental designer Rhea Shah explore multispecies environments through the lens of mobile pastoralists in Western India, proposing ways to re-inhabit an embodied ground in the fight for environmental justice. With The Domesticity of Wanderers, artist and writer Maitha Alsuwaidi sifts through stories of Ajami identity and collective memory across the Arab and Persian Gulf(s), while looking at the inner world of the home as a totem and a tool. The multifarious diasporas underline the slippages across borders questioning the nature of movement - forced or a way of life? Resilience or acceptance? Subversion or slippage?”
Time: 2PM - 6PM | Venue: Jossa Space, Alserkal Avenue
Click here to RSVP

Photo by Umanoide on Unsplash

I used to find it more effortless to have conversations with strangers before smartphones became popular but they also have not completely died out. As a woman, I am aware that this may not always be safe to do in all contexts as I have mentioned in one of my older posts that you can read by clicking here. This is why I have often connected with strangers in places I feel safe in, such as where there are other people passing by within earshot or where I have easy access to a door if I am indoors. I have also learned to pretend I have someone I need to meet up with if I start to feel uneasy during a conversation with a stranger which has rarely happened with me.

Here are some stories and thoughts that most stand out to me as I think about my experiences talking with strangers:

One day in my tween years, I was sitting on a bench outside of a supermarket in a mall in Dubai reading a book while waiting for my parents to finish up their errands. Later, an elderly Indian woman in a sari sat next to me.

After a while passes, she says: “It has been a long time since I have last seen anyone reading a book in public! I hope you keep this up!” As we were briefly getting to know each other, she told me that she is Parsi. It was the first time I learn about Parsis, a Zoroastrian community in South Asia who are descendants of refugees that fled Iran after the Arab conquest there. While I had heard about Zoroastrianism, as a kid I had the impression that it was no longer being practiced let alone outside of Iran and parts of Central Asia. As I write this, I find myself missing learning more things directly from in-person chance encounters, rather than “google-ing” online or through the blessings of “algorithms” in social media.

I have had other experiences in which a book bridged a back and forth conversation with a stranger. One I can recall was when I was browsing books at an independent bookshop called Trident in Boston. There was a young African American woman standing next to me, also quietly browsing the books from the large shelves in front of us.

I pick up a book by Murakami called “Men Without Women” and read its back cover before trying to put it back where I first found it overhead of me. Since I am short, I had some difficulty with this process. Each time I thought I had the book settle back into its home, it came hurling back at me!

By my third attempt, the young lady bursts out laughing: “That book really wants you to take it!” I laugh with her and tell her how the title combined with the fact that a male author had written the book gave me the impression that he was feeling spiteful about being rejected so many times by women so maybe the book was feeling similarly. We laugh some more which warms us into a longer conversation about what we do, our cultural backgrounds, Middle East politics among others. I find out that she too was in the mental health field so we exchanged numbers but unfortunately never stayed in touch.

While most of my experiences involved the other person initiating a conversation with me as I incline towards introversion, I have had few experiences where I was the one who initiated (provided that I had recharged my social batteries enough). Some involved conversations with people experiencing homelessness in Boston. One I can most remember was with a man who used to work as a journalist which had me think how homelessness can happen to anyone.

These conversations, combined with the fact that some of the people I had worked with in Boston experienced homeless whether ongoingly or in the past, shifted my perspective on homelessness. Generally, middle to upper class people in Dubai do not encounter visible homelessness in the streets (though I have heard through word of mouth that it does exist but not in the open) so they may be shocked to see the level of visible homelessness in their travels abroad, especially in so-called “developed” Western countries.

What was a big culture shock for me was seeing the level of rugged individualism in Massachusetts such that it is seen as “normal” for a sibling to be settled in a home in Paris while their brother was experiencing homelessness in Boston as I had heard from one of the people I spoke to.

This was unfortunately not the only example I have seen, and not just with homelessness. At the time, I thought to myself: “If I ever find out that my brother was homeless anywhere in the world, I will cut the globe in half to find him.” Looking back however, I recognize that there may have been unspoken family dynamics or other circumstances I was unaware of that may have impacted the sibling’s ability to help their brother.

I often forget that not everyone has had the interactions I have had with people who experience homelessness so they may have preconceived notions about what it means to be homeless. I myself still have a lot to unlearn so I am not bragging here but wanted to raise awareness to acknowledge the humanity of whoever you are passing by, no matter their social status. We are all busy and in a rush these days, but we can all spare a quick “hello” if we can not do a conversation. Keep in mind that I am not saying we should only stop here doing the bare minimum, but we can at least start here.

I recall being told by a watchman in Dubai how much he valued that I was the only person who greeted him with “salaam alaykum” everyday as he was a solo migrant and was not living with family. While this may not be everyone’s experience, the fact that at least one person told me this gives me the indication that more people are needing this connection. I imagine that this is more vital if they live alone and are having long working hours alone where the only conversations they may be having in a given day don’t go beyond someone requesting to be served.

People often think about mental health as an individual issue with individual or family causes, but a lot of research and clinical work confirms that experiencing dehumanization and social inequality at both systemic and individual levels can hurt people’s mental health. My first post that you can read by clicking here also highlights how much constant loneliness can hurt both our physical and mental health regardless of your social standing. These are thus collective problems that we are all responsible in tackling, and not just the responsibility of the person impacted by them.

Before I continue, I have a question for readers…

What is one thing you can do this month to connect with a stranger? What often comes in the way for you?

Photo by Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash

About Sidewalk Talk and How You Can Get Involved

If you are struggling with the above question, consider checking out the work of Sidewalk Talk, a community project started by two San Francisco-based therapists, by clicking here.

The organization aims to “…reduce loneliness, promote inclusion, and enhance social health through the practice of listening on public sidewalks worldwide.” They also have a podcast about belonging and wellness that you can listen to by clicking here. The organization is decentralized so each global Sidewalk Chapter will have its own materials, some offered in languages other than English. So far, Sidewalk Talk chapters are located in 50+ cities in 15 countries.

Sidewalk Talk offers training on how to become a better listener. Some of this is donation-based and some involve coaching at a particular cost with all the profits supporting the organization itself. There is also an opportunity to volunteer to become a Sidewalk Talk Listener so that you can join their public listening events in a chapter near you. If there is no Sidewalk Talk chapter located near you, you can volunteer to start one or practice the skills you learn with passersby in your community. Aside from in-person events, you can join online listening events to practice the skills you learned.

This all has me think that if I ever move to a different country again, I will consider looking up a Sidewalk Talk chapter or starting one as one way to help me adjust and meet people.

Do you know of any similar projects in your community?

If yes, do reach out by replying to this email or posting a public comment by clicking on the button below.

For next month’s newsletter I would like to feature one of your stories about connecting with a stranger. If you have one such story you would like to have featured, feel free to reply to this email or leave a comment below!

If I don’t get any story by November 28th, then I will instead write about an interesting communal project a reader told me to look into.

Before I wrap up…

“What if after you die you could be reborn as anyone you currently know? Who would you like to be reborn as?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Reflections on Practicing Insight Dialogue

Reema Baniabbasi — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 18:07:41 GMT

Dear City Person,

As promised in my last newsletter, I have just completed a one-month introductory course on Insight Dialogue which I will be reflecting on today. I had initially thought that I would be done with it by end of September only to realize that the last day of the course was early October which, on top of a busy week, lead up to the delay in this post.

I will start with writing about what is Insight Dialogue and noting down parallels with my faith as a Muslim even as it comes from Buddhist origins before sharing my experience with Insight Dialogue and the steps to practicing it.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash

What is Insight Dialogue?

Insight Dialogue is a relational form of meditation. It is a mindful way of being in conversation with others where the relationship becomes the container for meditation and for possible insights to organically emerge. It has roots in Buddhist tradition as described in the following passage below from an interview with Gregory Krammer I found in a blog post by Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Click here to read the full interview:

“What is Insight Dialogue, in a nutshell?
It’s the extension of personal, silent meditation practice into the interpersonal sphere. The technique, the qualities cultivated, and the intentions of the vipassanā tradition are all maintained—sati (mindfulness), samādhi (concentration), and sammā diṭṭhi (right view) remain central to the process—and these qualities are brought to the interpersonal engagement with others. Just as you carefully attend to sense data and bring awareness to mental states during silent vipassanā retreats, you can also attend to the words being spoken to you by others, along with all sorts of nonverbal signals that come along with communication. The heart vibrates, the organism vibrates, and this is known.
What is the precedent for this practice in the early tradition?
The evidence is everywhere in the discourses, but the most striking, clear statement of it is right there in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness. In the refrain repeated again and again in that text, the Buddha speaks about observing the whole range of phenomena internally, externally, and both internally and externally. This passage is so often glossed over, and emphasis is usually placed upon an introspective and even introverted approach to vipassanā meditation. But as I understand the instructions here, the practice is not complete unless one learns to attend just as carefully and precisely to external, or perhaps objective, phenomena. This must include interpersonal phenomena, a huge aspect of our lives as relational, social beings. I discovered only gradually how powerful and deeply rooted in the tradition this way of practicing really is.
Let’s take mindfulness as an example (though we could take almost any aspect of the dhamma). Internally, I’m mindful of this body as I’m sitting here talking to you: I’m mindful of the pleasant and unpleasant sensations, of my mind states and emotions. I might also be mindful of the hindrances or the enlightenment factors as they arise in this heart-mind right now. I might also open and extend my awareness from the internal and personal to the mutual, or shared, moments. I might be mindful of the words being spoken, of your body and how you’re moving your body. I might be mindful that I’m turning back internally to my reactions to what you’ve said, and to my aversion and craving, my concerns, my fears. Then I could turn outward again, noticing the impermanence of what’s external, which, right now, is you. You are changing moment to moment as you speak, as you look at me, and so on. Then, I can reflect upon both what’s internal and external. The heart/mind becomes flexible, calm and alert. We begin to see things as they are.
Looking at mindfulness meditation in the way I’ve come to understand and implement the teachings, the internal and external refers to the entire relational moment, to what Martin Buber called the between. It involves finding a whole notion of interpersonal contact—this voice of mine speaking and reaching your ears; a moment of ear contact; then you speak to me and your voice reaches my ears. Out of this language there is mind contact. There is visual contact and other kinds of energetic contact, and a relational moment unfolds, with both internal and external aspects. Indeed, it often becomes difficult to say where one leaves off and the other begins. The rigid boundaries between self and other—built up since infancy or even before it—begin to soften. This, of course, reveals and challenges the whole enterprise of constructing duality. This can be directly experienced in Insight Dialogue, where we meditate together.
It’s true that many people—students and teachers both—don’t know what to make of the external part of the instruction, especially when it comes to feeling tones or mental objects. It sounds like you may be opening up, and completing, an important but overlooked part of the classical teachings here.
It feels solid and not just an opportunistic interpretation, especially when you look at the rest of the Buddha’s teachings in this interpersonal light: interpersonal doubt and lust, relational grasping, energy and fear, all the way down to the ways dependent origination unfolds in the presence of others. As I began teaching this way, and the practice got deeper and deeper, the insights people were having got more profound and beautiful. As I immersed myself in the suttas, I saw that the whole dispensation of the Buddha, when construed to cover the interpersonal, had that same depth interpersonally that it does personally.
The noble truth of suffering is another example that easily comes to hand. Yes, suffering is personal, including as it does bodily pain and aging and death, and the existential issues of what am I doing with my life and so forth. But look at what a tremendous amount of our suffering is interpersonal. Not only are others often the source of my pain (have you ever been in relationship?), but so much of what I do causes suffering to others, either directly or quite indirectly—we discern the seeds of compassion.
Then you go on to say, if that’s the case, then the cause of this interpersonal suffering must also be interpersonal taṇhā, that is, craving, hunger. You look inside your life, you look inside your own heart, and you don’t have to look very far to find it. Yes, I’ve got interpersonal hungers going on. I do hunger for interpersonal pleasure. I do fear interpersonal pain. I do hunger to be seen, to exist, to be acknowledged, interpersonally. I also fear nonbeing. I do hunger to escape. These are the cravings for existence and nonexistence, understood interpersonally. All these hungers together are the roots of my suffering.
Of course, if you’ve gone that far, you can’t help but take the next step and ask, is the third noble truth true, interpersonally? What might my life look like with the cessation of interpersonal hunger? Might the stillness and love I cultivate be continually available to others? Might their love be available to me? Can I live with others in the world with the expansiveness, openness, availability, and tranquility of heart that comes from the cessation of these social or interpersonal hungers, and the grasping they create? Lovingkindness and compassion are not theory: they are lived experience.
Is it a matter of greater intimacy?
You know, that’s an interesting word, and it obviously comes up in my retreats or the practice groups that form. I’ve learned to distinguish two important facets of intimacy. One is constructed intimacy, which is what we usually think of when we use the word intimacy. Perhaps we’ve constructed a life together, as husband or wife, as business partners, or in a long-term friendship. This is intimate in the sense that we feel familiar, close, understood, and safe. We feel this way because the fibers woven between us are so refined, so numerous, so deeply set in our neurological structure.
But, there is also a quality of intimacy that is unconstructed, that is found in the absence of all of that. We are intimate because there is nothing in between us. This is what arises in meditation when we have direct contact with experience, and that experience encompasses another person, or other people. Not only is my direct contact with experience occurring in my own internal meditation—seeing is seeing, hearing is hearing, and so forth—but it is also happening while being present with another, with eyes open, with ears open, having stepped outside the whole constructed sense of self and other. This is unconstructed intimacy.
Unconstructed intimacy is not built around a sense of self—or of non-self, for that matter. It is not built at all.
It is the essence of impermanence, of emptiness, the essence of anattā, of shunyata. Shunyata extends to the whole of our lives, even this place—human relationships—where it is usually most obviously absent. The third noble truth, interpersonally understood, thus reveals a quality of being with others.
It is a quality of coming to rest without clinging and seeing things as they actually are.
I’ve certainly noticed that a number of people, many with extensive experience of silent, personal meditation, find the Insight Dialogue work quite remarkable.
Isn’t that amazing? It inspires me deeply. I’ll tell you why that is, as I understand it. It’s well-acknowledged by many people involved in this work that in traditional practice it’s possible to bypass a lot of issues and thereby miss a lot of insights. The mind is very powerful, and can protect those places of tension, confusion, and hurt from being known.
But a lot of that hiding becomes impossible when you bring the practice out into the open air with others, where every moment of interpersonal practice is met by, supported by, and even challenged by others.
Experience is met with unfettered receptivity, which is the essential nature of awareness, internally and externally. This quality of openness is the essence of the transformative moment—clinging is released and hungers diminish. This includes but is not limited to identified, psychological release. It extends to the mystery of awakening.”

Before I continue, I have a question for readers and you may respond by either replying privately to this email or posting a public comment on Substack by clicking on the button below the question:

What is standing out to you from the passage I quoted above?

Photo by Chris Ensey on Unsplash

Parallels with my Faith

While I am a practicing Muslim and recognize clear theological differences between Islam and Buddhism, I have also noticed parallels between them especially when considering esoteric understandings of Islam (also known as tasawwuf or Sufism). Examples of these parallels include:

how overly attaching to the “nafs” نفس (often translated from Arabic as “self” or “ego”) and making it the center of all we do can cause suffering both privately and within our relationships with others. Both traditions recognize that while having a self is important for us to function in our daily lives, the problem is more when it alone informs how we perceive things and when it becomes the center of how we relate to others and what we prioritize in life.
the idea of life and mental states being transient and how overly attaching to them can cause suffering
the interconnected nature of being and of reality
Within Sufism there is a type of meditation known as “muraqaba” مراقبة which is a tool for character development and for loosening one’s excessive clinging to self, except in this case the focus is more about developing a deeper intimacy with the Divine. It is also known as “zikr qalbee” (supplication of the heart) to the point one senses the presence of the Divine in the present moment both in their breath and in all their interactions with other beings. There is an Arabic phrase often repeated in Sufi circles that says الصوفي ابن الوقت “The Sufi is the child of the moment.”
Regardless of one’s sectarian background, all Muslims are advised to have a state of presence (known as hudhoor in Arabic حضور) in order for our acts of worship to be accepted. Acts of worship are not only limited to things like praying 5 times a day, but can also include zikr (supplication) before and after doing day to day activities as well as our day to day actions which we are advised to practice beautifully or with ihsan in Arabic احسان. Ideas of speaking with ihsan through gentle speech and allowing room for silence are also emphasized within Prophetic tradition.
Prophet Muhammad’s prayer which is known across sectarian differences: “Oh Allah, show me things as they are.” “اللهم أرني الأشياء كما هي” Also click here to read Rumi’s story about polishing the mirror (i.e. our ability to perceive and our character) to better reflect reality in his collection of poems known as the Masnavi.
Speaking of Rumi, if you have learned about mindfulness outside of a Buddhist religious context, you may have heard about Coleman Barks’s poem called The Guesthouse which often is attributed to Rumi. While it does capture the essence of Rumi’s original poem, Barks’s “translation” distances us from the Islamic teachings within Rumi’s original poem and skips much of it so it cannot be really described as a “translation” but more as a poem inspired by Rumi. See this video below that compares both the original poem with Coleman Barks’s version and how their message is similar to a quote from a Buddhist text. You can skip to the 7:20 mark of the video. As you can see, both poems and the quote of Buddhist origin illustrate how we can have a mindful way of being with our inner experiences through welcoming them as guests, even those we did not wish to invite.

