Don't look for sympathy'

Nimra Khan's advice for online vitriol

Social media is a territory teeming with landmines of negative opinions and Nimra Khan has experienced that harsh reality. During her appearance on Gup Shab, the actor shared just how detrimental the digital landscape can be to one's mental health.

"Everyone's fighting battles. Would it ease your heart if you opened Instagram at midnight on top of an already traumatic life ... and found others reiterating the same traumatic things?" she posed.

According to the Banno actor, acceptance is hard to find on social media, especially when one posts something out of anguish. "What I've learnt in due time is that their perspective is not my reality. So I don't even check my comments on Instagram, just because I believe that what I'm wearing today is of my own volition," she said.

"I know what I'm thinking as I put these clothes on but an onlooker doesn't know that. They'll take a second to write down their two cents, and you might think this stuff doesn't affect us but it affects us deeply. Sometimes, I can't sleep all night long if I read the wrong comment," she confessed.

Nimra feels that it is beneficial to hold up a pretence of happiness online. "It's a positive distraction," she said, adding that one may be in denial for sometime, but somewhere along the way, one finds the capacity to heal and move on.

"Hania (Aamir) is doing really good because she's organic. She keeps it raw and natural, so even when I watch her reels, I cannot help but smile," she said.

In contrast, the 34-year-old actor mentioned that difficult subjects, such as her kidnapping scare back in August, do not bode well with the public. It disconcerted her that instead of offering well wishes, the comments fired an onslaught of negativity her way. It was only after a conversation with her mother that Nimra managed to recompose herself, vowing to become a voice for women who have undergone similarly harrowing incidents.

"I received so many DMs from women. Our girls have a thousand things they can't speak about out of fear of society, an inability to score marriage proposals, a lack of acceptance from their own parents and from the boys around them. There's a lot of pressure on these girls," she observed.

"So that was exactly my intention with sharing my story on social media. Don't focus on me, focus on the crime," she said. "Social media has gained the liberty to say anything. So my advice is, don't look for sympathy. You will always find your grief to be bigger than anyone else's perception of it."