Ruwaida Abela Northen On Why Switching Off Doesn’t Have To Mean Switching Off Your Phone
Do you really need your phone glued to you 24/7 – or is it just the FOMO talking? Ruwaida Abela Northen’s one-woman saga: schedule the break, skip the relaxation
I have a massage booked at three. It has been in my calendar for 10 days. And it’s really stressing me out. It sits there between a call and a meeting, neatly contained, like any other commitment. Same font. Same level of importance. Same expectation that I will show up on time, prepared, and ready to perform. Because that’s what it is, really. Performance.
We like to think of relaxation as something that just happens. Effortless. Organic. The kind of thing you fall into when life slows down. Except life doesn’t slow down. So we schedule it. We book it in advance. We pay for it. We arrive (almost) on time, and then, just like that, we’re expected to switch. From fully operational to completely relaxed. Immediately. Off. On. Calm.
A friend of mine once went to this healer who apparently unlocked her entire past life. She came back with stories of being an empress, living in a castle, reconnecting with childhood memories she didn’t even know she had, so naturally, I booked a session. I arrived, lay down, closed my eyes, ready to access something profound. Nothing. Not a past life. Not even a vague emotion – just me trying to think how much time has passed. At one point, I started shivering slightly because the room was freezing. The poor woman thought I was having some kind of breakthrough. She leaned in and whispered, “Embrace it.” I opened my eyes and said, “I’m not having a moment. I’m cold. Can you turn off the AC?”
If anything, the first 10 minutes of any ‘relaxing’ experience for me are spent negotiating with myself: “Stop thinking. No, seriously, stop. Why are you still thinking? This is literally what you booked this for.”
This is where things start to fall apart. Because I am not built for immediate stillness. Therapists hate me. Not openly. But I can feel it. It starts with the music. That soft, floating, vaguely spiritual soundtrack that is apparently designed to calm the nervous system. It does the opposite for me. Within seconds, I’m irritated. Not relaxed, but irritated. So I ask them to turn it off. They hesitate, as though I’ve just rejected a fundamental law of wellness.
And then, of course, there’s my phone. It stays with me. Always. Yes, even during my monthly hammam. My therapist Kara and I have a system. It involves a number of face towels and a shower cap…
The thought of what I might be missing in those 60 minutes is far more stressful than anything the treatment is supposed to fix. An email, a message, a decision waiting to be made. Unacceptable. So there I am, in a setting designed for complete detachment, holding onto the one thing that ensures I remain fully connected. Just in case. Because that’s the real issue, isn’t it? It’s not that I don’t have time to relax, it’s that I don’t trust what happens if I do. We’ve turned stillness into something slightly threatening. As though stepping away, even briefly, means losing control of something important.
Even our downtime has conditions attached to it. If we spend the entire hour thinking, planning, checking, adjusting? Then we leave slightly annoyed. Not because we didn’t relax – but because we didn’t do it properly, as though relaxation itself is something we can get wrong. Which, apparently, I do. Consistently. And yet, I keep booking it. Same delusional optimism that this time will be different. Spoiler alert. It won’t be. The music will annoy me, the phone will stay in my hand. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I will attempt to switch off. Not entirely. Let’s not get carried away. Just enough to say I tried. Which, at this point, feels like progress.
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From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia June 2026 issue