I have also found the teachings mentioned in the passage from the Gregory Krammer interview I quoted above to apply to a larger human condition, regardless of one’s spiritual or secular orientation.

Before I continue, I have a question for readers and you may respond by either replying privately to this email or posting a public comment on Substack by clicking on the button below the question:

If you come from a Buddhist background, what are your thoughts on the passages from the interview above and the parallels I notice with my faith? If you are not Buddhist, what parallels if any do you notice between your tradition and what I shared so far?

My Experience with Insight Dialogue

Content warning: grief and loss

I was first introduced to Insight Dialogue in 2021 when I was doing a certificate on meditation and psychotherapy. At the time, I recall having practiced it three times with three different people, one of whom was diagnosed with ADHD. Each time, both sides noticed how much our thoughts slowed down and how we could let go of any attachment to the outcome of our conversations and be more present to each other the longer we spoke and paused. It would take time to ease into the shared silences, but once we did we both noticed how enjoyable it was rather than being labeled as an “awkward silence.” For those who had limited to no experience with any form of meditation, they found this practice to be more accessible as the relationship created the environment needed for them to meditate which can be harder to do on their own.

I did not continue practicing it until recently when I found out that the Insight Dialogue organization offers donation-based online and in-person practice sessions globally but it is required to do the 1-month introduction first before joining these. Click here to learn more about the organization and its courses and texts on Buddhist philosophy.

Since there was no in-person opportunity near me, I opted to do the online introductory donation-based course called “An Introduction to Insight Dialogue and The Caring Relationship.” I found much of what I took away from this course to be very applicable to my work as a psychotherapist and also in other relationships with people I care about.

While I was more consistent with meditation the month before, during the month I started this class I unfortunately was not able to be as consistent and I notice how it impacted my ability to be as present in our practices. I noticed how my ability to be present was different with each conversation partner I was paired up with and how usually I would start with a lot of tension and uncertainty before easing into the practice and becoming more relaxed and present.

This had me appreciate that regardless of how distracted or tense I feel at first and regardless of how unsure I feel about what I want to talk about when it was my turn to speak, I can still trust in the relational container I build with another person and in my individual meditation to allow what needs to happen to emerge on its own and to trust that I do not need to think about what I want to say as it will emerge if I am present. Even in times when I was not fully relaxed, I appreciated the insights that arose that had me curious about how what I noticed during the practice may be showing up in my relationships with other people in my life.

One of the facilitators opened our course by sharing his story of connecting with his wife while she was dying from cancer. He shared how when he overly latched on to the role of being a caregiver, it became a “job” and created a power imbalance in the relationship that took away his wife’s autonomy. It is also more likely to lead to burnout.

However, when he was able to distance from labeling himself as “the caregiver” and his wife as “the sick person,” it opened up new possibilities for how they could meaningfully connect in the last days of her life. As he said “even with someone very sick there are moments of joy.” He shared this story to illustrate how Insight Dialogue can help us step away from social constructs and labels so we can be more present with the person and curious about their needs and share what we can offer to them with their consent in mind.

In this way, we can be better able to respond to whatever needs arise in the moment instead of reacting out of fear which can unintentionally lead us to be coercive with others or to be paralyzed with inaction which can both backfire in our ability to support a person.

We can also be open to learning from the person so that they feel they have something of value to offer and the relationship does not become a one-way relationship which can hurt connection. Feeling that one “matters” to someone else is part of what it means to belong and it partly involves feeling that one can both give and receive in relationships, and not just always be the “helper” or always “the one being helped.”

In our last session, I most resonated with the idea of how a rigid attachment to roles like being the “caregiver” or “helper” can have us overly attach to the self. This rigid attachment can get us feeling stressed when circumstances call for any slight deviation in our thinking. This stress can impact our ability to physically relax enough to open up to what is arising in the present moment and to what the person is needing from us in that moment because we are too distracted by the assumptions and expectations inherent in rigidly attaching to a role.

I notice that in my role as a counseling psychologist, if I am too attached to it in a given moment, then I am more likely to approach the person seeking my help with an “agenda” and with a sense of urgency. This in turn invites anxiety and a sense of not being good enough if I cannot reach my “agenda.” I notice my speech becomes faster, I feel less patient, more defensive at feedback, and my focus becomes very narrow that I miss the larger picture. I may either ask too many questions and miss opportunities to validate and relate to the person or become too directive and thus steal away opportunity from the person to access their own power and grow. I am further more prone to make very silly but potentially hurtful mistakes with the person.

I have seen across the multiple cultural backgrounds and different degrees of emotional distress I have worked with globally how this approach hurts my connection with the person I am working with. In psychotherapy, the relationship with one’s therapist is key to therapy being helpful regardless of what approach or level of expertise the therapist has. If connection is not present, then therapy will be useless and the person won’t be motivated to put in the effort required from their side regardless of how “good” the therapist is.

I have questions for readers before I continue…

A) Think of 1-3 times when you noticed you were always or most of the time approaching a person from the mindset of being a “helper.”

Where did you notice your focus going when this happened?
What impacts did it have on your ability to be present and on your conversation with the person if any?
what impacts did it have on your ability to be curious about the person and to see the larger picture?
How did the other person receive your attempts at helping? (Do not share what you assumed, but what the person say or do or how did they react with their non-verbal cues)
If you have always been the “helper” and never the one “being helped” in a relationship, how did this impact your connection with the person over time?

B) Think of 1-3 times when you noticed the other person approaching you from the mindset of being the “helper” and trying to “fix” you either every time or most of the time:

How did you receive the other person’s attempts at helping you?
What impacts, if any, did this have on your connection with this person?
If you have always been the “one being helped” and never the “one helping” in this relationship, how did it impact your connection with the other person over time? How did it impact how you viewed yourself?

Every two-hour session during my introductory Insight Dialogue course started with the following structure:

Brief mindfulness of body and of sounds to have us transition from our day and into our practice.
1. our facilitator shared the following on why we focus on the body in both solo meditation and in Insight Dialogue (this quote is a rough paraphrase of what he said):
  1. “we focus on the body as the body and mind are not separate. Body is about feeling and minds create stories. So often we get caught up in stories and are not mindful. So coming into the body takes us out of the story even as it remains but it allows us to come below the level of story to notice something we are not quite feeling and to release our attachment to the story and begin to see things in a different way.”
  2. An example of what it means to get lost in story that the facilitator shared is when someone gets angry at us and we get lost in the story of them not liking us. Consistent meditation can help us see below that anger and see why it is here. It can touch into a place where care can happen and open up to love and compassion.
Introduction of a given step of Insight Dialogue for us to focus on that day. Here are the steps to practicing Insight Dialogue:
1. Setting an intention to care for each other’s wellbeing and not to intentionally harm one another.
  1. While it is encouraged to speak the truth of the present moment, we must also be wise to know when to hold back if the truth may be more hurtful than caring for the relationship.
2. Pause
  1. Momentary stop of thoughts of what we do in moment, just coming into the moment. This gives space for mindfulness to be established. Key word is “momentary” as we cannot force thoughts to stop, but we can invite them to pause and be with whatever thoughts or sensations or insights naturally arise afterwards.
  2. There is no limit to the pause, can be fraction of a second or even several minutes.
3. Relax your body as much as possible
  1. It is expected to notice tension when you first pause, so this step helps guide the journey to a mindful state. As mentioned, the body and mind are connected, so it is helpful to start with relaxing whatever parts of your body is tense as much as you can while being compassionately present with the parts that remain tense.
4. Open
  1. as we settle in, we can open to what is present with our five senses and with what is happening in our mind without attempting to control them and without getting overly attached and lost in their story. Just observing them as they are.
5. Attune to emergence
  1. entering flow of experience without attaching to anything in particular and not attaching to any role or outcome.
6. Listen deeply
  1. listening to our conversation partner and our body as we listen. Opening to what is being shared but not just the content of the words and without forcing ourself to remember all that was said afterwards. We listen with our whole body not just the ears. Noticing the words being spoken, body language, how the voice sounds, feel how the words and body language of our conversation partner are being experienced in our bodies.
7. Speak deeply
  1. sharing what is arising in our body and mind in the present moment as it is and noticing the physical sensation of speaking. Speaking from the heart.
Sharing prompts to guide our conversational meditation before we get sent out to timed breakout rooms with our conversation partner. At first, we take turns being “speaker” versus “listener” before we do another round with a different prompt where we let go of the rigid roles of being “speaker” or “listener” using “open dialogue.” We were instructed to “hide self view” in Zoom so that we can be more present with our conversation partner. Here were the prompts we had each week:
1. Name your present experience of your body-mind as it is
2. using open dialogue, name a role that is not too complicated (such as friend, neighbor, conversational partner etc) not getting lost in story but share what is it like in your body-mind to think and talk about this in the present moment
3. Focusing on the pause and relax steps: notice breathing, what is it like to breathe now? Speak about to where in our body do you feel the breath and what kind of sensations you feel as you inhale and exhale. Notice any thoughts that arise and stay with what is arising. As listener, become present to your experience of breathing and listening and be aware of where in body do you feel your own breathing and sounds of your co-meditator. Be patient with the noticing. When you are not too sure, you can pause more and feel then speak.
4. Focusing on the “open” step: explore something small but difficult in someone in our life that creates tension. As you speak the story, you pause and feel what is arising in the moment in your body. It can be easy to get caught up and excited in the story but the invitation is to pause and feel the body in the moment, not recalling what you experienced back then but rather what you are experiencing right now as you recall this story. As you you listen to your co-meditator’s story, notice what is arising in your body and notice when you get very drawn into the story and how you can you come back to the body.
5. Think of a role you play (as a worker, friend, neighbor, student, family member etc) for 7 minutes and see what truth manifests in the moment. See what roles come up in the moment and what you want to share rather than thinking of it. Only share as much as what you know in that moment. Listener takes in whatever you remember both what is described but also nonverbal cues and what emerges within the listener but don’t try to too hard to get all of that. Then for 3 minutes the listener shares what they receive after pausing and relaxing and opening. Then for 1 minute first speaker will share the truth of moment after listening to what the listener shared. Then role switch before open dialogue. You can pause in silence any time you need.
6. 5 minutes of each side settling into the relationship while co-creating the container of practice. Speaker will share what is present in body in this moment then slowly releasing attachment of self and opening to other person when done speaking. Notice what it feels like to listen. In open dialogue, choose a relationship that may have had little struggle in it (a level of 3-4 out of 10) and reflect on it but not on story but on how it felt on various stages. Reflect on what it felt in your body, allowing for any tightness to be and pause/open/relax/release it. Notice moments when self shows up.
7. Reflect on experiences over last 4 weeks of our class practicing with a conversation partner you never knew. Share what it was like to share things that were perhaps bit difficult. Do this in open dialogue after taking moment or two to settle in together.
8. Share how the roles we take on in life impact how we interpret things.
Coming back to main room and sharing what our experience was like

A question for readers before I end…

If you decide that you want to try Insight Dialogue after reading my newsletter today, please share how you hope it could benefit you and your relationships.

Next month’s newsletter will feature an organization called Sidewalk Talks and opportunities to get involved regardless of where you are in the world.

Before I wrap up…

“What if you were invited to write a single line for a fortune cookie without anyone knowing what you had written? What would you write?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Thoughts on a Book about Belonging in Dubai

Reema Baniabbasi — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 19:59:36 GMT

Photo by David Rodrigo on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

I am back from my 1-month break and have decided to shift the frequency of my posts to once per month to give myself and readers more time to digest each post. To my new readers seeing this, I wanted to let you know that I have yet to update my About page or Welcome Email to reflect this change, but will do so soon!

As promised in my last post, today I will be sharing my thoughts on Rana Almutawa’s book called “Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai,” an ethnographic research about how middle and upper middle-class citizens and residents who lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) for an extended time experience its rapid and major developments and ways they try to belong within them even while they experience a sense of loss of old spaces.

If you are not familiar with what is “ethnography,” I encourage you to first click here to read this article before coming back here.

Please let me know if you have read AlMutawa’s book as I would love to read your thoughts on it. Or you can let me if you plan to read it at some point and share what is drawing you to it.

You can write to me by either replying privately to this email or posting a public comment on Substack by clicking on the button below.

Scroll down to find out where you can get a copy of the book (if you haven’t already) while supporting public libraries or independent bookshops and global literacy. To me, getting a book through these alternative ways is a small practice of belonging—of connecting to a sense of place and a larger humanity.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

If you are new to my free newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab, check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:

Photo of Rana AlMutawa, academic and author of Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai. Click here to read her bio.

Most researchers and journalists I have seen writing about Dubai in English are either not from there or have not lived there for an extended period of time. While many bring up valid social, humanitarian, and environmental concerns which I wish were spoken about more openly in Dubai, their dominantly Western lens and limited connection with the city has me mistrust their motivations. I sometimes find their perspective lacking in nuance or at times representing only limited segments of the city.

When I first learned that AlMutawa published her book, I was excited to read it as it is refreshing to read perspectives by an Emirati academic like herself or by anyone who grew up here and lived here for a long time. However, for the same reason, I was wondering if it will be overly apologetic.

AlMutawa addresses this through stating her positionality in her book’s introduction and what opportunities and challenges this gave her as a result when working on her research. Here is a passage on this from the book that stood out to me in page 31:

“In a Twitter post with a high level of interactions, Kuwaiti academic Talal Al-Rashoud wrote: ‘As Gulf academics we often find ourselves in a delicate position. We must criticize the gross injustices plaguing our region, yet we must also debunk the potent orientalist discourse that all too often pervades such criticism. We thus end up attacking & defending simultaneously.’ This accurately reflects how I often felt about my academic experience, with one major caveat—that I had to also negotiate how to do this in a more constrained political context, for while Kuwaiti academics also engage in some self-censorship, they have a much larger space for academic freedom. Given this positionality, my place in the academy affords me both opportunities and limitations that shaped this book. The former includes the reality that I have better access to and familiarity with certain parts of UAE society. The limitations include working with assumptions that my research is necessarily more biased than that of non-citizens, dealing with a sense of alienation of writing from that position, and navigating specific concerns (self-censorship) that other academics writing about the region may not have to consider in the same way.” —Rana AlMutawa, Everyday Life in the Spectacular City, page 31.

I can relate to this experience of self-censorship which I often engage in while writing my newsletter and in my creative work as a poet. I have often found that people who grew up with comparatively more freedom of speech can take this for granted and I find that friends and professional networks would forget my boundaries around discussing certain topics online with me even after I repeat them multiple times as it is not part of their everyday “normal.”

When I live in a place where I must practice self-censorship (whether during my time living in the US as a Middle Eastern Muslim person or while currently living in the UAE where I was born and raised), I find that it has an impact on my sense of belonging. This is because part of belonging to me involves my ability to feel that I have a voice to contribute to my community.

At the same time, as AlMutawa observed in her ethnography, experiencing belonging versus exclusion does not always happen as a black and white binary. Rather people can experience what she described as “ambivalent belonging” in which one person can experience exclusion in certain areas and a sense of belonging in other areas. This reflects how I experienced both Dubai and Boston. So while the limited freedom of speech is one exclusionary aspect, there are other aspects of both cities that I still feel connected to.

A question for readers before I continue, feel free to respond by either replying privately on email or clicking on the button below to post a public Substack comment…

If you can relate to the above experience, how do you navigate self-censorship in a way that honors both your safety and what you have to offer? What helps you decide when you can take a risk versus when you can’t?

While I was to some extent aware of orientalist perspectives that can at times color valid criticisms of Dubai, I appreciated that the book had me think of more examples of how this can show up that I did not realize I myself was engaging in even though I am local to the city and grew up here. An example of this is where AlMutawa mentions the “fetishization of poverty” that can unintentionally show up when describing old parts of the city as more “authentic” than new developments. Here is a quote on this that stood out to me in page 54:

“While they dismiss other forms of mass consumption, some seekers of authenticity can be voyeuristic, looking to consume images of poverty, struggle, or ‘tradition.’ In doing so, certain places and people are fetishized in the process. For example, a film director says: ‘I kept looking for an authentic aspect of Dubai until I found this old souk. Amazing people with beautiful stories, finally.’ Here, a souq is depicted as an authentic aspect of Dubai, perhaps due to Orientalist ideas that imagine “traditional” spaces as constituting authenticity in an Arab country. But there is also a class aspect to this discussion, wherein low-income inhabitants are exoticized as more ‘real’ than other people, making those how recognize their realness more ‘real’ as well.”—Rana AlMutawa, Everyday Life in the Spectacular City, page 54

Another quote from page 55 also spoke to me:

“At times, the line between fetishizing poverty or ‘humbleness’ and seeking a less-controlled urbanity is blurred.”—Rana AlMutawa, Everyday Life in the Spectacular City, page 55.

