About Me — Saif Farooqi
I am a Ph.D. in Psychology, from the University of Delhi, and currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. I have been blogging about psychological issues for more than ten years, on my blogs — Life and Psychology and History of Psychology. I am extremely passionate about writing as well as teaching psychology. My areas of interest are interpersonal relationships, personality, and individual differences, youth issues, beliefs and thought processes, social media/cyberspace, urbanism, mental health, critical thinking, history of psychology, and theoretical psychology — these are all reflected in my writings. I also conduct workshops on self-awareness, self-expression, communication, critical thinking, and SPSS (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences).
When I look back at my childhood and adolescence, I would have never imagined, even in my wildest dreams that one day I will get into a profession (teaching) that would require me to interact with a large group of people, almost every day. From someone who was very hesitant and could not speak a sentence without stammering, to presenting papers at conferences, conducting workshops, becoming an assistant professor, and being invited to deliver lectures, the transformation has been difficult, yet exciting.
From a very early age, I realized that I am a big introvert. Later, I also realized that I am suffering from social anxiety and depression. This surely made my life difficult, but I believe it eventually led me to being who I am and what I became, especially in terms of studying psychology, getting into writing, and being involved in teaching.
One of my earliest memories, during my childhood days, are people telling me that why am I so quiet, why do I not be like others, and why do I not behave like a typical guy. Day by day these questions became more frequent and with them, there were often innumerable suggestions of how should I behave to be more “regular” and “normal”. After a while, it became quite disturbing and I started questioning myself that why am I not like others and that is there something wrong with me.
Perhaps it was these questions that made me highly self-conscious and socially awkward, which may have caused me to start stammering. I could not complete a sentence without stammering. Whenever I used to speak, I used to stammer, and people used to give me weird looks as if I am some strange person. I was often made fun of and laughed upon when I used to stammer. I already used to keep to myself, but due to the fear and embarrassment of being made fun of, I became quieter
I started to realize that I do not really have too many people to talk to. Quite often, in school, I used to sit all alone in a corner. I did not like going to school because of that. I was lonely and depressed. I felt that nobody really likes me and I hated myself for being this way. The question of why am I not like others, became more and more pronounced.
Because I did not have many people to talk to and I was very hesitant to initiate an interaction with others, I began to spend a lot of time alone. I spent a lot of time deeply engrossed in my own thoughts, and reflecting upon the past, often trying to figure out what really is the purpose of my life.
Spending a lot of time alone, I gradually learned to enjoy my own company. I liked spending time by myself. In a way, I had built my own world, and I had started to like it. I started to accept the way I am. I started to tell myself that I do not really have to be like others and that everyone is different from each other. It made me feel better about myself. I started to understand myself in a better way, I started realizing my strengths, and began to build in some confidence.
One day, while doing some random reading, and I came across the word “introvert”. After reading more about it, I felt that this is exactly who I am. It gave me a lot of self-acceptance. It gave me a strong reassurance that there are individual differences, and that people actually are different from each other.
I then got to know that there is a subject called Psychology, which is extensively about human behavior, including individual differences. When I was in 11th grade I decided that after completing school, I will study psychology. I did exactly that. I studied psychology as my major subject in my Bachelor’s, and then took it up in my Master’s.
Psychology helped me a lot to understand many different aspects of human behavior. I learned a lot about individual differences. I also began to read a lot about interpersonal relationships. Not having any friends, and not having too many people to talk to, made me curious about the different aspects of relationships. Later on, I even went on to do my Ph.D. in the area of interpersonal relationships.
During this time, I also felt that I could express myself in a better manner in writing rather than speaking. By now I was not stammering as much as I used to. The self-acceptance and self-confidence that I had developed in the past few years, helped me in dealing with that. But I was still hesitant in expressing myself in face-to-face interactions.
I felt like talking about things that made me excited. But I did not have too many people to talk to. This led me to get into blogging. I thought that the best way to share things that got me excited, which mainly has been psychological issues, theories, and concepts, was to write about them on blogs. Gradually, I felt that I am good at it, at least better than talking. I started becoming more active on my blogs and even began to participate in online forums. All this helped me to express myself in a better way. Because writing involves a lot of research, it also led me to more and more reading.
I have now been blogging about psychology for more than ten years. I have been writing psychology-based articles on two of my blogs — “Life and Psychology” and “History of Psychology.” I have also been sharing psychology-related facts on my Facebook Page, “Interesting Facts About Psychology”. After my Facebook page, I have also started an Instagram page, “PsychWord”, which is about psychology-related words/terms.
Writing on social media, extensively, has made me feel really good about myself. My confidence level increased to a great deal, to the extent that I am no longer hesitant about having face-to-face interactions about things that make me feel excited. This, eventually, played a role in me taking up teaching, after my Ph.D., where I have to address a group of students, on a daily basis. My increased confidence due to writing has now also made me start my podcast called — Psychology, Critical Thinking, and Society. In the podcast, I talk about how psychology and critical thinking can help in understanding relevant societal issues.
On April 1st, 2023, I also delivered a TEDx talk, in which I spoke about how social media can be used for self-expression, especially for people like me who are hesitant in face-to-face interactions. I talked about my own experiences of how blogging has helped me to enhance self-expression. I believe that the confidence that I have got because of writing made me a person who has been hesitant to now becoming a TEDx speaker.
My TEDx talk — “How Does Social Media Help in Self-expression” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XWn-W2d4Mo&t=559s
There are times when I feel hesitant, in social situations, be it addressing students in a class, or delivering an invited lecture, but I am able to deal with it, partly because I get to talk about topics that fascinate me. Therefore, through all my experiences, I believe, I could come out to be a stronger and confident individual.
After writing on social media, all these years, I found Medium.com to be a useful platform on which I could share my writings. It also gives easy access to what others have written and I get to know about their perspectives. I joined Medium.com in September 2021. It has been good, so far. I have had some good interactions with people, and I am looking forward to more.
Links of social media platforms on which I can be found:
Blog: www.lifeandpsychology.com
Blog: www.historyofpsychology.net
Podcast: www.anchor.fm/psychologysociety
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saiffarooqi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saif.farooqi/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psych.word/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saiffarooqi/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LifeAndPsychology
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfPsychology
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/InterestingFactsAboutPsychology
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FactsPsy
