What I describe here is not an objective analysis of a city. It is frequency and perception.
Some people experience Dubai as loud, intrusive, artificial or sexualised. Others experience calm, dignity and spaciousness. Two people can stand in the same place and experience entirely different realities. They do not live in different cities; they live in different inner spaces that find resonance outside themselves.
In Dubai, you do not meet the city; you meet yourself. There is no predetermined identity here. Instead, it expects you to be able to carry, hold, create and move yourself. For people who place security before self-realisation—impossible.
Why I am here:
1. Dubai is not a place; it is a flow
Germany has a great deal of history and an opinion about everything. But not in the sense of “What is best for you?” More often: “What do we know, and why are you different?” For people who innovate and create something new, that is not sustainable.
Dubai feels like a current. People arrive, leave, begin again, stop and flow onwards. Nobody holds you back. Nobody pulls you into old stories without being asked. Here, everyone can meet themselves without judgement. Trying things, making mistakes and changing your mind are not labelled problems; they are seen as courageous.
2. No collective identity that defines you
In Germany there is a strong collective conditioning: this is how things are done, this is how you live, this is what is proper, this is how you are acceptable.
Dubai works differently. The city does not impose a narrow cultural template on you. You define yourself. For some that can be unsettling; for others it is the freedom to finally become who they really are.
If your nervous system is sensitive to other people’s expectations, this neutrality is not a luxury. It is a sense of arriving.
Yes, many people come here to build something. I am here to enjoy what I have built and no longer HAVE to go higher, faster and further. Everyone is allowed to be as they wish. I do not experience it as fake; I experience freedom of choice in BEING.
Here, it is not about having to. It is about wanting to.
3. Ambition without suspicion
In some cultures, ambition provokes scepticism or envy. In Germany, I always felt I had to explain myself. “What do you do? You can earn money with that? Now she is moving into a big office with double doors—she is crazy. Be careful, Sabrina; this could backfire.” That makes innovation twice as difficult as it already is.
In Dubai, ambition is usually viewed pragmatically. Those who want to build something build it. Those who want to expand expand. Success is discussed less in moral terms and accepted more as a fact.
For people with visionary power, that is decisive. Expansion needs room and freedom from judgement. Constant scrutiny drains energy.
4. Space without being claimed
In closer social structures, roles emerge quickly: daughter, friend, boss. You become a screen for other people’s projections.
In a city like Dubai, everyone is strongly focused on their own agenda. People are busy with their own path. Closeness develops voluntarily, rather than through social obligation. I experience individuality here as curiosity and joy in learning something new. It is an exchange and a desire to understand without making someone smaller.
5. A sense of safety at the nervous-system level
I no longer felt safe in Germany or the EU.
My experience of Dubai feels free of violence. If you leave your phone on the beach, in my experience it is still there three hours later. There are playgrounds with security under bridges. People leave their front doors unlocked. You can ask anyone for help and someone is there immediately.
For a sensitive nervous system, that feels enormously relieving.
6. Sunshine is regulation
Light is not only about mood. It brings warmth and relaxes muscles. Sunshine affects energy, clarity and connection with myself. My joy in life has grown here almost automatically.
If your system responds strongly to light, grey months are not a minor issue; they are an ongoing strain.
I often hear people say they are afraid of the hot summer months. Eight weeks of heat. During that time I travel, sit in an air-conditioned restaurant or at home, go to the mall, and so on. In Germany, we spend seven months indoors with the heating on. Everyone decides for themselves which feels less pleasant. I love having what I experience as nine or ten months of comfortable temperatures around 25–30 degrees.
7. Spirituality and strategy in one space
Many places are either gentle and spiritual or hard and performance-driven. The combination of inner depth and external ambition rarely finds a sustainable home.
Dubai allows both at the same time. Visionary thinking is not read as delusions of grandeur. Material expansion is not automatically judged as soulless. Spiritual depth is not ridiculed.
If your system holds both, it needs an environment that does not constantly split this dual structure apart. For me, nowhere is better for bringing innovation into the world.
8. My experience of financial and administrative freedom
For me, taxes in Germany were not only a financial question but also an energetic one. It was not simply about paying, but about how creation was treated.
My sensitive nervous system could not tolerate the way I experienced the system in Germany. High charges were one thing; the atmosphere behind them was another. That constant search for mistakes in bureaucracy. The permanent possibility of having done something wrong. It is a pressure that never completely disappears. For me personally, on my path towards living my vulnerability and femininity, it became impossible.
In Dubai, I experience a different underlying tone. Those who build something are allowed to keep what they have created. Those who grow are not automatically questioned. This attitude has an effect beyond finances: it has given me tremendous peace because I no longer feel I have to justify my BEING. There are not even letterboxes here.
In that peace, I am happy to pay five euros more for a glass of wine.
9. Culture and origins
Here, people meet through values rather than origins. Skin colour, body shape, status or nationality become less important when a shared direction is felt. Innovation, growth, peace and the willingness to take responsibility for one’s life connect people more strongly than cultural conditioning.
The proportion of local residents is comparatively small—the figure quoted in my original article is 9%—because most people come from all over the world. That changes the dynamic. Identity arises less from nationality and more from attitude.
For me, it is a place where the question is not where you come from, but what you stand for: respect, freedom and the desire to create. Difference feels natural here. When values align, origins become secondary.
Dubai is a question of resonance, closely connected with one’s own inner values.
You do not move somewhere because it is objectively better, or because you simply like it more. You go where your nervous system has to struggle less. Perfection does not exist. But personally, I know of nowhere else in the world that offers what I find here for sensitive nervous systems.
Sometimes, changing location is simply regulation.
What do you like about Dubai? You are welcome to share your thoughts in a comment.