I grew up in an old part of Dubai nearby the Dubai Creek and Al Bastakiya (now called Al Fahidi) so I have often associated such spaces with “home.” I would not feel at “home” unless I visit them which is why I experienced a sense of loss when I noticed how much parts of them changed. However, unlike some of AlMutawa’s respondents who “outgrew” such spaces because of class aspirations despite them missing those spaces, for me I am finding those spaces less accessible due to distance and traffic after my family moved to a different part of Dubai in 2009. I do still visit time to time to feel grounded but not as often as I would like as they are not on my way to things. I also notice my heart open when I see older buildings in other parts of the city or country as they remind me of the neighborhood I grew up in.

Thinking of this and the above two passages from the book has me wonder what is the line between a voyeuristic fetishization of poverty and tradition versus seeking to reconnect with a sense of home one grew up with?

Before I continue, I am curious to hear from readers how they would respond to my above question, so please reply privately to this email or post a public comment by clicking the button below!

One common assumption held by academics writing about Dubai that AlMutuwa critiques is the idea that people are either always passive recipients of how the city develops or active resistors of it. What often gets missed in this binary assumption is the way people make meaning of the developments that can be shaped by their intersecting identities based on gender, age, race, ethnicity, class, nationality, among others.

A point she repeats in her book is the concept of “adaptive agency” where people are neither resisting nor agreeing with how the city is developing but instead find ways to live in it that meets their needs to belong. For example, while a shopping mall is an inherently exclusionary space by class and focuses on consumeristic behavior as a way to connect, people can form meaningful memories in these spaces or even use them in traditional ways as she noted in the example of Emiratis treating certain Emirati dominant cafes the same way they would treat a “majlis” (a traditional gathering space).

One of my critiques of the book is that it does not fully unpack or deconstruct what does “belonging” even mean and how do her respondents understand this. This is a common construct I find often taken for granted by social scientists across different fields in which they assume that readers will have the same shared understanding of what belonging means.

While AlMutawa acknowledges the fact that her respondents are dominantly middle and upper middle income, I wonder how her conclusions would have been different had her research included currently lower income respondents. The chapter about Satwa, a low income neighborhood in Dubai that experienced gentrification, was a particularly interesting one to me.

Many of Satwa’s long-term residents moved either voluntarily or involuntarily and were compensated by the government to make way for new developments. Parts of Satwa still remain but the demographics have shifted. While here too most of her respondents were currently middle income, they had experienced an upward shift in social and economic status. But it was interesting to see how their form of “ambivalent belonging” had more tinges of loss compared to the other respondents she interviewed. This had me wonder who has more access to “adaptive agency” that she described versus who may find it more challenging to access.

These respondents who grew up in Satwa both longed for the deep sense of community at a neighborhood level that they used to feel there while also believing that “progress” is inevitable. This had me wonder whether their response would have been different if they could access another vision of “progress;” one that did not involve displacing them but rather improving their neighborhood’s economic condition and safety while preserving the positive aspects. One of her respondents, Abdulrazzaq, in page 202 and 203 confirms my point.

AlMutawa observed that when people’s material needs were met through their change of economic status, their sense of neighborliness decreased. For example, her respondents mentioned how much they missed the informality of walking into each other’s homes to share food or carpooled together but this stopped when they had enough food for themselves or when everyone had their own private cars.

Furthermore, she mentions research in other Gulf countries that showed how when state welfare and higher standards of living were provided, these made the community dependent on the state and no longer needing to depend on each other. While families and friends may still look out for each other, it is becoming rarer for care at a neighborhood-level to take place.

These points have me wonder how can we encourage people to continue practicing community care even when their material needs are met?

I would love to read reader’s answers to my question above. Please reply privately to this email or publicly on Substack by clicking on the button below!

If you have not already, you may get a copy of the book via the following ways:

If you are located in Dubai, you may buy a physical copy in Art Jameel’s shop. I am not sure if they have a copy you can borrow at their library but you can ask their front desk. While ramps for wheelchairs are available, the doors are not wheelchair friendly. Click here to find information on how to get to Art Jameel.
Click here to search for the nearest public library that carries a copy you can borrow wherever you are in the world.
Click here to buy an e-book copy while supporting global literacy.
Click here to buy a physical copy while supporting local bookshops globally:

Next month’s newsletter will reflect on my experiences with an online introductory 3-week course I will be taking on Insight Dialogue, a relational form of meditation. I will be reflecting on it as a belonging practice. Click here to learn more about Insight Dialogue.

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could time travel to any period in the past or future? What period would you travel to?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Belonging and the Human Experience

Hayyakum,

Reema

Slowing Down as a Belonging Practice:

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 17:00:37 GMT

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

It has been a month and twenty days since I announced shifting my weekly posting schedule to a biweekly one before I take a 1-month break to reassess. I am taking time off from work from July 29 to August 29 so I thought that I also use this time to take a break from posting to focus on rest.

Coincidentally, I ran into a lovely post below called “Finding Rhythms of Rest and Renewal: How to Belong to Summer and other stories of belonging” written in a newsletter called by one of my new readers, . You can read this post by clicking on the link below.

I found it interesting how she connects the idea of rest with belonging. I thus thought to use this opportunity to reflect on this point from Prasanta’s post while also reflecting on what I have been appreciating about experimenting with different posting schedules so far.

Finding Rhythms of Rest and Renewal...

Welcome to Belonging and the Human Experience!! And a hearty welcome to new subscribers that just joined in June from in-person events, such as the Tosa Storytelling Workshop and the League of Women Voters panel!! I’m so happy you’re here! I write about belonging, loneliness, culture, migration, faith, race, and community. You’re receiving this email be…

2 years ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Prasanta Verma

Aside from rest, I plan to use my holiday to continue reading Rana AlMutawa’s book titled “Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai” so that I can reflect on it in my next post on August 30th. I invite readers to use this gap in my posts to read the book along with me and to catch up with any past posts they may have missed by clicking here to check out the archives.

Click here to find a copy of the book at your nearest public library wherever you are in the world. Click here to purchase a physical copy while supporting independent bookshops. You can also click here to find an electronic copy while supporting funding for libraries and global literacy.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash

I have usually had a tendency of starting things before stopping part way and I am sure many people can relate to this. This is why I found posting weekly gave me the momentum I needed to go on in the first 4.5 months of launching my first newsletter.

I loved entering a flow state whenever I would sit down and write a post and converse with readers in between. But I noticed that I had a hard time finding motivation to start writing even though the process of doing so would feel effortless. I also noticed needing more space to think through posts while juggling other life commitments. I felt bad for not always having time or energy to read other people’s posts as interesting as they are. I thus experimented with a biweekly schedule.

I was initially worried about whether this would break up the momentum I had built. But on the contrary, I noticed the gap supported my process. It is now 6 months since I have launched the newsletter and I am still going! Few readers seemed to prefer more gaps between my posts so that they could have time to think through my posts and questions. It further gave me time to read and comment on other people’s newsletters, whether or not they are my readers. I also noticed that I would have more time to properly research my topics instead of rushing through them.

I have thus decided that I won’t be going back to a weekly posting schedule. I will use my holiday to decide on if I want to stick to my biweekly schedule or to go for a monthly one instead. I will update you on this in my next post on August 30th.

Slowing down seems to help me better connect with myself and with what I am writing about. While I have mostly heard people talk about belonging as being about connecting with groups of people and with places, I have also at times heard people talk about it as connecting with oneself. Prasanta’s post mentions belonging both from the angle of what actions she will take to better connect with herself in the summer as well as what it means to her to belong as an American of South Asian descent.

The idea of connecting to oneself as being part of what it means to belong makes sense to me because it can be difficult to meaningfully connect with other people without meaningfully connecting with yourself. However, the opposite can be true at the same time too.

In his book, “Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community,” social psychologist Kenneth Gergen argues that our very notion of us even experiencing having a “self” is not possible without relationships. He argues that our thoughts, feelings, values, behaviors, how we relate to ourselves, and how we make meaning of the world are all constantly being co-constructed within relationships whether past or present.

Psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has written a book I plan on reading called “How Are Emotions Made: The Secret Life of the Brain” where she too touches upon how our emotions are socially constructed and how culture interacts with our brains and bodies.

I recall from a course I took on meditation and psychotherapy how Buddhist philosophy claims that even consciousness itself cannot arise without the existence of something to be conscious about. This mirrors the claims of some secular Western philosophers such as Heidegger who proposed that consciousness is always consciousness about something. Thus our notion of ourselves and even our consciousness are both relational in that they arise within relationships and never on their own.

This all has me think that belonging is intertwined with connecting with oneself. What most drew me to Prasanta’s post is how she asks herself “how can I belong this summer?” rather than “how will I spend my time this summer?” or “how will I relax this summer?” I found this question particularly refreshing as it focuses on connecting rather than productivity or consumption which I admit is a trap I can easily fall into as many of us do within global capitalism.

I have a question for readers before I continue. You may reply privately over email or publicly via clicking on the comment button below:

After reading Prasanta’s post, how would you answer her question? How can you belong in the upcoming last month of summer?

Here’s how I would answer the above question:

I would like to return to a consistent meditative practice. While I practice informally in brief passing moments while walking or after prayer, I would like to go back to more daily formal practice. I have noticed how it impacts my connection with myself and how I show up in my relationships more fully and more anchored and even how I connect with the plants in my garden.
I would like to spend more time with friends in a meaningful way. I would prefer we learn new things together or do activities that can reconnect us to our inner child (like laser tag and go karts among many examples) rather than eating out and having coffee. I find that as adults we often take ourselves too seriously which leaves me feeling disconnected. Letting go with someone can be so intimate. I was thinking of booking a private room in a library that is close to both of us so we can create together or play board games. As much as I would like to invite them over, I also recognize how my family whom I live with comes from a culture that goes out of their way to show hospitality and I don’t want to burden them.
I could try going back to writing my people watching poems which I mentioned about in an older post that you can read by clicking here. I noticed how it helps me feel better connected to a place and to a larger humanity while slowing down my thinking.
I am open to scheduling Zoom or Google Meet calls with readers to connect with you more! I have so far had 2 and would love to have more! We can do audio only calls if you are not comfortable with video. Feel free to privately reply to this email if you are interested in chatting.
These are only intentions and I may not live up to all of them for this month. But I hope that I can at least stay close to that question and find even small acts of “belonging” in my day to day; small acts of how I can slow down, however brief, to connect better with people, myself, and the world around me.

The next newsletter will be posted on August 30 and I hope to reflect on Rana AlMutawa’s book called “Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai.”

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could time travel to any period in the past or future? What period would you travel to?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Dear City Person, Ramadan Kareem to all who celebrate! In this weekly newsletter, I have the third post of each month feature an organization or an event that tackles issues of urban belonging and opportunities to get involved. Today’s newsletter will focus on the work of Intentional Peer Support. I will also pr…

Hayyakum,

Reema

Wildflower Alliance and Peer Respite Programs

Reema Baniabbasi — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 11:03:30 GMT

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

While I was researching about loneliness and social support, I ran into a few related community interventions. One of such interventions was peer support which I wrote about in a past post linked below while I was featuring the work of Intentional Peer Support. I would recommend reading that post first before circling back here as it offers important historical context.

Belonging Co-Lab

Intentional Peer Support

2 years ago · 1 like · 4 comments · Reema Baniabbasi

I later learned about peer respite programs via the Wildflower Alliance’s Afiya Peer Respite Program which I thought to feature here in my post today. I will first provide context on inpatient psychiatric units that lead to the rise of community-based interventions such as peer respite programs. Then I will define what is peer respite and share where you can learn more about them. Then I will share about what the Wildflower Alliance offers and how similar programs can fill the service gaps in psychiatric wards. I will end with a question for readers.

*Content warning: this post will include mentions of trauma.*

Before I dive in, I have an announcement to share…

The Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) at Berkley University is starting a free monthly virtual book club to discuss “Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World” written by john a. powell and Stephen Menendian.

The first meeting to discuss chapter 1 will take place on July 17, 2024. Click here to learn how you can sign up, to access the first chapter for free, and to see where you can buy the book.

I would also recommend checking out World Cat by clicking here to see if there is a nearby public library that carries a copy of the book you can borrow for free wherever you are in the world. I could not find any in UAE that did except for NYUAD’s library which is only accessible to students and faculty. But I was able to buy a digital copy via Better World Books which you can click here to access.

Click “read more” below to see one of my past posts where I wrote more about OBI and its offerings:

Belonging Co-Lab

Othering & Belonging Institute

Dear City Person, In this weekly newsletter, I have the third post of each month feature an organization or an event that tackles issues of urban belonging and opportunities to get involved. If you know about an organization or event that you would lik…

2 years ago · 4 likes · 9 comments · Reema Baniabbasi

I have signed up for the book club and look forward to starting, lemme know in a private email reply or publicly in the comments below if you will be joining!

Some house keeping before I continue…

If you are new to my free biweekly newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab, check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:

Photo by Ansgar Scheffold on Unsplash

Peer respite programs arose in the US as a response to the traumatic experiences of some of those who were hospitalized at inpatient psychiatric units. Before I get into more on what they are, I will first offer some context on psychiatric units.

The Status of Psychiatric Units Globally:

Psychiatric units were designed to be spaces to serve people whose needs cannot be adequately met at an outpatient clinic. One may be voluntarily or involuntarily hospitalized for a temporary period. Involuntary hospitalization can happen for those whose physical life or the life of others is at imminent risk due to mental distress. These units are staffed by psychiatrists, nurses, and psychotherapists who offer 24/7 individual, group, and family care in the duration of the person’s stay with opportunities for patients to socialize.

Many psychiatric wards globally have unfortunately been understaffed, under funded, under-resourced, poorly managed, or/and have limited access to therapeutic and social services outside of medication which can lead to poor treatment and even traumatic experiences. Many don’t offer comprehensive planning for what happens after the patient is discharged from the hospital which can increase the risk of patients getting re-hospitalized again in the future. At worst, there can be extreme forms of human rights violations which is a belonging issue.

In the West, these issues have lead to the rise of peer respite programs and other community-level interventions as preventative or alternative approaches before the person needs to go to the hospital. However, these programs were not widespread enough or well funded enough for everyone to access. This is why the reduction in psychiatric hospitals in the 50s and 60s in the US has lead to a public health crisis as they happened before any sustainable or meaningful community-based interventions could work. Click here to read an NPR article that says more about this.

Also click here for an article by the World Health Organization (WHO) that raises concerns about widespread human rights violations in psychiatric inpatient units and how community-based interventions have been shown to be cost-reducing and effective. They further propose that community supports and community crisis management should not only focus on mental healthcare but also wider economic and social supports.

While peer respite programs have been used by people who are also using psychiatric and psychological services on the side, others have used them on their own due to traumatic experiences with the mental health system.

I personally don’t propose a complete replacement of inpatient units as I recognize that we have yet to come to a point in history where alternative community-based options as proposed by the WHO or by peer respite models are more widespread. I also recognize that no one approach will help for everyone all the time especially in life or death situations. Rather, I propose that inpatient units to be majorly improved until more effective community-based crisis and social support programs be implemented and sustained at a large scale to give people access to multiple options that could reduce the need for inpatient units in the long-term.

Inpatient psychiatric units may be the only life-saving option available in a given community and not everyone has a traumatic experience in one. In fact, a 2023 review of 31 studies from almost every continent in the globe found high levels of patient satisfaction at inpatient units. Click here to read the full study.

However, the study did also find that the major sources of patients’ lack of satisfaction were due to:

experiencing involuntary hospitalization
seclusion
restraint
physical or psychological abuse at the inpatient unit
the misbehavior of staff
poor living conditions
lack of information and transparency

Those who were satisfied were more likely to report better insight, therapy relationships, and overall functioning. This shows that addressing patient satisfaction is important for improved outcomes and that coercive treatment can be counterproductive.

At the same time, I wonder about the power dynamics involved in filling in a satisfaction survey: if one is not happy with coercive stay, they may want to do anything and say anything that could get them out as early as possible including claiming that they are satisfied when they are not.

Aside from this study, there are multiple peer reviewed studies that reflect how the numbers of people who report poor and even fatal outcomes post-discharge are significant enough to be a global public health and human rights concern. The studies show that this is not unique to the US and that makes the role of peer respite programs worth looking into as a preventative method, even if not as a complete alternative for everyone all the time.

Here are 3 global studies below that look into the experiences of patients at inpatient psychiatric wards and what can be done about it:

Study 1:

A large Danish study in 2019, linked here, compared the long-term outcomes of 62,922 recently discharged patients with 1,573,050 patients who were never admitted. The outcomes they looked at are: mortality, accidental death, criminal violence, suicide, self harm, and hospitalization because of violence. They measured these outcomes at different timeframes: within 3 months of discharge, 3-6 months of discharge, 1-5 years of discharge, and 10 years of discharge. While most patients in the study had voluntarily admitted themselves to inpatient psychiatric units, the percentage of those who experienced poor outcomes was significant.

