RSS Mental Health Strand 2021

By Elizabeth Paulyn Gostelow (21A01B), Max Chwa (21A01B)

One thing’s clear: everyone needs a breather from JC life.

The pandemic’s impact extends far beyond the physical realm. How many more online classes, cancelled CCA sessions and shortened MEP curriculums can one student take? The lack of social interaction in our schedules has undoubtedly had detrimental effects on our mental health. Avenues for relieving stress—from movie watch parties at the Shaw Foundation Library to visiting My Rest Space (MRS)—have been closed off, leaving Rafflesians with a sense of helplessness and entrapment.

Before the event began, guests on the online Zoom call were treated to a video of the Peer Helpers’ activities in 2020. In spite of COVID-19’s undeniable impact on all MEPs, the Peer Helpers have been able to adapt by shifting their focus to online sessions, digital learning journeys, and even a Microsoft Teams version of My Rest Space. Y6s might remember the informative yet engaging exhibits put up in the canteen during Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW).

Following the screening, Ms Woo Mei Hui introduced herself and the rest of the counsellors at the RGC. She explained that students often fail to seek help due to their fear of appearing “weak”, professing her hopes that attendees would apply the information gleaned through the symposium’s talks. Following a brief content warning, she thanked attendees for coming, and the first talk began.

Talk by Dr. Christopher Willard, Psychologist and Author, Teaching at Harvard Medical School

A few minutes into the talk, Dr. Willard instructed us to close our eyes and raise our hands before our chests. “How do you feel? How does your breath feel?” he asked.

Jokingly, he mentioned that none of our cameras were on and he had no idea if we were mimicking his actions. Still, he carried on, asking us to fall back into our seats, then asking us to sit up with our palms up. Finally, he rested his hands on his chest, signalling us to do the same.

These four poses represented four different responses to stress: the fight or flight response, the freeze response, mindfulness, and self-compassion. While the first two may feel more intuitive, Dr Willard advised us to try the latter two.

“Stress comes from our cavepeople ancestors that used stress to keep themselves safe from physical threat, but we still use it for emotional threats in the present.” he explained. “However, our bodies have not adapted to more emotional threats, and have not evolved to react properly.”

According to Dr Willard, when we feel panicked, blood flows into the amygdala and away from other parts of the brain. That means that sections of the brain where decisions are made and relationships are handled are neglected. As a result, panicked individuals often suffer from paranoia and aggression, which can lead to self-harm or avoidant behaviour that creates more stress — in other words, the fight-or-flight response. The brain may be permanently altered by these experiences, turning into depression. Additionally, immune and physical systems shut off, which can lead to stomach aches and sickness.

However, there are concrete ways of reducing stress. Breathing exercises such as 7/11 breathing can prove very useful.

“It helps you regulate your breath, regulate your body, regulate your nervous system and brain, [and] regulate your attention, impulses, and emotions.” Dr Willard said of the exercise, which can be done in one minute. “It’s a really short pause, but it certainly has a huge effect.”

Additionally, he stressed the importance of human connection. Social interaction causes the brain to focus on empathy and the intricacies of human relationships. This allows the amygdala to rest, hence reducing stress.

While some individuals may feel skeptical about the mindfulness movement, Dr Willard’s personal experiences are a testament to its value. When he was a child, he was enrolled in a highly competitive elite private high school, which might sound like a familiar environment to Rafflesians. After graduating, he went to college, only to find himself struggling with stress, depression and anxiety. The weight of his struggle with mental health was too much to bear.

Dr Willard explained the responsibilities that encumber students with his own “Student Paradox”, which involved students picking two out of three options (Good Grades, Good Friends, and Good Sleep) to focus on during their school lives. Clearly, all three options are necessary, but this hypothetical dilemma highlights the difficulty students often face when wrestling with numerous burdens. Furthermore, troubles within families and worries caused by evolving political situations can lead to added stresses in our lives. In his own school life, Dr Willard encountered the same problems.

Thankfully, he knew to ask for help. He decided to take some time off by visiting a retreat. There, he was exposed to various mindfulness techniques that helped him feel happy, creative, and focused. Through these techniques, he learnt to reduce his stress levels and persevere. He wishes to share those techniques with young people such that they can improve their lives, just as he did. Turning these practices into habits is hardly unrealistic; neuroplasticity allows us to reorganise our neural networks, allowing new mental health habits to take root. In the words of Dr Willard: “One thing about mental health is that it gets better.”

Mr Kevin Wee, founder of Rebound with Resilience

Before Mr Wee’s talk began, he flashed two intriguing questions on his slides:

1. What were our main fears/struggles/concerns that we’d like perspective on,

and

2. What did we hope to learn and what changes did we want to make?

The two questions set the tone of self reflection and introspection as he delved into his sharing.

He first recounted a poignant memory from his primary school days:. It was PSLE results day, and his brother’s friend was not celebrating alongside his peers but alone in the school bathroom, claiming that his life was over. Mr Wee still remembers the dismal scene—a once cheery figure huddled up into himself, falling apart over a few letters of the alphabet. He questioned: “Why did he feel his grades should determine his life?”