Overall, the study found that people who were discharged from inpatient psychiatric units were at higher risk than the general public to experience poor outcomes in all the areas the researchers studied. Suicide and self harm were found to be highest within the first 3 months post-discharge while the risks for other outcomes remained the same at a 10-year period. The risk for at least one of the outcomes worsening within a 10-year period was the highest at 49.4% for those diagnosed with psychoactive drug addiction and lowest for those who were diagnosed with a mood disorder but still a significant enough number (24.4%—almost a quarter!). The researchers suggest immediate follow-up care post-discharge and long-term access to social support to address this.

Study 2:

A 2022 qualitative study gathered the responses of 262 Reddit users on their experiences of hospitalization at inpatient psychiatric units (r/PsychWardChronicles). Click here to find the full study.

Three main themes were found from the responses:

“neglect and abuse”
“coercion and obedience”
“dehumanization and fear”

The authors highlight how often respondents gave into coercive acts in the hopes of getting discharged faster.

The authors also raise concerns about how the traumatic experiences discouraged respondents from seeking future mental health services even when they are needing it. This shows that preventing these traumatic experiences in a space that is supposed to be healing is an important public health priority. It further shows the need for patients to have accessible social support shortly after being discharged.

Study 3:

A 2019 review of 72 studies from 16 countries published between the years 2000 and 2016 linked here looked at the factors that can help improve the outcomes of patients at inpatient units.

Their introduction cites multiple UK-based studies that revealed prevalent “fears about assault, concerns regarding coercion, limited recovery-focused support, and lack of therapeutic activities” as well as poor building conditions located far from patients’ families and homes and “…unsafe staffing levels and overly restrictive care.”

The review found how the 72 global studies reveal the importance of working to reduce the negative impacts of coercive treatment, ensure safe social and physical environments at the wards, foster quality relationships, and patient-centered care.

What is Peer Respite:

According to a research and practice agenda by Laysha Ostrow and Bevin Croft, linked here, peer respite programs are:

“…voluntary, short-term, residential programs designed to support individuals experiencing or at-risk of a psychiatric crisis. They posit that for many mental health services users, traditional psychiatric emergency room and inpatient hospital services are undesirable and avoidable when less coercive or intrusive community-based supports are available. Intended to provide a safe and home-like environment, peer respites are usually situated in residential neighborhoods.”

The programs are run by trained volunteer peers who have had past experiences with mental and emotional distress. The idea is about connecting people with lived experience with each other. Some offer other social services beyond a temporary residential stay as I will mention later regarding the Wildflower Alliance as an example.

Some peer respites offer a “mobile” respite where instead of the person going to the residence, trained peer staff or volunteers come to the person.

There have been other forms of respites that don’t necessarily fully fit the definition of a “peer respite” in that they are run by psychologists, social workers, or psychiatrists but staffed by trained peers or incorporate a mix of both psychological and psychiatric support as well as peer support and access to housing, education, employment, and financial assistance.

To learn more about peer respite, click here to access a free digital copy of a handbook written by both Intentional Peer Support and the Wildflower Alliance which also incorporates perspectives from other peer respites: . You can also purchase a copy to support their work by clicking here .

The Wildflower Alliance

The Wildflower Alliance is based in Western Massachusetts, USA and consists of multiple online and in-person resources that include a peer respite called Afiya among others. It is funded by Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, federal grants, regionally based hospitals, jails, housing projects, community organizations, art councils, and individual donations. These help make their services free of charge for the community.

Aside from a home-like temporary respite of 7 nights, the Wildflower Alliance also offers:

support for those who were recently discharged from an inpatient psychiatric unit to ease their transition back to the community. This can look like: thinking through next steps together, socializing together, support with needed paperwork, advocacy, support with appointments, and connecting with other community resources like housing support, career support, where to access financial support, support groups, cultural spaces, etc.
help with finding and maintaining housing and work
distributing essentials such as food, phones, sanitary items, etc.
A Discord server for people to socialize and support one another online
A drop-in social room where people can socialize, join support groups, create art, meditate, etc.

Their approach focuses more on building mutually supportive relationships where all sides learn from each other rather than a “helping” versus “helped” relationship. The assumption is that what we often label as a “crisis” to be “fixed” which can often reinforce stigma, is more seen as a clue to how someone is attempting to cope and a valuable opportunity for someone to learn something about themselves and what they are valuing in life and how they show up in relationships, and what do they want to change versus not change.

Their Afiya Respite Program is among the very few dozen in the whole US. It is designed as a homey space where people can temporarily stay in a private space with access to a common area to rest with no strict schedules imposed, access to individual and group peer support, support in brainstorming next steps and access to essential needs and community resources as described above, access to books and art materials, and limited transportation.

They further help connect people with psychiatrists and psychologists outside the respite if this is requested and allow for visitors whether they be family members or mental health providers (in Massachusetts, home-based services are offered alongside outpatient and inpatient treatment).

Even when someone is not staying at Afiya or they stay ended, they can still have access to other services listed above by The Wildflower Alliance. While some hospitals offer similar services in the form of social work, from my experience of working in the US before I moved back to the UAE is that they tend to be severely understaffed and have very limited time in their appointments. I also noticed how certain demographics such as low income immigrants strongly mistrusted them so more creative solutions need to be found to get their needs met. Some people respond better to a peer than to a hierarchal relationship. Having additional community services like Afiya can help bridge gaps in current services even if they cannot always 100% replace them.

Click here to learn more about the Wildflower Alliance and click here to learn more about their peer respite program.

A question for readers as I wrap up…

Have you heard of other creative approaches to addressing gaps in mental healthcare and belonging in your country?
Another I can think of is the Friendship Bench created by a Zimbabwean psychologist to address strongly-held cultural stigmas against seeking mental health services which you can read more about by clicking here.
Leave a comment

For the next biweekly newsletter, I will be reflecting on what it has been like for me to shift from a weekly to a biweekly posting schedule before I take a one-month break to assess whether to keep this frequency or shift over to monthly one.

Before I fully wrap up…

“What if today was your last opportunity to speak to uplift the world? What would be your message?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Belonging in Digital Spaces

Reema Baniabbasi — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 08:47:30 GMT

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

I have had times when I fantasized about time traveling to when the internet and smartphones didn’t exist in the hopes that I would be more present and enjoy a slower pace of life. But I have had other times when I felt grateful for living in a day and age where I can have a live video call with multiple friends and family members living thousands of miles away from me or at least hear their voice in a voice note with no expectation that I respond right away.

One of the things that I lamented about moving back to Dubai is the limited intellectual events I find here compared to what I used to find in my Boston years. I have thus been grateful for having access to online communities where I can scratch some of that itch. I also appreciate how certain apps help me find in-person events that I would not have otherwise known about especially while moving countries, such as Meetup.com, Facebook Groups/Events, Internations, and Eventbrite.

Many of my psychotherapy clients told me how they felt less alone reading about others sharing their lived experiences with trauma, mental distress, and physical disability on Reddit or on Facebook Groups as they have difficulty accessing this in their in-person connections. Some also found language and tools that were useful to them in navigating their experiences such as how a client who joined lupus Facebook groups learned about “spoon theory” .

I am not sure how I would have mentally survived moving countries and the COVID shutdowns without access to digital connections. At the same time, there is a lot about social media that I don’t like which had me think about the sorts of digital interactions I find meaningful that I want to prioritize versus those that are draining to me. I will share the things that I don’t like about social media, what kept me on them for a long time, and what steps I have taken to center more meaningful digital interactions. I will further share some further reading on this topic for your reference.

Some house keeping before I continue…

Last Thursday I logged off Instagram for the foreseeable future. I lack the desire to keep up with steadily decreasing metrics. I don’t want to make reels. I don’t want to watch them. I don’t want to keep feeding the belief that I need this platform to have an impact in the world…

Below are the things that I don’t like about social media that has had me gradually start to wean myself off of some of the platforms:

1) How algorithms filter information and reinforce divisions between groups of people.

It seems people are talking “at” rather than “to” each other and are living in very different “realities” as they cannot even agree on basic facts. While I have known people who try to mix the sorts of accounts they follow because of this, I still notice them getting sucked into echo chambers.

This has me prefer to have dialogues with people on difficult topics in-person or over an audio/video call so we can notice each other’s non-verbal cues that often get missed on text-based platforms. I would only do this if I notice that the person is to some extent receptive about hearing what the other side has to say, even if they don’t change their position, and we can respect each other’s needs for pauses in the dialogue. I am not interested in wasting my emotional labor over bullies.

It can be easy to watch a short Instagram Reel or TikTok video and assume we got what one side says about an issue but this takes away the time and curiosity needed to truly understand and engage with each other even if we don’t agree with each other over fundamental moral issues and facts.

2) How our data gets sold online and opens us to more scams.

I would rather own what I choose to share versus not share instead of hand that to a third party. This had me get my own domain name for my online professional portfolio and a separate domain name for my newsletter as the nature of my work as a counseling psychologist and my love for writing both require some level of online presence.

I have also started to take some of the steps detailed in this article by ACLU on improving our online safety, especially for sensitive information that we rather keep private or limited. Click here to read the article.

3) How social media reinforces immediate gratification and impatience at the appreciating the present moment and at the expense of critical thinking skills.

I find it interesting how blogs used to be popular and the advent of each new social media platform brought shorter forms of content and thus shorter attention spans. I am finding that this has people become increasingly intolerant about nuance, less capable of empathy towards someone different from them, and less patient with slow activities and skills and knowledge that require time to master.

This is why I prefer being in platforms like Substack that are focused on long-form content which encourages me to slow down, even as I acknowledge its shortcomings. I have been limiting scrolling through its “Notes” feed which has a Twitter-like feel that I don’t like and only opening Substack on my desktop once in a while so that I am not as tempted to scroll on my phone.

4) How numbing and time consuming it would be for me to scroll through feeds.

While I would sometimes learn new things or get a good laugh at a funny cat video, it often would not add as much value as other things I could have done with my time, such as calling up a friend I have not talked to in a while or reading a book that I never opened in years.

I recommend reading this Substack article below called “I left Instagram” by where she mentions leaving social media to reclaim what and who she gives her attention to. She further recommends the Digital Wellness Institute for more on maintaining our wellbeing in digital spaces which you can access by clicking here.

The Deeper Call

I left Instagram

2 years ago · 759 likes · 208 comments · Ashley Neese

5) While social media has at times helped me stay aware about world events, it would also leave me unconstructively worrying about the state of the world.

While I do believe we should not turn away from the world’s atrocities, I think there is a difference between helplessly ruminating and raging over what is happening to the point of burnout versus channeling these feelings into action even if it is only in our one-to-one relationships and individual choices in what we consume. These may seem like tiny drops in a vast universe that requires systemic change for anything to shift, but they matter in these individual instances.

For instance, while I as an individual cannot stop deforestation, do I really need to buy a new physical copy of a book if I can find it in a local public library (highly recommend browsing World Cat for this) or borrow it from a friend or get a digital copy or audiobook version of it?

Or, as another example, I may not be able to individually stop a genocide but can I check up on friends and colleagues who are impacted by what is happening? Can I offer to support them on chores/tasks to help make their day to day a little bit more bearable while they navigate this collective trauma? Can I boycott or limit buying from companies that are complicit if alternatives that are affordable to me exist?

We may assume these mean nothing, but as a psychotherapist who has worked a lot with trauma, including war trauma, I can tell you that one of the most painful things my clients have experienced that worsened their trauma responses is when they see people around them pretend everything is normal after they have experienced grave injustice at a huge scale.

An article titled “The Outrage Economy” by mentions about how our collective rage and helplessness on social media drive…

“…clicks, views, and purchases. It’s especially valuable to media owners, executives, and influencers who know that your fury is a priceless commodity for their networks and publications and more. Smaller creators, social media users, and advertisers have also caught on: outrage reliably fuels virality. That’s why your anger isn’t just being mined, it’s being manufactured.”

Click below to read the full article:

New Means

The Outrage Economy

The number of rage-baiters, of people trying to provoke your anger deliberately, even if it’s at them, has skyrocketed. Online, offline, just about everywhere there are people who have had the slightly counterintuitive realization that anger can sell. Twitter might be the worst offender, the clearest example. Over there you get a pairing of racist and h…

2 years ago · 208 likes · 20 comments · Joshua P. Hill

6) The ways people compare themselves to each other.

I notice in this comparison, people assume that everyone else has it good when they may be only posting the positive aspects of their lives, especially if they are using it to document memories rather than to share private vulnerable aspects of their lives which they may be reserving to one-to-one conversations.

While as social beings we may not necessarily always be able to let go of all comparison whether online or offline, it is worth asking ourselves:

A) who are we comparing ourselves to?

B) how much do we truly know this person at a deep level?

C) what metrics are we using for what makes life worth living to make this comparison?

D) is the comparison helping us become better people or keeping us stuck in shame/self doubt?

It may also be worth thinking about how you are impacting the person you are comparing yourself to when you place them on a pedestal. In my case, I noticed that people assumed I always had it all together because of my posts so whenever I would open up to someone about something I am struggling with, it would often get minimized which would later discourage me from doing so.

7) While I initially found social media to be helpful in easily sharing photos with friends, I later found that it would have me focus on documenting my experiences rather than “experiencing” my present experiences.

mentions this point in her article “Intentionally Disconnecting” which you can read by clicking here.

I have some questions for readers before I continue, feel free to reply to me privately by replying to this email or clicking the button below to comment publicly…

How would you describe your current social media usage? What aspects of it do you find helpful versus unsustainable to you?
In what ways has social media helped you feel more connected versus disconnected from others?
In what ways has social media helped ease your transition to a new neighborhood, city/town, or country?
In what ways has social media helped you stay aware about current events versus kept you stuck in echo chambers? What steps do you take if you notice that the latter is happening?

Actions I took in response to the above:

Aside from getting the domain names and following some of the steps in the ACLU article, I recently deleted my professional Instagram and LinkedIn accounts and am in the process of deleting my Facebook once I backup my photos and data. I had deleted my Twitter ages ago as I was barely using it.

I was thinking about deleting my social media accounts many times throughout the years and more so in recent months. I will likely create an anonymous version of a Facebook account using an email alias so that I can use it for events and groups only which can be useful for me to find in-person opportunities for social connection. I will take a similar approach with other apps I need to use if they ask for personal information and I won’t give my real birthday, only the year so I can confirm that I am 18+.

I noticed that the moment I announced deleting my Instagram and Facebook accounts, I had more people reach out to me for one-to-one connections in a way that never happened in 5 to 20 years of being on a given social media platform. I also personally reached out to those I wanted to stay in touch with and most were happy to do so. This reinforced my decision and had me notice all the interesting people whose presence I was missing because of the algorithms.

I have never gained anything from LinkedIn despite having been told about its necessity for finding jobs. Most of the jobs I have secured have been via networking in conferences, via university resources when I was a student, and through people I volunteered with rather than via social media. While the COVID shutdowns initially had me get lots of opportunities for community work via Instagram, this later dwindled after the shutdowns were over.

This article called Your Social Media Followers Miss Almost Everything You Post by is one of the many on Substack that inspired me to take these steps. It helped me see how often we are tricked into believing that we need social media in order to have meaningful engagement with our audience. I especially loved these quotes from the article below:

SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB

Your social media followers miss almost everything you post

In a recent newsletter titled “Backstage” (which went out to 10,000+ email subscribers) Tegan from Tegan and Sara wrote about putting out a live album. Maybe release it on vinyl, CD, and cassette, “with a booklet with photos from the tour.” Then goes on to say…

2 years ago · 242 likes · 77 comments · Seth Werkheiser

“The Tegan and Sara Instagram has 470,000 followers, and the last nine posts got an average of 3,444 likes, meaning 0.7% of their fans liked any one of those images.
Two of those posts have over 100 comments. That’s 0.213% of their fans that left a comment, and that’s on a good day.
Mind you, Tegan and Sara are a Grammy-nominated indie pop duo who’ve been making music for over 25 years.
I’m not saying don’t be on social media (well, maybe I am); just lower your expectations of actually ever reaching 10% of your followers”

I once ran into a Substack Note I cannot find now where the poster mentioned how getting 20 people to sign up for an event at a small bookshop would have been seen as a success back in the day compared to how getting 20 likes or follows in social media is seen as a failure in engagement.

This had me think of how social media significantly shifted our metrics for success and has us downplay whatever few meaningful relationships we are building with our community. The very process of writing on Substack had me appreciate the one-to-one emails and video calls I would have with readers even though these are not being reflected in my number of likes and comments publicly. This had me reflect on how I would rather focus on quality of relationships I am building, even if with one person, over quantity.

Speaking of calls with readers…

If you would like to have a one-to-one call with me whether to say hello or to talk about any of my writings or to explore possible collaborations, feel free to reply to this email or leave me a private message on Substack.

I highly recommend another article by titled “Social Media Loses Power When We Build Community in Other Places.” While addressed to those in the creative industry, the message is still relevant for those of us who take whatever little social capital we do have access to for granted.

SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB

Social media loses power when we build community in other places

Social media rotted our brains on the instant gratification racket. “I accept defeat,” I repeat after HINDZ from a recent video, “I accept that billion-dollar corporations have invested millions and millions of millions into the psychology and understanding how to keep me on these devices on their platforms, and it works…

2 years ago · 103 likes · 51 comments

I admit that I have times when even one-to-one messages with friends are draining. This was more so the case when I moved countries and found that it was easier to prioritize my energy towards what is in front of me. I am still working on this but I am appreciating that with my closest friends we can trust that no matter the time apart it will still feel like we just talked yesterday once we reconnect. I also find voice notes and video notes helpful if it is difficult to get a hold of someone via a spontaneous call.

As an introvert I often don’t prefer the latter but sometimes I find that it ends up being worthwhile with the right people…I have been thinking about ways to be more generous with my time, while still honoring my boundaries, given how many of us are lacking access to meaningful relationships which are essential to living a meaningful life.

The next biweekly newsletter will discuss The Wildflower Alliance with a specific focus on its peer respite program called Afiya.

Before I wrap up…

What if you had unlimited resources? What sort of home would you built for yourself?

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Overcoming Challenges in Reaching Out

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:18:14 GMT

Photo by Billy Pasco on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

Firstly, I wanted to wish those who celebrate an early Eid Mubarak!

Today’s post will focus on what helps people reach out for support from others when they are feeling their lowest. In my post about storytelling as soul work (that you can read by clicking here), I mentioned that I was collaborating with insightful.ae to collect short anonymous stories about reaching out when one feels their worst to get insights based on lived experiences.

I will be sharing people’s stories below and reflecting on what I took away from them. I will invite you to share your responses to them too. I will later add some additional insights I have gained based on my experience as a counseling psychologist and person who has supported loved ones.

Before starting, I have a question for readers…

I would like to hear what has helped you reach out to others when you felt your lowest. What has often made it challenging and how did you respond to those challenges?

You may share privately by replying to this email or over a private Substack message. Or you may post a public comment by clicking on the button below.

Also some house keeping before I dive in…

Photo by Maegan Martin on Unsplash

Here are the short stories that we have received when we asked respondents about what has helped them reach out when they were feeling their lowest:

Story 1:

What has helped me reach out to people when I felt my lowest are many things but first thing that comes to my mind is what my dad told me in my first year of university, he said: “do not give in to sickness”, I view it as “do not give in to feeling at your lowest…”. Secondly, what has helped me reach out to people when I feel my lowest is fighting isolation so I don’t surrender to it like many of my loved ones did/do.

Story 2:

Just recently I have been feeling down…mainly talking to friends and family (finished my one month calls minutes in 2 days) to vent out to find solutions or just to feel better. I was also remembering someone who quickly “snaps out of it”, that takes practice. I also told a friend what's the point of being positive and feeling grateful when all is not well in our world. The real challenge is to be grateful for everything in the toughest time and to have real positivity at these times not only when all is good.

Story 3:

To relieve the pressure and to consult on matters I couldn’t resolve after 2-3 weeks of trying by myself.

Story 4:

I am an introvert and I don’t reach out to anyone except my husband because he is my safe and secure place.

Story 5:

At my lowest points I have gone through intense pain and complete isolation but somehow I pulled myself out of it. Reason something deep inside me said you will bounce back, trust in the invisible and unshakable faith for life force given by almighty.

Before I share what stood out me, I would like to hear from readers…

What most caught your attention in the anonymous responses above? What did it have you think about or feel? What are you appreciating most about the stories?
Where do the responses take you in your own memories?
What values do you see the respondents standing up for in the way they dealt with the difficulty reaching out? Values are things we care about in life.

Here are my responses to the above questions I posed to readers:

1) What most caught your attention in the anonymous responses? What did it have you think about or feel? What are you appreciating most about the stories?

I noticed how two of the respondents found it helpful to think of memories of people they know of or care about that helped them reach out even in their lowest.

Story 1 was reminded of their father’s advice and how they saw loved ones give in to isolation which is not an outcome the respondent wants for themselves. Story 2 thought of someone they know of who modeled a response that they themselves found helpful in that moment (practicing “snapping out of it” which I know may not resonate for everyone at all times but I want to acknowledge it was an important resource for this respondent at this time).

This had me think that even if one is physically isolated, it can help to stay connected with the memories of people that we draw strength from to navigate life’s challenges, even if that life challenge involves difficulty reaching out to people. Even when the memory is not a positive one, it could still provide clues as to what outcomes the person does not want in their own life and therefore to prioritize the actions that will align with the alternative outcome they prefer instead (in this case reaching out to not give in to isolation as they have seen happen with loved ones).

I was also drawn to how Story 5 mentioned that spirituality motivated them to reach out in their lowest. They centered the importance of their relationship with spirit—whether that spirit is “something deep inside” or an “unshakable faith” or a “life force given by almighty.”

What this had me think of is that quite often there are people who may not be able to access a positive memory, especially when feeling their worst. So thinking about present-day non-human relationships, whether that is with spirit or with nature, as I talked about in one of my previous posts here, or with pets, as I have seen with some of my psychotherapy clients, could be a helpful resource that could potentially open the possibility of reaching out to others. Sometimes we need to anchor ourselves in a non-human connection before we can feel emotionally ready to connect with a fellow human.

I had not quite put this into words until writing this response to the stories above so I appreciate this gift the stories gave me! Writing this down gives me something concrete I could consider turning to in times when I myself may have difficulty with reaching out.

2) Where do the responses take you in your own memories?

Story 3 reminded me of conversations I had with some of my psychotherapy clients. One of them who experiences severe bouts of feeling low mentioned that it was helpful to tell themselves that they can either choose between how they are feeling right now or the challenge involved in reaching out which is not something they are used to practicing. They decided that the latter, as uncomfortable as it was, was far more worth the risk than staying where they are even if they don’t get the outcome they had hoped for (it turned out to have exceeded their expectations).

3) What values do you see the respondents standing up for?

Connection with loved ones, connection with spirit, practicing “snapping out” when needed, not giving in to the lowest feeling or to isolation itself.

Before I continue, I am curious to hear how you experienced my responses to these stories…

Photo by prottoy hassan on Unsplash

My Reflections on Challenges with Reaching Out:

These short anonymous stories are likely snapshots into the respondents’ experiences. I am aware that there can be lots of factors that impede people’s ability to reach out when they feel their lowest and that they may need other tools beyond what the stories offered.

Examples of barriers to reaching out are:

Uncertainty about trust or judgement. This can be more so the case when we have experienced often being let down others.
Feeling unsure about what sorts of supports one needs to ask for, which can especially be the case if we have not practiced initiating asking for support for a long time if ever. Some may not know that they can even directly ask for a particular kind of support so they may feel resentment if the other person is trying to support them in ways that don’t resonate at the moment. An example of this can be when someone is seeking to only be heard and reassured whereas the other person is offering advice that was not asked for.
Uncertainty about how the other person will react to their request for support even if they do trust them and love them in general
Difficulty accepting “no” as an answer or difficulty hearing any form of boundary-setting on what kind of support the other person can offer if any. Some may perceive “no” or boundaries as rejection. On the other hand, many people are not skilled at how to say no or how to set boundaries in ways that are relational but without sugar coating either.
Feeling too fatigued to reach out due to mental or physical health concerns, running out of social batteries especially if we lean towards introversion or neurodiversity, or overall burnout
Shyness or anxiety about engaging in any social situation
Societal or familial stigma. There are some cultures that stigmatize talking about any emotion or only allow happiness and, in some cases, anger to be expressed. Stigma can limit the words we have available to us to express ourselves and can also limit our ability to fully acknowledge what we are experiencing to ourselves let alone admit that we need to reach out. In the Gulf where I am, I have often seen the taboo against talking about private things to non-family members or to even extended family members. While I respect where this might be coming from, I also acknowledge it can limit options for those who do not have access to emotionally supportive family members.
Accessibility issues. Some people need in-person support and do not experience the same effects over the phone or online whereas for others it makes no difference. Also not everyone in the world lives in a place where they have consistent access to quality phone or online connection or access to reliable sources of transportation or safe neighborhoods.
Coming from a marginalized background while lacking close connections with people who can relate to it.
Working long hours that can limit time and energy to reach out or struggling to prioritize time to do so even when time is there.
Having the following ideas about what it means to reach out which I mentioned in a past post here:

A) “I don’t want to come off as needy/weak.”

B) “I don’t want to be a burden.”

C) “I am not deserving of receiving help.”

D) “I should be able to figure it all out on my own.”

E) “I was always the person helping others and never the person being helped.”

A question for readers before I proceed…

Are there other examples of what can make reaching out difficult that you would like to add to this list?

On the one hand, for those of us who do not experience major accessibility issues, there are things we can individually do to reach out. While some level of alone time can be helpful to get space and thus clarity on a problem, isolating for long can worsen an already low mood though in itself is an impact of worsened mood.

On the other hand, we all need to take collective responsibility to check in with our friends and loved ones time to time. Relationships are a two-way dance and are part of what makes a meaningful life. They are not only about receiving but also about giving when we are able to.

Reaching out to others requires practice and to lean into the initial discomfort it can bring up. Often the ideas we learned about what it means to reach out can have us resist so hard. It is because we have practiced applying these ideas for so long that it will take time to practice a new set of ideas that can help you reach out when you need to. We may never get to a place of 0 discomfort when reaching out but with practice the process can be worthwhile in the long-term.

One does not have to always share everything at once if they are not feeling ready to do so with a particular person in a given time. We can slowly start building our motivation from “small asks” before proceeding to “bigger asks” over time with those we have established trust with. A “small ask” is a request that is not as challenging for us to make whereas a “bigger ask” is more challenging. What is “small” or “big” can be different for each person at different times and with different relationships.

While requesting support, we will need to practice being open to the possibility that the other person may say no and we will need to respect their boundaries and capacity.

Regarding difficulty trusting, here is a quote below that stood out to me from a hybrid conference I had attended this week by Johns Hopkins University and The Coalition to End Loneliness & Social Isolation. I wish I can recall who said it:

“People assume that we need to trust to be vulnerable but it is the opposite: we need to be vulnerable for trust to emerge."

This reminded me of an advice a past mentor gave me: there is no way we can know if we can trust someone without taking some level of risk as painful as it can be. Slowly progressing from “small asks” to “big asks” can be helpful here to assess a person’s trustworthiness to you.

They are many types of support as listed below:

At different times and with different relationships, you may experience requesting some of these as a “big ask” or a “small ask” or a mix. As you look through this list, consider how would you rank from 0 to 10 how easy or challenging it would be for you to ask for each one if and when you ever needed it (0 being effortless and 10 being most challenging). Also consider which of these types of support do you tend to prefer receiving and which of these do you have a tendency of giving to others:

Emotional support: validation, compassion, being listened to, and a sense of not feeling alone. Emotional support does not always have to involve words, sometimes the presence of someone who genuinely cares an be powerful in itself even if you are not directly talking about what is bothering you.
Practical/Instrumental support: support with actionable and logistical things like grocery shopping and scheduling appointments. Another example I have seen especially with ADHD communities is the notion of “body doubling.” It involves having people co-work in silence together so that they get motivated by each other’s presence to get their tasks done. This can be done in-person or virtually and you do not have to be diagnosed with ADHD to benefit from it. Sometimes when we are feeling so low, whether due to depression, burnout, grief, or general life stress, we may struggle to get things done so body doubling could potentially benefit without needing to tell the person what you are emotionally struggling with. An example of a body doubling request is: “I will be studying at this time at the cafe, do you want to join me while you work on your essay?” Click here for an article that explains body doubling in more detail.
Esteem/Appraisal support: support that reminds you of your strengths and assets and a sense that others believe in you.
Informational support: this is the type of support many people rush to but can be helpful in certain contexts. This includes offering information or advice or directing the person to resources like websites and books where they can gain more information.

Check out this article linked here for more information about types of social support. Be sure to have a look at the academic papers it cites. While it is focused on depression, the tips can apply to others needing support.

An invitation for readers before I proceed…

Feel free to share your reflections on the above privately over email or publicly on Substack by clicking on the button below:

Where to Find Social Support

The above types of support don’t have to be limited to friends or family but can also include peer groups and online messaging boards.

In the UAE where I am based, I would recommend checking out MentalHealth.ae (by clicking here) that sometimes hosts in-person meetups. 7Cups.com offers free 24/7 online peer support. Intentional Peer Support also offers online peer support but from a non-medicalized model of mental health (in-person ones are only available in particular countries). They call these gatherings “Co-Reflection” (as process is more about “learning together” rather than “helping”) which you can learn more about by clicking here .

Also check out Meetup.com which is available in many cities around the world including Dubai and has a list of groups that host events based on different interests where you can meet people.

Please note that while these can be supportive, they may not always 100% replace the need for individual psychotherapy for everyone. If after trying all the above and not finding the support you need, consider the possibility of seeing a therapist that is accessible to you. For Dubai-based resources on this, check out Hoopfull by clicking here or regional online apps that offer online therapy such as Takalam, Ayadi , or Labayh . While 7Cups.com is UK-based, they also offer online psychotherapy.

What if I am “too introverted” to reach out?

Even those of us who lean towards introversion, like myself, can benefit from reaching out for and offering support to others. Contrary to popular belief, introversion is not about shyness or being antisocial.

Like all people, we can benefit from social interaction but we flourish more in small or one to one social interactions on conversations we experience as meaningful. We can appreciate shared silences and time to recharge on our own and can enjoy our own company provided we chose this rather than it being imposed on us by circumstance. We may experience certain types or quantities of social interaction as draining. However, we may not always correctly predict how draining a potential social interaction will be which may have us limit ourselves from reaching out when we need social support.

I have found that knowing the sorts of interactions, times, and environments that are more draining versus less draining for me, knowing when it may be worthwhile for me to step outside of my comfort zone, and learning what I can do to recharge after having had a draining interaction have all been helpful for me though I may not always be skilled at approximating this all the time.

One can learn this by writing down the following as soon as you can after a social interaction:

how did you feel physically and emotionally during and after different types of conversations you had?
How much room was there for silence or even small gaps between speaking?
Write down the times of day, environments (online, in-person, groups (big or small), noise levels, weather, etc)
Write down what was your own mental/physical state before the social event
Write down if you have had enough sleep, food, rest, space for fun or relaxation before the social event
notice if you find any patterns after days or weeks of writing down the above. Consider what kinds of self care, boundaries, or supports you would need based on this information you have gathered. Also notice when a social interaction was joyful. Write down what made it different.

An invitation for readers who lean towards introversion before I proceed…

Feel free to share your reflections on the above privately over email or publicly on Substack by clicking on the button below:

Click here for a Johns Hopkins University study on introversion and social interaction. While it seems to mix introversion with social anxiety and shyness, they can co-occur in some people. But the study does reveal other factors that can combine with introversion itself that can have people experience more draining social interactions than others.

Ways to Offer Social Support

Click here to check out the Instagram page of counselor, Oumu Sylla, on tools to give and receive support and on how to assess our capacity and relationally set boundaries in a given time,

I recommend before assuming what kind of support someone needs in a given time, to first make sure that they feel you understood them. It is not enough to assume that you did, you will need to check with them if they felt this way and be open to them correcting you. Here is where a skill like active listening can help which you can learn more about by clicking here.

Once the person felt that you fully understood them, let them know what you can offer them and allow them the choice to accept or reject the offer. I don’t recommend only saying “I am here if you need me” and stopping there. At times a person is too overwhelmed to think about what they need so it helps to give them specific options or at least one specific option based on what you genuinely are able to provide. Do not make a promise you cannot keep.

For example: “I can help with getting the groceries on my way today, would that be ok with you?” Or “I can call you at this time if you need to talk more. Do you want to hear advice from me or do you just want to be heard? If you don’t want to talk about it, we can just watch a movie at your place instead.” Or “Would it be ok if I sent you a book that really helped me with a similar problem?”

Allow people to tell you that none of your attempts are helping without taking it personally. Allow people to not know what they want. If this happens, offer one thing you can do for them directly and be open to the possibility that they later say no even after initially agreeing to it. Allow room for silence without forcefully filling it and be with them in the silence unless they prefer to have space. Even when they ask for space, ask if you can check in with them after a couple of days.

A final question for readers…

What other advice would you offer on how to support others?

The next biweekly newsletter will focus on my social media cleanse and how I have been finding ways to make my digital interactions feel more meaningful.

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could have anyone become your mentor or coach? Who would you choose?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Shifting the Frequency of My Posts

Reema Baniabbasi — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:18:44 GMT

Photo by john vargues on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

While I have been enjoying the weekly pace of working on my newsletters, I am finding it difficult to make time to engage with your offerings and with the other wonderful newsletters I am following on top of the rest of my life. After seeing that I didn’t have enough bandwidth to meaningfully focus on the next post I had scheduled for tomorrow, I thought I use this opportunity to revisit the frequency with which I post.