As a Victoria School student that DSA’d into Raffles, the competitiveness of junior college life made him wish to stand out in ways other than academics. As such, he began to derive a sense of pride from something else — being the class clown. At this juncture, he related a string of humorous anecdotes with a smile on his face, one involving his school shirt being stuck on a ledge and another eating hydrilla plants during a biology lab session. Quite a daredevil move!

However, these lighthearted anecdotes evolved into a more serious sharing of the stress he faced as A-levels drew near. Not only did renovations lead to an unconducive home environment, his sleep deprivation and mental block greatly undermined his exam performance. He shared how he had handed up blank exam sheets on his General Paper exam and struggled through the rest of the A-levels.

Even when the dreaded exams ended, Mr Wee’s mental state continued to spiral. He had suicidal thoughts for the first time, and eventually, he had to be hospitalised and sedated as such thoughts grew more frequent. After hospitalisation, he entered a period of mania, which drove him to extremism.

But out of such bleak experiences, the unthinkable emerged— hope. Having overcome his depression, he found a passion for mentoring and spreading joy to others.

On this note, he voiced his tips on developing resilience. To him, the secret lies in its very definition. Resilience is the ability to adapt and overcome failure and setbacks—as such, failure is absolutely necessary. The stigma surrounding failure is unhealthy as it helps us to develop resilience. He then related a quote by Bill Gates: “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” Apt indeed!

Mr Wee then covered the importance of social support. As he was a person with lots of self-loathing, he had once felt “too good” for professional help due to the stigma surrounding it. However, his eventual decision to attend counselling sessions was one he did not regret; he praised his counsellor as a loving, gracious and kind woman who offered another perspective on his situation. His recovery was also aided by medication, which alleviated certain thoughts. He also had the support of his family. While they did not fully understand what he was going through, they tried to be there for him, expressing their empathy. Reminiscing, he related the time when he went to eat with his friends after his ‘A’ levels Mathematics paper, with them hugging him one by one and telling him it was going to be fine. It is a memory that he treasures dearly.

Mr Wee also advised the audience not to suppress negative thoughts. “It’s the worst thing you can do,” he commented. Instead of suppressing them, he suggested that we could dispute and distance ourselves from such thoughts. From his experiences, he recommends that students avoid tying their self-worth to variables such as grades and instead, discover their inherent self worth.

Furthermore, he urged the importance of taking one’s suffering seriously instead of shaking it off. Explaining through the use of a graph—with performance and stress as the y and x axes respectively—a line plummeting downwards gravely showed the consequences of ignoring one’s stress. Though the journey of recovery is difficult, we should not neglect it. According to Mr Wee, one always regrets things we didn’t do, and never those we did and failed. As an example of advising us to not fear failure, he jokingly quipped that if a spider was on our faces, we’d be scared but he wouldn’t be—because he loves animals!

Surrounded by loved ones who supported him, Mr Wee experienced a paradigm shift. He subsequently poured much of his time into volunteering and grew into a more resilient person overall. He shared one last piece of advice: never underestimate the power of hope, even when it is at its faintest.

“Cling to it with everything you have. One day, you’ll appreciate and understand why you had to go through it.”

Dr Heng Lim

Next, the audience got pumped for Dr Heng Lim’s talk on sports and mental wellness. Starting off with the theme of motivation. Dr Lim brought up the inspirational story of Joseph Schooling beating his own hero Michael Phelps in the 2016 Olympics. Surely we can learn from this that hard work is necessary to achieve one’s goals.

But how would one go about goal-setting? Dr Lim introduced us to the SMART acronym, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely—just a few guidelines when one wants to set effective goals. There are also different types of goals, such as short, mid and long term ones. A few tips he shared were to break down and revise goals, giving yourself chances to review and reflect.

In a person’s pursuit of their goal, it is important to see growth and prevent motivation burnout. Performance profiling theory is a great way to achieve both of these things. The theory puts the athlete in control through a performance profile, which analyzes their strengths and weaknesses. This increases the intrinsic motivation of athletes to improve. In addition, asking other people for their perspectives will increase self awareness and confidence.

This is remarkably similar to how one can identify requisite characteristics to be successful in life and endeavours, transferring these characteristics to a visual profile and rating our own abilities in such attributes

However, if you’re looking for something more gamified, Mr Lim recommended the Forest app. The app helps to control mobile phone usage through the use of a credit system, where the user earns credits by avoiding phone usage for certain durations. Apparently, such credits translate into real trees being planted!

Mr Lim then briefly mentioned exercises such as mindful eating and body scans as ways to increase our sensitivity to our physical states. As for self reflection, journaling aids us in questioning our goals. By penning down such thoughts, we better manage our expectations and gain fresh perspectives, developing a sense of self awareness. He also stressed the necessity of sleep for cognitive function.

To manage stress and anxiety, Mr Lim brought up stress inoculation training. The training consists of coping skills such as breathing exercises and muscle relaxation. To pursue such training, one can find small pockets of time every day, resulting in a healthy balance of work and exercise.