I have thus decided to experiment with posting every two weeks and to use the week in which I am not posting to meaningfully read and engage with the newsletters I follow.

What I have so far been appreciating about Substack is the quality of conversations I have with people unlike in other social media platforms I have been on. Even when I don’t always get public engagement, I appreciate the private one-to-one emails and texts I get from readers and the conversations I have with other writers when I comment on their posts. I want to better value these interactions through making sure I have a week for posting and a week for engagement.

I also want to announce that I will be taking a break from posting between July 29 to August 29.

I will use this break to do some reading that I can use for future posts and to also meaningfully engage with others whose work I appreciate, whether its your work or others I follow. I will further use this time to reflect back and assess whether I want to stick to a post every 2 weeks or consider monthly post instead or go back to weekly.

In the meantime, I would appreciate hearing from you.

I would like to know how you have so far been experiencing my writings, your thoughts on the frequency of posts, what you would like to see more or less of, or just in general how is life treating you. You may reach me either privately by replying to his email or on Substack direct messages or publicly via clicking on the button below.

Stay tuned for my next post which will be shifted to June 13th! In the meantime, you can catch up with any posts you may have missed by clicking here for the archive.

Hayyakum,

Reema

Connecting with Dubai’s Urban Nature

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 30 May 2024 18:48:33 GMT

One of the collage art I have made this year in my journal using pressed/dried molokhiya leaves and basil flowers from my garden, rose petals from a bouquet that was gifted to me, a feather I had found in one of my walks, washi tape, burlap, and a cut out of a bird from a re-used gift wrap.

Dear City Person,

In today’s post, I will be sharing reflections inspired by a blog post written by one of my readers, Beth Adoette. I will be focusing on how it had me think about the benefits of connecting with nature in general and with nature in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), where I am currently based, in particular. Before I dig in, I want to first introduce you to Beth.

Beth is an artist who creates beautifully arranged circles from plant parts and seashells as shown below. She also writes about her nature-inspired contemplations on her blog that you can subscribe to by clicking here.

I have been following Beth since my decade in the US via Facebook and later through subscribing to her blog. To this day, looking at her nature-inspired art puts me in a meditative space, even if for a split second while scrolling through my feed. Her art partly inspired me to create collage art out of the freshly fallen leaves, flowers, and feathers I would find in my walks or garden especially when I moved back to Dubai, UAE like the one you can see in the photo above.

Despite my history of receiving Beth’s creations, I had never put in the effort to connect with her until I saw one of her recent blog posts titled, “Meditation: Grounding or Flying?”, that moved me to write to her and to feature it in my newsletter today. Click here to read Beth’s blog post that I will be referencing today.

A question for readers before I continue…

What stood out to you in Beth’s blog post?

…and some house keeping before I dive in…

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A nature mandala created by artist, Beth Adoette. Image source: Beth Adoette’s website.

When most people think of Dubai, the first images that tend to come to their minds are those of skyscrapers, artificial islands, and shopping malls. Many who live here often lament at the limited options for green spaces. You may thus think that it is an oxymoron to mention “Dubai” and “nature” together in my post’s title. I don’t blame you because I have noticed that regardless of which city in the world one is based in, “nature” is often talked about as though it is something “outside” the city that we can “escape” to rather than “connect” with from within the city.

I have noticed when hiking in both the UAE and Northeast US, people would often rush to finish the hikes and have seemingly little to no interest in the local flora and fauna because quite often the focus is on escaping and competing rather than being present. Most people are not even present to whatever nature is already outside their windows within their own cities let alone “out there” in a hike.

Every city I have ever visited or lived in has weeds growing through the pavement cracks or in unpaved areas, uncultivated trees, birds and birdsongs, bugs, sky, clouds, sun, breeze, wind, dust, shadow, and rain (even if very little of it). Some cities have access to the sea or other natural bodies of water even if the surrounding area is artificially built. Some have hills, snow, hail, storms, fog, mists, and humidity. Are these all not “nature?”

You might be surprised to learn that I have documented 91 species of plants and bugs using iNaturalist app with most of them being uncultivated weeds within walking distance to me in Dubai. Some I have found in my hikes in Fujariah and Ras Al Khaima in the UAE but they do not dominate my list.

If you ever visit Dubai, you may notice especially in residential areas there are small empty sandy patches that tend to have plants growing out of them. Also like any city, you may find random weeds growing in between cracks of pavement. An untrained or uncurious eye may think that all these plants look alike (click here to read this BBC article on “plant blindness” which is a universal phenomena). But walk closer and focus on the details of each one and you will see how distinct they each are. Taking photos of these plants and documenting them in iNaturalist to support conservation research has been one of the things that have helped me with my reverse culture shock when I moved back to the UAE after a decade away.

Click here to learn more about iNaturalist. I would also recommend Merlin Bird ID by Cornell University which identifies birds around the world by sound. Bird watching from my window and walks and listening to how their sounds change by season and in different contexts has also helped me adjust back here. Click here to learn more about Merlin Bird ID.

A “sound walk” art exhibit created by Nasser Al Sughaiyer, who is another reader I have previously featured in my newsletter, further expands our understanding of urban nature by including built environment, cultivated plants, and our own bodies as part of nature rather than being separate from it. Click here to read my reflections on Nasser’s “sound walk” in Art Jameel, Dubai.

Two questions for readers before I continue…

What do you imagine would become possible if more of us acknowledged how we are connected to nature even when living in a city rather than separate from it?
Have you ever used apps or physical field guides to identify plants and animals in your area? If yes, how did you start and what has your experience been like?

You may be wondering why am I making a big deal about connecting with nature. I recommend this article in Greater Good Magazine by Berkley University which you can read by clicking here. The article mentions how 100s of studies found that being in or near nature or even watching nature photos and videos are good for our emotional and physical wellbeing regardless of our ethnic or socioeconomic background.

What most got my attention from this article is how it says that there are studies that also demonstrate the benefits of connecting with nature for our social wellbeing and for inculcating kindness. The article says that it may be because being in nature has us relax enough to open up to experiences and people around us. But I would add that connecting with other living beings, whether they be plants or animals, has us care more about them. You cannot care for what you are disconnected from or for what you have no curiosity about so it makes sense that spending more time connecting with nature can improve our kindness.

One of my critiques of articles like this is that they dominantly focus on green spaces which to me reflects a Western cultural bias (though a few do explore “blue spaces” too as mentioned in this article from The Guardian that you can click here to read which is good news for those of us living closer to the beach in Dubai). At least from anecdotal evidence, I can vouch for how much being in the quiet expanse of sand dunes and feeling the softness of the sand under my bare feet is quite relaxing to me.

I further wonder if people who have a fear of bugs or experience bad allergic reactions to pollen will experience similar benefits that the studies cited found. But in the case of fear of bugs, a gradual exposure to the trigger of the fear is part of a common psychotherapy intervention called systemic desensitization…so while not “relaxing” at first, it could be potentially therapeutic when done well.

I also find that many of such articles don’t mention how certain countries experience inequalities in access to safe spaces where people can connect with nature whether within or outside cities. Having said that, studies on the link between access to nature and health have had more groups advocate for equitable access which The Guardian article mentions.

Two questions for readers before I continue…

What do you appreciate about the Greater Good Magazine and Guardian articles?
What other shortcomings do you notice in either of the articles or in similar mainstream discussions about the benefits of connecting with nature especially in urban contexts?

Here is what most stood out to me in Beth’s blog post, “Meditation: Grounding or Flying?”:

I had mentioned in my first post (that you can read by clicking here) how one’s connection with a place (aka “place attachment”) is often tied with one’s connection with nature and the people who live there. Beth expands on this further by mentioning how connecting with our animal and plant kin creates “touchstone memories” that one can revisit to either “ground” themselves in the moment or to “fly” in wonder. This quote from her post explains the importance of touchstone memories:

“I think it is important to have touchstone memories to visit. As we return to them again and again, we learn to settle in more easily, appreciate more deeply, and grasp the comforting feeling of going home.” —Beth Adoette

I assume that Beth is using the word “home” in the most expansive meaning of the word, rather than referring to a literal physical place or country. Some of us, especially those of us who grew up as third culture kids, may not necessarily connect with one place as “home” but may have relationships or certain values that give us a sense of “home” even if we don’t necessarily call it such. I would say that these relationships don’t have to be with people, but can include plants and animals.

Quite often, we may get lost in life’s day to day grind, more so when we live in a fast-paced city like Dubai, that we may lose touch with these relationships. This is why reconnecting with memories of these relationships can help re-orient us back to what matters to us which can help us navigate what life throws at us.

These lovely passages by Beth illustrate what having a touchstone memory built from a relationship with nature can look like:

“To ground and recenter, I often think about my favorite oak tree that lives near the ocean. She and I have a long, long history of heart to heart moments where we have talked, without words, and acknowledged our struggles. I learn from my quiet sister who grounds down deep near the water edge. She is not tall, but reaches out wide. Still holding many dead branches, I see she perseveres as new leaves continue to show up every year. Unashamedly she shows her vulnerability, but continues to reach out wide and dig down deep.
Here is what I do . . . I close my eyes. I visualize standing beside her. I begin to breathe slowly and deeply as if I am breathing with her. With each breath, I imagine rooting down deeper and reaching out wider.
Other times, it seems less about how my mind is responding and more about my body. I am not entranced by that crazy spin art machine any longer. I am feeling more like the paint. This kind of feeling is usually short lived, but more intense. It is then that I allow my memory to take me to a particular field from my childhood. There, the goldfinches continue to fly above the field with a their slow, predictable, undulating flight pattern. There is such a beauty in this rhythmic pattern and their in-flight song repeats with the pattern as they fly!
Here is what I do . . . I close my eyes. I visualize myself as a kid watching my brother and sister goldfinches in flight. I remember their rhythmic song. I begin to breathe slowly and deeply with the rhythm of their flight.”
—Beth Adoette

When I read these words, I could feel each image in my body…the rootedness of the oak tree in the gravity pulling my feet, and the flight of the goldfinches skipping in my chest and breath.

I was taken to a memory of a date tree that used to stand next door to me in Dubai before it was cut down. I remember how everyday, I would look at the date tree, see how its fronds expand up, middle, and down….

…I would close my eyes and visualize the tree in my mind’s eye…

I would imagine the expansive motion of the fronds and notice my chest and shoulders expand with it….

I would imagine what that tree’s growth looked like from seed, seedling, to tree and feel my whole body smile…

While I felt sad when that tree got cut down, I am glad to have built a touchstone memory with it, reminding me about the wonder of the more than human kin out there no matter where I set my roots…reminding me that I am never truly “alone.”

A final question for readers:

What touchstone memories did reading this post take you to?
Leave a comment

For next week’s newsletter, I will be reflecting on ways people can reach out to their supportive relationships when they are feeling their lowest. I will highlight insights from a collection of anonymous stories insightful.ae has gathered as well as those based on research studies.

If you would like to contribute what had previously helped you reach out to people when you felt your lowest, please reply to this email or share in Substack comments below!

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could choose one manager to work for, anywhere around the globe? Who would you work for, and what would your job be?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Take Part in WHO’s Social Connection Film Series

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 23 May 2024 17:00:28 GMT

Photo by Kumiko SHIMIZU on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

In this free weekly newsletter, I have one post per month feature the work of an organization that addresses issues related to belonging and opportunities for readers to get involved. I was initially planning on writing about a few peer respite programs as I had mentioned to you toward the end of my post last week. But last night I saw an announcement of an opportunity to get involved in a project lead by the World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Connection. This opportunity will close by May 31, 2024 so I did not want you to miss out on it in case you are interested in taking part.

I will postpone my post about peer respite programs for next month’s featured belonging organization.

Some housekeeping before I share more…

About the Commission

The WHO Commission for Social Connection was launched this year in 2024 to prioritize loneliness and social isolation as global public health concerns. I encourage you to browse their website by clicking here to learn more about why they see these issues as priorities and to also check out my earlier posts in my newsletter if you have not already. I further recommend subscribing to the Commission to stay up to date on their initiatives and events.

The Commission is in the process of analyzing data they have gathered on systemic and individual solutions to tackle loneliness and social isolation. They hope that this analysis will help them create a proposal about ways leaders and community members can improve community social connection.

Among the many types of data being included in WHO’s analysis are people’s lived experiences with loneliness and social isolation which are being documented through a film series they have launched called the Social Connection Series. You can learn more about the film series and watch the current uploaded videos by clicking here and scrolling down to the heading “The Social Connection Series: lived experiences of people around the world through film.”

A question for readers before I continue, feel free to reply privately over email or leave a public comment on Substack…

What most caught your attention in watching one or more of the Social Connection Series videos? How come those parts caught your attention the most?

Image Source: GettyImages

Opportunity to Get Involved

The Commission is still open to having more people submit their stories for consideration to be included in their film series. While everyone’s story will be considered, they will be prioritizing the stories of those who have marginalized experiences and identities such as migrants and people experiencing disabilities among others. The deadline to submit your story for potential consideration for the film series is on May 31, 2024. Click here for details on how you can submit your story. Even if your story gets declined, you may still possibly be invited to take part in a panel about social connection as detailed in the submission link I have shared.

I highly encourage you or anyone you know to participate and not to downplay the value your story can have. I have noticed that people who are not involved in the social sciences are unaware about storytelling as a valid form of research. They tend to take quantitative data (i.e. data that involves numbers) more seriously and dismiss qualitative data that include people’s subjective experiences and perspectives. They may see storytelling as “wishy-washy” and “not objective” or “serious.”

But both quantitative and qualitative data are important. They can provide valuable insights for researchers from different perspectives which can help them come up with solutions that are better tailored to people’s day to day lives. Sometimes collecting stories can help researchers come up with future research questions, and thus the potential for developing more solutions, that they may have not previously considered. Your story may thus offer an important insight especially when considered alongside other people’s stories and other types of quantitative and qualitative data that they have so far collected.

My post last week, which you can read by clicking here, featured a monthly belonging practice called collective documents as done within the context of narrative therapy and narrative community work. It was thus a lovely coincidence to see WHO’s announcement in my email inbox this week as their film project is an example of a collective document even though it is being done outside the context of narrative therapy/community work.

In next week’s newsletter, I will be featuring a reader’s offering as I tend to do at the end of each month. For this particular one, I will be reflecting on a blog post about connecting with nature that I deeply resonated with by artist Beth Adoette who is one of my readers.

Before I wrap up…

What if you could spend a single day being completely invisible? How would you spend that day?

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Storytelling as Soul Work and Community Work

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 16 May 2024 19:00:12 GMT

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

Each month of this free weekly newsletter highlights my experiments with belonging through trying different ways of connecting with people, places, or nature. Today’s post will focus on collective documents which is a practice done within both therapeutic contexts in narrative therapy and also in community work outside of psychotherapy.

Before I define what are collective documents and share examples of them and their value, I will start with defining what is narrative therapy to provide context. Toward the end of this post, I will be inviting you to participate in two collective documents I am working on in collaboration with others and I encourage you to share the invitation with other people who may be interested in them.

Before I continue, I have some housekeeping to do…

I love this definition of narrative therapy provided by Tiffany Sostar, who is a narrative practitioner, as it captures the spirit behind the title of my post today:

“Our stories shape how we see ourselves and the world around us, and can connect us to our own actions and choices in responding to the problems in our lives.
Narrative therapy is all about our stories – the ones we tell ourselves, and the ones we’ve been told; the ones we tell about other people, and the ones they tell about us. It’s about understanding where those stories come from, who they serve, and deciding whether we still want to give those stories weight in our lives. And it’s about reauthoring our stories, and strengthening our connections to legacies and histories of responding to hardship with skill and resilience.
A narrative conversation, either in a group setting or individually, can help us tell our stories in ways that honour our skills, values, knowledges and actions. For many marginalized communities, these skills, values, insider knowledges, and actions have been devalued and dismissed.
You already are the protagonist and the narrator of your own story, the expert in your own experience – nobody can give you that power, and nobody can take it away. But sometimes we lose connection to our deep self-storying abilities, and narrative therapy can help us get back in touch with that knowledge.” —Tiffany Sostar

A question for readers before I continue…

What stands out to you in Tiffany Sostar’s quote?

I would add that narrative therapy does not define people by their qualities and problems they face, rather it sees people as being in relationship with them. In other words, people are not problems, rather people are people and problems are problems. For example, if I were to label myself as a confident person, what happens to my sense of self when I have times that I experience self doubt because I am an imperfect human being?

I have been finding it more meaningful to think about my relationship with a quality like confidence rather than wondering if I am a confident person or not. The former helps me understand the times, relationships, personal and societal ideas, and personal actions that make it possible for me to have a more intimate relationship with confidence and which of those things distance me from confidence. I have noticed the more I practiced this way of seeing, the less I tie my self esteem to transient things and the more I can take action when I notice I have gotten distant from the qualities I value. It thus frees me up from the limitations of defining my story through a label that may only reveal parts of my story, not the whole picture.

For another example on the relational nature between people and problems, let us suppose that a child is often labeled as a “difficult child.” What happens to how other people see that child and thus treat the child? What happens to how the child understands themselves if they too internalize this idea that they are a “difficult person?” How would that impact their beliefs, actions, and mental health in the present and future? Even if there are scenarios that show that this child is not always “difficult” the label may still make it difficult for the child or others to acknowledge those exceptions and sustain them so that they too become part of who the child is. They will thus brush the exceptions away to make the stories that support the idea that this child is a “difficult person” more dominant and defining. Therefore the events that reinforce the idea that the child is a “difficult child” become part of the “dominant story” whereas the events that reflect other facets of the child’s life are the “alternative stories.”

Think of how often this happens at a societal level with racism, sexism, ableism, among other -isms that define certain groups of people through limiting ideas which have exclusionary and even violent consequences at individual and political scales as we have seen historically and at present globally.

Narrative therapy tries to make those limiting dominant stories and the stories about the person/community’s values, responses, skills, preferences, or hopes transparent so that the person/community will have more choices as to how they want to relate to a given experience or problem. This then becomes the process of “re-authoring” and helping people find their own “preferred stories.”

Below is a well-known TED talk about the danger of attaching to a single story. While not specifically about narrative therapy, the ideas in the video are relevant for it. In narrative therapy, people are described as “multi-storied” rather than “single-storied.”

This TED talk illustrates more of what this means and how connecting with the multiplicity of our stories can help us connect with ourselves and with each other in a meaningful way. This can be therapeutic when we have taken on unhelpful single stories from our personal experiences or societies:

Before I continue, I have a question from readers:

After reading what I wrote so far and watching the TED talk, can you think about a time when you experienced the negative effects of a single story? How did it impact how you treat yourself and other people?

The idea that people are not their problems does not mean that people are not accountable to hurtful or abusive behavior. We are still responsible for what actions, values, and ideas we choose to align with in a given moment as they affect us and our relationships.

It is also not saying that people do not have inclinations. For example, some people more often than not have intimate relationships with confidence and there are likely different factors that contribute to that possibility.

The idea of being multi-storied does not mean that it is “wrong” to find a label that is meaningful for us. It is more about acknowledging that it is one way among others of making meaning of ourselves and we can notice what it does for us and where we can make choices here. It also helps us to step back and not assume that everyone will find a given label, or the very act of labeling itself, meaningful for them. It thus opens up room for curiosity which is essential to deep nonjudgmental listening when hearing other people’s experiences instead of listening to them through a filter of labels they did not choose.

It is worth differentiating between how we subjectively make meaning of our lives (how a story is told) versus facts (the events as we can describe them with any of our five senses without the meaning-making). This is not to say that subjective meaning making cannot have real effects on how we experience the fact of an event taking place. For example, it is a fact that people can get infected with viruses but the way we make meaning of the presence of infection and how we respond to it are subjective experiences that can have real effects on us.

If you want to learn more about narrative therapy, I recommend clicking here for a booklet that you can access via the Dulwich Centre which is well known within narrative therapy and narrative community work spaces or click here to see if there a copy you can borrow from a nearby library. Also check out the free and paid offerings by the Dulwich Centre that is open to everyone even if you are not a therapist by clicking here.

If you want to dive into the philosophical ideas that influenced narrative therapy, I recommend reading about social constructionism, deconstructionism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. Click here to access this article that offers names of philosophers you can start with and a summary of how their ideas influenced narrative therapy.

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

What are collective documents and where do they fit in narrative therapy?

While narrative therapy is often thought of as a type of psychotherapy approach, it has also been applied as a method of community work outside of therapy contexts. Collective documents are one among many examples of narrative community work.

A collective document is a communal method of documenting the alternative stories that often get missed by the dominant stories as mentioned earlier in this post. Examples of what gets documented can be:

the story of values people are trying to stay connected to
ways people responded to a problem
stories of relationships and activities that keep them going or that are in general meaningful to them
their hopes and how they are trying to stay connected with those hopes
times when a problem was not as dominant and what made those times possible.

Documentation can happen through someone writing all the above down during a guided live group conversation, writing down notes from one-to-one interviews, audio-recordings, having people exchange letters to one another which then get gathered into an archive, or an online forum/shared Google doc. Collective documents may either be kept private within a given group of people or it could be shared with the group’s consent to benefit other people who want to learn from those who have lived similar experiences.

There are creative ways of documenting which don’t have to be limited to typical speech such as collecting artwork, poetry, zines, or recording dance and music.

Examples of Collective Documents

Click here to see examples of collective documents and other kinds of narrative community work by the Dulwich Centre.

Check out Dear Diagnosis website by clicking here. This website was started by a narrative therapist who invites people to write anonymous letters to their diagnoses and to other life problems. This process helps people to focus on their relationship with a problem rather than having the problem be the only thing that defines everything about them.

Below are two examples of creative forms of collective documents that go beyond regular speech.

Nicole, a classmate from my narrative therapy certificate program, runs a private group in Washington, DC called Pen, Paper, Process. During the group conversation, Nicole writes down one-liners that reflect the things people are caring about and ways they respond to problems. These can easily get missed when one rushes through listening. At the end of each group meeting, Nicole reads each line to the group as though it is a poem. Group members shared how they felt surprised that they had said those things and felt moved by seeing how much more impactful and meaningful the words they said sounded than if they had only said them once and forgot about them. I unfortunately cannot share a specific example of what this looked like as I want to respect group members’ privacy.

Vani, a narrative therapist based in India, created a Spotify playlist where people contributed songs that helped them get through tough times. Vani has shared a link to this playlist for other people to benefit from it. You can follow Vani’s Instagram page and find the link to the Spotify playlist by searching for the handle @ therapyofmanystories .

The Value of Collective Documents

Since it is easy to miss out other facets to the “difficult child” story in the example I shared earlier because of how embedded that story became, documenting those other facets of the child’s life can help make them more visible in front of us. Doing this documentation with a community of other people witnessing this story can make this even more powerful as the act of telling a story to a community makes it come to life in a way that it doesn’t when it is stuck privately with us. As Maya Angelou says:

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”

Typically, the other people contributing to the collective document share their responses to a similar experience or are only reflecting on how a person’s story moved them. This benefits everyone involved as people not only share their stories but can also see how their stories can have value for someone else while at the same time learning from other people’s experiences.

The act of storytelling in this way helps people feel less alone in their experiences and connect to multiple facets of their own story rather than through a single story. So often, when people are told to share their experience with a problem, they will focus on how the problem is impacting them. While this can be helpful, sometimes people get stuck with what to do next after this or end up ruminating about the problem more.

While there are likely other groups outside of narrative therapy that do similar work, I wanted to focus my post on collective documents as presented within narrative therapy and narrative community work.

If you know of any such groups doing similar work, I would appreciate hearing from you through Substack comments or private email replies!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lU687fjpxwXqYDrVhAM2J9TmJd6yJmReBttvbJUlYMk/edit

I want to end this post by extending an invitation to you. I am currently working on two collective documents. Both are offered virtually as people are spread out. I personally prefer doing this live rather than virtually as it would allow me room to ask follow up questions to thicken the responses but sometimes this is not always possible. Anyway, here are the two projects I am inviting you to participate in:

Stories about Moving

This is a virtual collective document about what helps people deal with life transitions such as moving homes, schools, neighborhoods, cities, or countries or graduating from high school or university. I am working on this with a young person who sees me for therapy who wanted to learn from other people’s lived experiences with transitions.

The young person consented to having this shared so that we can gather more stories and other people can benefit. So far we have received two stories and the young person found it helpful to see that things can potentially turn out ok even if one may struggle with transitions. If you would like to contribute or if you know of young people in your life who may be interested in contributing even if only one line, then please share this link to the Google Doc with them:

Reaching out in our Lowest

I am collaborating with insightful.ae to gather stories about what helps people reach out for social support when they are feeling their lowest. We so far have five responses and would appreciate more. I will then write about what stood out to me in people’s shares and write about the topic of reaching out when we feel our lowest in a future newsletter post. If you are interested in contributing a story, feel free to either comment on Substack, send me a private message on Substack, or to reply to this email privately.

Next week’s newsletter will feature peer respite programs and some research on them.

Before I wrap up…

“What if your empathy allowed you to fully feel the pain of others? Whose pain and suffering would you like to feel?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Does Expertise Help or Hurt Community?

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 09 May 2024 19:07:38 GMT

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

After interviewing Alhanoof in last week’s newsletter about her work with insightful.ae that you can read by clicking here, I wanted to share my observations of how people interact with anyone positioned as a mental health expert like myself. Based on those observations, I will share thoughts about what negative and positive impacts might this have on connecting with ourselves and on building social support. I will conclude with ways to navigate the potentially negative impacts while strengthening the positive ones.

Since this is a topic I am ongoingly learning about, I would appreciate reading your observations, even if you are not working in the mental health field. Hopefully we can all learn from each other even if we don’t agree on everything as long as we do not impose our observation as the “capital T” truth that may not apply to everyone in all contexts.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

When is “Expertise” Harmful

Whenever I tell people that I work as a psychotherapist, I am often asked questions that assume that I will give them a simple answer that will cure whatever is afflicting them without me needing to understand their unique context. Examples of these that I have run into are “how do I stop worrying?” or “how can I let go of the past?”

One assumption that is behind such questions is the notion that there is such a thing as an “expert solution” to subjective human experiences. Purely relying on the idea that there are “expert solutions” to subjective experiences hampers our ability to develop our inner resources that suite our specific contexts. It could also come in the way of reaching out for community supports as we may come to believe that one person or idea out there possesses all that is useful to us.

When some people seek my psychotherapy services with the expectation of receiving “expert solutions” from me, I feel worried about them becoming exclusively dependent on me at the expense of their inner wisdom or community’s wisdom. I rather see my role being more about one or more of the following below depending on the person I am seeing:

empowering them to reconnect with their inner and outer resources, values, and meaningful relationships that can often get pushed aside in the daily grind
having a space where they can freely express themselves
helping them feel less alone in their experience through the quality of my presence. This presence may then become a possible model (among others they can choose from) for how they can have a relationship with themselves as I have written in a past post here.
exploring their preferred response to societal or personal narratives they have found helpful or unhelpful.
collaboratively customizing tools to suite their circumstances (if tools are what they are looking for which is not always the case)

As I hope this list shows, I am not against “solutions.” Rather I prefer to offer them as options among others that a person can consider experimenting with before customizing it to fit their circumstances. I also don’t assume that a person is always looking for solutions or that every problem will have a solution. Sometimes what we need is a way to live with life’s uncertainties or to simply feel fully heard and witnessed without judgement or without trying to be “fixed.”

I further find that solutions offered in self-help books and within mental health outreach assume that individual solutions are enough and that mental health or life coaching services are all that we need. Rarely do I see invitations to have people consider tools that can help them create mutually supportive relationships which are essential to our wellbeing. You can read two of my past posts for more on the importance of social support by clicking here and here.

Some mental health providers and laypeople assume that seeking unlicensed help will always harm and that licensed ones will always help. But I have heard stories of those who were helped and harmed by both licensed mental health providers and unlicensed people whether they be life coaches, spiritual healers, family members, or friends.

While there are different reasons that contributed to the harm, a common denominator is their assumption that they alone are the experts on the person’s subjective experiences and assumed what the person needed instead of collaborating with the person. The latter requires allowing room for curiosity and not assuming that one knows everything no matter their expertise.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

When is “Expertise” Useful

Don’t get me wrong: I am not dissing all kinds of “expertise.” A collaborative approach to helping someone is a learned skill, whether this is done within or outside the context of professional mental health services.

One thing I tell those who are seeking out my psychotherapy services for the first time is that while I have something to offer through my studies and experience, I am not an “expert” in their own lives as they know themselves more than I do. I also acknowledge that they likely had life experiences that got them as far as they could go and I am curious about that. So we are both “experts” collaborating with each other and we both continue to learn from each other and from our journey together.

I just wish that these collaborative tools are more widely available so that people can know how to support one another without positioning themselves as “experts over” the other person’s life and can honor what both sides bring to the relationship. I wish for this especially if a person is not able to access professional mental health services or needs additional support outside of therapy.

If I ever needed a surgery, I sure as hell would not trust someone who does not know the technical details of conducting one. But the science of mental health is not the same as that of surgery or many branches of medicine/healthcare for the matter.

There are objective measurable facts about when and how to do surgery that have been refined over generations and continue to be built upon the more human knowledge evolves. In contrast, mental health is a relatively new field and the measurements that are often used to diagnose, assess, and treat often rely on the person’s self-report of what they are going through. A brain scan can only tell you if there are structural issues with the brain but not how it is functioning in the world outside the scanner or how the person is experiencing it. A provider’s observation can also yield helpful data but providers are human beings with biases they may not always be aware of that can impact how they are interpreting what they are observing.

I am not dissing seeking out mental health providers. They are essential when:

a person’s social supports reach the limit in what they can do to help with a given problem
the person wants the perspective of someone outside of their social circles. These social circles may have solidified their views of a person based on their history with that person. While I have mentioned peer-to-peer support groups with non-friends/non-family members in a past post here, not everyone has access to them or feels comfortable in them and they may not always replace a person’s need for professional help.
the person does not have access to said supports and needs help in the process
when depression stops a person from reaching out even when they say that they need to do so.
the person has internalized narratives that stop them from seeking out social support. Examples of such narratives I heard are:
1. “I don’t want to come off as needy/weak.”
2. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
3. “I am not deserving of receiving help.”
4. “I worry I will get judged.”
5. “ I don’t know what help do I need to ask for.”
6. “I should be able to figure it all out on my own.”
7. “I was always the person helping others and never the person being helped.” I use the word “narratives” rather than “ideas/thoughts” because there tends to be stories that contributed to them.

Psychotherapy can be helpful in exploring these narratives, their impacts, when were these narratives useful versus not useful to the person, and how the person wants to respond to them.

Before I conclude, I have a few questions for readers…

Are there other examples of narratives or ideas that you have seen stop a person from reaching out for support from others?
What are your thoughts about the notion that one can exclusively rely on “expert solutions” on mental health?
Have you ever found yourself dismissing or minimizing the value of social supports because of prioritizing “expert knowledge” in mental health?
What are examples of “collaborative expertise” or “collaborative curiosity” that you have seen whether within or outside mental health institutions?

Conclusion and plan for next week’s newsletter

How can we lessen the negative impacts of relying on mental health expertise and increase its positive impacts? I am still reflecting on this myself but one place I find myself landing on is the idea of “collaborative expertise/curiosity.”

This means to me being open to the fact that both we and others have expertise to offer, admitting where our knowledge falls short, and being open to curiosity about where the journey is taking us. It also means customizing the therapy based on each unique person’s needs and listening to them instead of assuming what those needs are. These are in contrast to positioning one side as the “expert over” the other person’s subjective life. I highlight “subjective” as I recognize that there are hard facts in science that don’t have room for subjectivity (such as the fact that the earth is round) or that require highly technical knowledge based on said hard facts (like being an engineer or a surgeon).

I also wish that more mental health approaches emphasize helping the person to build socially supportive networks so that they have something to fall back on whether in between sessions, as part of safety planning with mental health crises, and after ending services. In this way, the person does not become purely dependent on the services or on the limitations of their own self care as one can only help themselves so much.

I myself get stuck on ways to do this with some of the people who see me but I have been gradually incorporating more of these conversations into my work. One way I have been doing so is through what is called “collective documents” in Narrative Therapy. I will discuss this as part of my monthly series on belonging practices in my post next week.

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could be the president of your country for one year? What is the one thing that you would change?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

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Hayyakum,

Reema

Building Community Around Mental Health Awareness in Dubai

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 02 May 2024 17:01:25 GMT

Photo by Total Shape on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

I am enjoying the people I have so far been connecting with through this newsletter. One of these people is Alhanoof Assaf, founder of insightful.ae , who has been following me since I started the newsletter. Since I tend to feature a reader’s offerings in issues related to belonging once per month in my weekly posts, I thought to share an interview I had with her about her work with insightful.ae and the community that she has built around addressing mental health stigma in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

While insightful.ae is primarily focused on hosting talks lead by licensed mental health providers, I appreciated learning about how the attendees get inspired to share their personal stories and network with one another after each talk thereby helping them feel less alone in their experiences. This caught my attention because a common theme I see across the different people I have supported as a psychotherapist in Dubai is the lack of meaningful nonjudgmental social supports around stigmatized experiences. I will first share some observations I had about some of the factors that contribute to this before sharing my conversation with Alhanoof.

While millennials and generation Z are increasingly talking about these subjects in the UAE, we still have a long way to go for such conversations to happen with more of them and across other generational demographics. Even when such conversations are happening, I find that people often prefer talking about emotional wellness in generic terms rather than about more stigmatized subjects such as psychosis, suicidal thoughts, and sexual trauma which further contributes to isolation.