These are great tips for keeping ourselves motivated and well. But what about dealing with setbacks? Using Mathew Emmons (an American rifle shooter) as an example, Mr Lim highlighted the importance of persevering despite failure. Even after Emmons repeatedly messed up his performance at the Olympics, he tried again and again, and never regretted what he had to go through.

A final piece of advice Mr Lim shared with us was that we should listen to doctors and physiologists when recovering from injuries, focusing on things we can do in the meantime.

Student Presentations

Before the Peer Helpers gave their presentations, their chairperson, Remus Ong (21S03L), introduced the Peer Helpers Programme (PHP). He discussed the skills that PHP has equipped him with, from summarising and paraphrasing to more intangible skills such as empathy and reflection. This newfound understanding and compassion towards others spurred him to make several personal changes — for instance, he no longer says slurs.

Additionally, he discussed the many responsibilities that the Peer Helpers had to juggle. Every Peer Helper was put into a committee, with some Peer Helpers being responsible for the planning of MHAW, while others had more general responsibilities, from adding features to the Peer Helpers’ website to creating art for the programme’s various purposes. As chairperson, Remus was involved in immense amounts of coordination and liaising in the weeks leading up to MHAW, a responsibility that was both immensely challenging and satisfying. After MHAW, the Peer Helpers were split into teams and given the task of producing posters and other informative items so as to bring awareness to a specific mental health issue.

The research projects undertaken by each group formed the foundation of the student presentations. Each group explained their rationale behind their choice of topic, described their solutions and received questions from the Zoom audience, proving that Project Work has continued relevance in our everyday lives. The passion every group had for their projects was evident, with many presentations involving innovative visual designs or even artwork by the members of each group.

Furthermore, many groups seemed to speak from a place of personal experience, whether they were discussing perfectionism, anxiety, or unhealthy relationships with one’s parents. Hence, there was a unique feeling of warmth and sincerity that pervaded the different presentations. Furthermore, every group explained how one could identify someone facing certain mental health issues and how they could assist others or themselves in dealing with these problems. These concrete pieces of advice allowed the audience to gain genuine takeaways through each pithy presentation.

There was one particular group that stood out — instead of creating posters and leaflets, they had created a short film for the SMHFF Short Film Youth Competition! Unfortunately, due to competition guidelines, they were unable to screen the actual film. However, they provided attendees with behind-the-scenes footage, revealing the massive workload involved in the creation of their film. Through the Vlog-style video, the audience was allowed a glimpse of the true amount of effort the Peer Helpers invested in each of their projects.

Talk by Elizabeth Paulyn Gostelow on her personal scoliosis recovery journey

Showing the audience pictures of herself, Elizabeth brought up the body image issues she had with back bracing. She commented on heightened consciousness one may have when having physically visible conditions. For her, this manifested through acquired behaviours such as expressions of discomfort when asked about her condition and avoiding group photos.

Admitted into NUH in late November 2017, she recalled her fears of surgery and its risks. However, this fear eventually transformed into pride as she emerged stronger from her surgery. Proudly showing us a picture of her back scar, she expressed her gratefulness at how her surgery went well.

Taking up her book copy from a table, she then shared with the audience her motivations for writing Embrace. Smiling, she elaborated that she was inspired by an RI senior Huang Huanyan’s book Brave Girl Not Eating, which chronicles the author’s journey with anorexia. Touched by the honesty of her book, she realised the power of sharing recovery stories. Through her book, she hopes that others will be more vocal about their recovery journeys.

A few coping strategies she outlined were journaling and doodling, which she shared aided her in consolidating her post surgery experiences. In the same vein, she noted the thought-behaviour-emotion-sensation bubble writing exercise was just as useful.

She also included a small section of advice on post-surgery home adjustments, such as firm mattress, chairs and grab bars to help a scoliosis patient navigate around the house safely and comfortably.

Other than elaborating on coping strategies a person with scoliosis could follow, she delved into a section on what family and friends can do to help. For example, she highlighted caregiver burnout as a real issue to avoid and the importance of choosing appropriate words when commenting on a scoliosis patient’s physical appearance.

Wrapping up her presentation, Elizabeth assured the audience that recovery is never a linear process. With loved ones to support you and a deepening self awareness over time, one may find the grit and hope to press on in their personal growth journey.

There is a tendency to frame the experiences of those who have overcome great odds as either pitiful or inspirational. While benign in intention, both types of coverage alienate us from these individuals, ensuring that they’re either denigrated or over-idealised. Through Elizabeth’s authenticity, it became clear that in spite of her struggles with scoliosis, Elizabeth is just like any one of us — a little insecure, but full of life and personality.

Final Words

RI is often perceived as a hyper-competitive environment full of rabid students doing anything they can to claw their way to the top. However, through the RSS Mental Health Strand, another side of our beloved school was revealed, a side that believes in the importance of supporting one another and uplifting those around us. Amidst the neverending hustle of TPs and CTs, PHP and the RGC serve as a reminder that we should all take a few moments to focus on how we feel. Sit up straight. Close your eyes. Breathe.