Ableism also plays a role in isolation as families often feel ashamed about having others see any physical or neurodevelopmental disability within their bloodline. This can limit opportunities for receiving meaningful social support for both those who directly experience said disabilities and their caregivers.

Another factor that can contribute to isolation around mental health is that some people may not always resonate with any of the mental health jargon that are imported from a Western cultural context so they may not see their experiences reflected in community awareness initiatives, support groups, or mental health services. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone who is suffering emotionally qualifies for a formal mental health diagnosis (a topic I wrote more about in this article that you can click here to access). It is further worth noting that the mental health field is still in its infancy and that the scientific validity of our current diagnostic system is questionable and constantly being reviewed which you can read more about by clicking here. This is not to downplay that, for some people, receiving a diagnosis can help them feel less alone in their experience and potentially access workplace and educational accommodations.

I notice that most psychoeducational spaces in UAE focus on mental health from a medical or individual wellbeing perspective without looking at how family dynamics, peer groups, workplace/educational environments, and societal, political, and economical factors can all impact one’s emotional health. This can have some people feel that their experiences in these areas are not being reflected in community outreach.

I hope that more initiatives, such as insightful.ae, can take these into account while at the same time I acknowledge the value they bring to the community. Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian cultures who make up the majority demographics in UAE tend to shy away from talking about private emotional and family matters to strangers so formal support groups tend to have a low attendance. However, some prefer seeking out educational content online or through public talks especially when they are feeling ambivalent about mental health services or are unable to access such services even if they want to do so. There are many systemic and economic barriers that can impact such accessibility in the UAE but this is outside the scope of this post but I will mention them in future posts. All this partly contextualizes why insightful.ae is focused on talks by mental health providers rather than being a formal support group.

I appreciate the role that both community and self-care played in keeping Alhanoof going in her initiative despite pushback. It has me think about what are the elements needed to keep communities sustainable in the long-term and I would like to continue exploring this question in my newsletter.

If you are based in the UAE, I recommend you follow insightful.ae on Instagram by clicking here to stay up to date with events.

If you are not based in the UAE, I have a question for you that you can respond to by either replying to this email or commenting on Substack:

What are the things that you believe make building long-term community connections possible? Do share any experiences with community building or observations you have had of others involved in this area.

Some house keeping before I share my interview with Alhanoof…

Feel free to either reply to this email or comment on Substack app/website if you would like me to feature anything that you offer in the area of belonging, whether it is a blog/newsletter, videos, podcast, groups, events, research, resources, an organization you run, etc.

insightful.ae’s logo. Image source from the Instagram account.

Briefly introduce yourself and insightful.ae. What does insightful.ae currently offer to the community?

My name is Alhanoof Assaf, resident of Dubai for over 20 years, I worked during and after I graduated university in various corporate jobs until I became a mother. Couple of years after that (last year) I started organizing events to create mental health awareness in my community and to try to end the stigma. insightful.ae currently offers in-person events in Dubai with expert speakers, licensed psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists who are invited to share their experience and practical tips on different chosen topics around mental health. My work is for those experiencing emotional and mental afflictions and the people who care for them and is essentially to try to move people from a state of isolation and confusion towards community and curiosity and subsequently finding relief via licensed psychology and psychiatry speakers who ignite the sparks of insight and hope.

What inspired you to create insightful.ae?

It came through the realization that sometimes when people try to manage their emotional and mental health and that of their loved ones by distracting with activities or ignoring the mental and emotional status quo of self or of loved ones or relying on alternative ways other than seeking professional help from psychologists and psychiatrists in particular can have adverse outcomes for those who need them. Ideally I wish to try to make people accept getting the knowledge and help they need while feeling a sense of community.

What was challenging about your journey in creating it? What kept you going despite the challenges?

Challenges are breaking the stigma and receiving comments from people who either misunderstand or minimize my efforts. What keeps me going despite the challenges are countless elements and factors among which are my reflections on how what I do can be helpful and doing my prayers, affirmations, seeking guidance from professionals, and journaling where I remind myself in writing that the benefits outweigh the challenges. Also, the individuals who keep encouraging me with their actions and words whether it’s by attending the events, giving verbal face-to-face and/or written testimonials, reshares, posts, responding to surveys, and giving constructive feedback. I also have a number of loyal attendees who keep registering and providing support in any way they can. In addition, my past events’ speakers witnessed my passion and saw the level of sophistication of the attendees who engaged beautifully with them, hence we have multiple repeated speakers.

Tell me about a moment with insightful.ae that you feel so proud of. How come you picked this moment to share?

I’m proud of the people who gathered the courage not only to attend the mental health awareness events but who also chose to share from their experiences and I hope it’s because they felt that the space I try to create is free of judgment, respecting everyone’s journey and privacy where we all share the same hope for mental and emotional health.

Is there an upcoming event that you would like newsletter readers based in UAE to know about?

Upcoming event Thursday May 9th 10:30 am to 1:30 pm on the topic of Emotion Regulation, what it is, signs of emotion dysregulation, causes of emotion dysregulation, barriers to emotion regulation in addition to real life examples with guest expert speaker Dr. Jamilah Motala ClinPsyD (UK) - Licensed Clinical Psychologist at The Psychiatry and Therapy Centre, Dubai. The event will take place in Dubai Hills Mall.

Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter where I will discuss my ruminations about expert knowledge and the positive, negative, and mixed impacts that privileging it may have on communities. I will also pose questions on how the potentially negative impacts could be navigated.

Before I wrap up…

“What if a new island has erupted from the sea and you are in charge of building a new country there? What sort of country would you build?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Volunteer as a Pen-Pal

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 19:43:06 GMT

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

After sharing how letter-writing supported my transition back to Dubai in my last post here, I thought to invite you to get involved in organizations that recruit volunteer pen pals to support those impacted by prolonged involuntary social isolation and loneliness. This is not to say that this is a magic wand that will “fix” social isolation, rather it is one among many small steps we can start with. As I will mention in future posts, loneliness and social connection are not just individual problems but also systemic ones that require systemic solutions. For today’s post, however, I will focus on one small individual action.

I invite you to share names of any other volunteer pen-paling programs by replying to this email or commenting on Substack by clicking on the button below.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

How I got Introduced to Volunteer Pen-Paling…

I was introduced to the idea of volunteer pen-paling through my experience with First Friends of New York and New Jersey. First Friends offers a range of services for people in US immigration detention centers which includes a pen paling program, visitation program, legal support, and post-release support such as a temporary housing, ESL classes, transportation, bond assistance, and emergency funds. Since I was living in Boston at the time I heard about First Friends, I could not commit to supporting them directly in most of their services so I instead opted to be a pen pal especially as they can benefit from having multi-lingual volunteers like myself.

They paired me with an Arabic-speaker and we exchanged letters for several months. I had the privilege of meeting with them in person after their release and got to meet the wonderful founder and staff of First Friends during my visits to New York and New Jersey. The staff and the people they served felt more like “family” than a transactional dynamic which was refreshing to see given my past experience interning and working in non-profits. Since I did not want to share my address with the detainee, I used First Friends’ office as my return address and they in turn forwarded the mailed responses to me.

Contrary to popular belief, many in US and UK immigration detention are not held for criminal reasons but rather for administrative ones. However, the conditions in immigration detention can be worse than those in the criminal system and many don’t get access to legal representation or interpreters. Click here to read a report by Bail for Immigration Detainees which details the psychologically and physically devastating symptoms that UK-based immigrant detainees experience which includes onset of severe mental illness or worsening of an already present one.

Chronic loneliness and prolonged involuntary social isolation can have major impacts on our long-term physical and emotional health as I have highlighted in my first post which you can find by clicking here and in my perspective paper which you can access by clicking here. While some people may roll their eyes and say “of course being lonely for a long time is bad for us, DUH!” but I find that many people are not aware of the extant of it.

For example, prolonged loneliness and social isolation can be as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and having good enough relationships can raise our life expectancy by 50% (you can find this study by clicking here). It is no wonder that the United Nations General Assembly describes prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement (defined as being 22+ hours per day) as types of torture that are to be avoided no matter the reason. Here is a document that describes their position in detail .

Solitary confinement is further an ineffective form of punishment as a forensic psychiatrist mentions in this Al Jazeera article that you can access by clicking here. He further adds that increases the incidence of prison violence and reduces conflict resolution skills and life skills needed for both before and after release.

Before I continue, here are my questions for readers:

Have you run into any books, articles, talks, podcasts, or studies about loneliness and social isolation that surprised you or at least caught your attention? What surprised you or caught your attention about them?

Around a quarter of people aged 15+ in 142 countries experience moderate to high levels of loneliness according to the Gallup. I am not certain if that number takes into account the people who are in involuntary detention whether in criminal, immigration, or psychiatric institutions around the world. I am also not sure if it accounts for those who are isolated due to chronic medical conditions. I would appreciate it if anyone can share some stats with me on these!

While pen-paling may not entirely replace the value of face-to-face contact, it can still be meaningful. My pen-pal from First Friends still has our letters and reads them at times. They told me how much it helped them feel less alone especially in a country where they don’t have family present and how it was one of the things that kept them going.

If you have run into any interesting studies on the benefits of pen-paling, do share them my way!

A Couple of Pandemic Gifts

There was a similar pen-paling program to First Friends called Unlikely Pen Pals which was based in Australia for refugee children who were detained in Nauru island. I tried searching for it to feature it in this newsletter but I believe the program ended in 2019 after the children were released from the island (though they still have uncertain futures as documented in this UNICEF article that you can read by clicking here).

Aside from First Friends NY/NJ, here are two other organizations looking for volunteer pen-pals below. Be sure to read through the minimum commitment needed, especially with programs that involve children where setting expectations is especially important:

One of my readers, Rita, had mentioned Chronic Cards in her newsletter which you can find by clicking on the link below:

3 Birches Way

I’m a resource person who rarely comes away from seeing or speaking to someone without a note to send them a connection of some sort. It might be a link to an article about a breakthrough in a medical issue they mentioned, a writing or art opportunity, or an interesting piece about a group training barbers to increase the mental health of their customer…

2 years ago · 4 likes · 12 comments · Rita Cammarano

Chronic Cards matches people experiencing moderate to severe ME/CFS or similar chronic health conditions with pen pals to exchange art cards with each other. You don’t have to be an “artist” or “good” at art to volunteer! Chronic Cards also has an online market where creators experiencing chronic conditions sell their creative works. Click here for more information.

Letters to a Pre-Scientist pairs middle school students with professionals in the STEM field (science, technology, engineering, and math). While this may not at first seem directly related to loneliness and social isolation, I find that privileged folk take for granted the value of social capital which is one part of social connection.

Many of these students may not have family members or other adult figures who have been to university. Some come from backgrounds that tend to be a minority in STEM fields. They thus need connections with role models. Letters to a Pre-Scientist used to partner with the UAE-based Arab Women in STEM Sciences which is how I got involved with them briefly during my time in Dubai. I am not sure if their partnership is still ongoing, but you can still get involved with the main program. Click here for more information about them.

As mentioned, I am open to hearing of more pen-paling programs which you can share in Substack comments or in your email replies! Please share your experience if you have ever volunteered in one before!

Next week’s newsletter will be a monthly reader’s offering. In this case, it will highlight the work of Insightful.AE which was started by one of my readers.

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could resurrect a single loved one for just one day? Who would you resurrect, and how would you spend your day together?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below:

Hayyakum,

Reema

Belonging Practice 3: Letter Writing

Reema Baniabbasi — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 17:00:52 GMT

Photo by Jess moe on Unsplash

Dear City Person,

Firstly, I pray that those of you living in the GCC have stayed safe in the midst of the flooding that has impacted Oman, UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. I reassure you all that me and my family are safe and we had minor issues at the house that we were able to quickly resolve. I hope to write more about the reflections this brought up for me in a future post. In the meantime, here is the topic I had scheduled for today as promised previously.

Today’s post is part of a series about activities that have helped me feel more connected to people or places. I also invite readers to share their experiences or to experiment with these practices if they have not already. Today I will focus on how writing physical letters has impacted my sense of belonging.

Some house keeping before I dive in…

One of the things that I have never outgrown from my childhood years is my fascination with stationary and the written word. This was in part influenced by my Mom (or “Yuma” as we call her in our Gulf Arabic dialect). Yuma once showed me letters she had received from friends and family during her university years abroad in the UK. She also gifted me a pink box of small blank pink sheets of paper with matching envelopes and pen that she herself used to use to write some of her letters.

This left an impression on me and I wrote my first physical letter when I went to London for surgery when I was around 8 years old. But I never seriously started writing physical letters until much later in my university years abroad in Boston and the practice helped me navigate my reverse culture shock in my first couple years back in Dubai.

A few questions I have for readers before I continue…

When was the first time you have written a physical letter? What was that like for you?
How were you introduced to slow mail?
What is something you have never outgrown from your childhood?
Leave a comment

Stationary Yuma would use to write letters since her university years in the UK. I unfortunately cannot find the pen that was part of this box :-(

I used to sporadically blog in my university years that had me make a few online friends (the blog is currently deactivated and lacked the focus of my current newsletter). One of these online friends, who was based in California, re-introduced me to the joy of slow mail and expanded its creative possibilities for me. While I have unfortunately lost touch with her in my move back, I am still connected with her positive impact.

When we started exchanging letters, I was initially intimidated by her stunning penmanship compared to my handwriting which has been described as “chicken scratch” by some. But seeing how she embraced the spirit of what I shared regardless of its visual appearance and enjoying the anticipation of what will I find next in my mailbox encouraged me to continue.

In this process, I found alternative ways of visually expressing myself in my letters outside of penmanship. My pen pal tended to seal her envelopes with decorative stickers so this inspired me to do the same and to also use washi tape. I loved how this slowed me down and had me reconnect to my inner child that used to collect and exchange stickers.

My pen-pal’s calligraphy on the left and an envelope I decorated/sealed with stickers and washi tape on the right.

As I got introduced to collage art through a free workshop I had taken in my mid-20s at the Cambridge Women’s Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, I gradually started to incorporate collage into my letters. Initially I only used washi tape and cut-out pieces of magazine pages but then discovering how I can use distress ink pads to paint backgrounds without knowing how to properly paint myself was a game changer (I don’t earn affiliate fees from this link). How I got introduced to distress ink pads is a topic for another future post about the hidden world of “letterboxing” that I am engaged in, so stay tuned!

I experimented with tapping the ink pads on blank sheets of paper or cards then swiping them in lines or swirls at different pressure levels. I loved the lack of predictability in how the textures and patterns of darker and lighter patches would turn out in the end. I loved the child-like freedom of just playfully creating without needing to overthink every detail and to invite someone else into this world through mail.

When I moved back to Dubai in 2018, I would pick up freshly fallen flowers and leaves and feathers in my walks and started to incorporate them in my collages and letters. This helped with my reverse culture shock as it helped me slow down and notice the details of plants that are commonly cultivated in our streets and gardens and the birds that greet our mornings and evenings. I would thus connect with the city in a different way than I am used to. Incorporating these parts of urban nature into my letters would be a way of inviting the person I am addressing to join me where I am.

Some of the letters I incorporated collage into in 2018 or 2019 (before writing in them). Aside from plant parts, magazine cuttings, washi tape, and distress ink pads, I have also on occasion added dried cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods after having used them in tea as in the bottom left photo that is the decoration behind the letter itself.

Even if I did not always decorate my letters, just the act of physically writing to a person felt different than doing so over email or WhatsApp or other social media platforms. I tend to feel a sense of “urgency” in digital media perhaps because of how convenient these modes of communication are and how I often associate them with “work.”

Writing by hand entails slowing down enough to make sure that my writing is legible has me better embody the presence of the person I am writing to even if they are not physically with me. I also find that looking at a person’s handwriting gives me a glimpse into a side of them that I don’t get to experience over typed mediums, almost like witnessing their “visual voice.”

Even if someone were to mail me a typed letter, it would still feel more special to me than if it were sent digitally as I have found in a letter a cousin of mine sent me in the 90s when she used to live in North Carolina for 2 years. The slowness of sending and waiting for a reply by itself created a shared intimate silence in which both sides can digest what was sent and received versus needing to rush to “perform” a response. This feels different to me from the pauses in between digital interactions where we know that we can immediately read and respond.

In times when I feared that I have become emotionally disconnected from someone because of moving countries, letter writing would remind me that their impact on my life is much closer to me than I realize.

Here are my last questions for readers:

What were your impressions about slow mail before reading this post? Did they change or remain the same?
If you already write letters, what differences, if any, do you notice between it and communicating via digital media or phone calls?
Leave a comment

Next week’s newsletter will list non-profits around the world that are looking for volunteer pen-pals to help with the isolation that the people they serve experience.

If you know of any similar ones that you would like me to feature, please either reply to this email or comment on Substack by clicking on the button below:

Before I wrap up…

“What if you could not make your own decisions, but you had to choose someone else to make them for you? Who would you choose?”

Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend!

You may also share the newsletter itself by clicking on the button below:

If you are viewing this from Substack and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking the button below: