How Do We Help Young People Who Are Struggling? | Shiyun on ONE FM 91.3
When a young person is struggling, our instinct is often to step in, fix the problem and keep them safe. But what if our best intentions sometimes make things harder?
What happens when a trusted adult pulls away? When a young person has to repeat their story to multiple counsellors? Or when the adults around them are so focused on stopping a behaviour that they lose sight of the person behind it?
In this conversation with The Morning Drive on ONE FM 91.3, Shiyun draws on her experiences working with young people at Tak Takut Kids Club (TTKC), and shares insights from Shards of My Life, a graphic memoir co-created with a young person known as Bean.
In This Interview
This interview has been transcribed and lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Understanding Why Some Young People Self-Harm
TFD: Shiyun, you wrote that Bean was one of your earliest teachers in understanding the inner world of a young person who self-harms. What did Bean help you understand that you might not have understood otherwise?
Shiyun: We met Bean in the community club. We run this children's community club called Tak Takut Kids Club, TTKC. We met Bean when she was in Secondary One. One day she just came to us and said, "Oh, I have these cuts on my hand." And then we're like, okay, let's disinfect this. And from there we got to know her and journeyed with her for about two years.
The thing that I learned from her is that, especially as adults, when we see kids self-harm or self-injure, immediately we think of the worst thing: they're going to kill themselves. What I learned from Bean is that it's not true. Actually, that's their way of staying alive.
Because there are so many emotions that they're experiencing, they don't know what to do with them, or how to release that or feel better. So when they cut themselves, it's a way of feeling better. It's actually a coping mechanism.
Lynette: It's a kind of release.
Shiyun: It's a kind of release. So it's not to immediately think about how I could stop this behaviour, because if we want them to stop it immediately, then how else are they going to release that? It's taking time to understand what the pain is, and what other ways they can cope. To see the person, rather than immediately see the behaviour, link it to the worst, and try to stop it immediately.
TFD: So see the person behind the scar, not the scar.
Shiyun: Yeah.
When a Trusted Adult Pulls Away
TFD: Interesting.
Lynette: You mentioned that what pained you was how often the help being sought fell short. When does help, despite the best intentions, end up making things harder for the person receiving it?
Shiyun: We journeyed with Bean for two years. She's very resilient in that way. She really believed in getting help. So she went through school counselling, mentorship, medical help. She was also in the community. In many ways people want to help, and we don't know that sometimes the best intention might further trigger. I'll give an example of mentorship, and this is in a chapter called "The Hands That Pull Me Up, Pull Me Down". Mentorship is about building relationships, right? We have many volunteer mentors here in Singapore.
TFD: Let's hold that thought of mentorship. Let's go onto Facebook and deal with mentorship there. Guys, if you're listening to us on radio and you want to follow us, we're live on Facebook. Okay, so we're talking about looking for help, and one of the ways of looking for help is mentorship. Let's explain this.
Shiyun: Bean had a mentor. It was part of a mentorship programme she was referred to by her school, when she was in Sec One. They first built a very strong relationship. And for someone who's struggling with identity, you tend to attach yourself to a person, so she was very attached to the mentor. They were talking through the night. After about six months, it was just getting too much for the mentor, because they kept receiving news about her self-harm and things like that. After some time the mentor just pulled out, and stopped responding the way they had been responding. And that further triggered the young person. The self-harm actually got worse.
TFD: But that's also hard for the mentor, though.
Shiyun: Yes.
TFD: Mentoring is, I mean, you really have to go into it with your eyes open and understand that it is a 24/7, 365-days-a-year thing.
Who Supports the Adults Helping Young People?
Shiyun: So I think what I learned is that the adults who want to support the young person need a good support system themselves. Because you'll be met with a lot of complexity and very difficult decisions. Sometimes you set boundaries and you don't know whether you'll further trigger. Sometimes your young person will trigger you, especially teenagers. And you need to be regulated so you don't go into full-on rage or immediately withdraw. You actually need a support system for yourself.
TFD: Where do mentors then go to get this?
Shiyun: I don't know, actually. I don't know if there's a system for that.
TFD: Maybe the powers that be who are listening should listen to this, and we should check and make sure that we do have a system to support the mentors.
Shiyun: I think so. The mentors also need to go in with some knowledge. How do you handle certain situations?
TFD: So, training.
Shiyun: Yes.
Having to Tell Your Story Again and Again
TFD: That's actually a very good idea. Where do you think the biggest gaps are when different sources of support, things like the school, the family, the community, healthcare systems, try to work together?
Shiyun: So we talk about school, and within school you already have school counsellors and teachers; then family, different family members; and going to hospital. So imagine a young person going through all this. It means they're going through different people. And if the information is not shared, it means you have to repeat your story five, six times to different people. And different people might also react differently to your story. This is one of the biggest complaints I've heard from the youth, especially when counsellors change, and they just have to repeat the story all over again.
Lynette: So are we saying that because there are so many people involved, not everybody is on the same page?
Shiyun: Yes. And the young person is always going back to the dark stages, that's what they say.
Lynette: Yeah, right.
Shiyun: I remember, I think there's one who said it's like Groundhog Day. You keep going back, and you feel like you can't move forward.
TFD: And if you keep going back, I would imagine the youth feels, "I'm in that same rut, I'm not getting out of here, so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing."
Shiyun: Yeah, and the worst is that different people will also react differently to what they share.
Lynette: And I'm also thinking, if the person keeps repeating that same story about themselves over and over again, it becomes the truth. It becomes their version of the truth.
TFD: I get what you're saying.
Shiyun: That, or they will just completely shut down. Even if they are made to go for counselling and therapy, they just go in and say, "I don't know."
TFD: Dealing with the youth, do you get a situation where they feel that the reaction to their issue or their problem is an overreaction?
Shiyun: Yes, definitely. Like I was saying, for them, cutting themselves is a form of relief. But when the adults come in, immediately it leads to, "Oh, this person's trying to kill themselves." And then it goes into a whole hyper-reaction. And for the child, it's just like, "Oh dear, what is happening?"
Balancing Confidentiality and Safety for Young People
Lynette: Talking about adults: oftentimes they have a duty to protect young people, especially when their safety is at risk. So how do we balance that responsibility with a young person's need for privacy and control over their own story?
Shiyun: I think there are three scenarios where we cannot keep a secret. One is harm to the person themselves, another is harm to others, or there's something that's illegal. So we have to tell the young person, "We need to tell somebody. We are concerned about your safety. We are concerned about the safety of others." They will be resistant at first, but I think we should be consistent: "This thing, we need to tell someone. We need someone to come in and help."
We often think of this as breaking confidentiality. But I learned from a principal, he has a good term for it: it's actually expanding the circle of trust. So it's also working with the young person: "We need to tell somebody, I can't help you alone. Is there another trusted adult? Is there another adult I can speak with?" And working it out with the young person to expand this circle of trust.
TFD: That's interesting. It's not a break of confidentiality, it's an increase in the circle of trust. I like that. That's a good concept. Brilliant. Very, very good concept.
Connection Before Correction
TFD: Help is sometimes imposed on young people rather than asked for. Why do adults find it so difficult, and I have my own thoughts on this as I'm asking the question, to sit with a young person in their struggles without immediately trying to solve them?
Shiyun: I think it's a deep fear that something will go wrong, and you want to manage that risk immediately. But there's that whole tension between connection and correction. This is very difficult. You want to correct something immediately. What are your thoughts?
TFD: To me, we're built that way. We're built to solve problems, particularly men. We feel that we have to solve everything that's put in front of us. But what I learned growing up with my kids is that sometimes adults need to step back and not be the adult in the situation, if you can follow me. Don't be the adult in the situation. Be the friend in the situation. So there's no hierarchy. The person doesn't see you as an adult; they just see you as a friend. And I think that is more helpful to a young person than having an adult trying to solve your problems.
Shiyun: Yeah, and I think when we're too quick to solve a problem, we actually solve the wrong problem.
Lynette: Yes. Because we're trying to do everything so quickly. And then you seem to find problem after problem after problem.
Shiyun: And I think the problem, mostly, for young people is this lack of connection with people. So when we immediately go into correcting their behaviour, or put them under a certain surveillance...
Lynette: Then we isolate them.
Shiyun: Yes, and it gets worse. Then we are not identifying the right problem to solve.
How Do You Rebuild Trust With a Young Person?
TFD: If a kid has had a bad situation with a trusted adult, what can the next adult that comes in, or that same adult, do to rebuild trust? What do we need to do?
Shiyun: Like you said, it's to take a step back, especially if they are teenagers. It's like, "I see you're having a bad day. I see that you have this issue. I don't really know what it is, but I'll give you space. But I have to tell you, I see that. And whenever you are ready, you can come and talk to me."
TFD: Do we need to put a time limit on that "whenever you're ready"? I know we say, "Whenever you're ready, come and talk," but that could be three, four months, and too much damage is done in that time. So in our own minds, do we need to put a time limit on that? We may not tell the young person, but in our own minds?
Shiyun: I think it's actually every day: you are looking at the young person, is there further and further withdrawal? And then we can create activities to do together that are not about the issue. Like going out, having dinner, but not trying to preach during dinner. I think people do a lot of that.
How Everyday Activities Can Support Young People
TFD: You've got a club that you run as well, and you've seen how seemingly ordinary interactions can make a massive difference. How do we create an environment where young people can simply exist on a difficult day, without having to explain themselves or make progress? Parents, listen, this is important.
Shiyun: I think doing things that you enjoy doing together, especially what the young person likes doing. For children, a lot of the time it's play. For teenagers it's not so straightforward, because the things they like to play, we don't know how to play as well. But I think something that's very universal is making food. All together. They see a lot of these recipes online, right? Viral food. Make food together. I think that's the best.
TFD: What an idea. That's interesting, because a lot of adults will go, "But making food, the kid will get bored." But viral videos, and following them. So you're getting into their world. That's very interesting.
Why Tell a Mental Health Story Through Comics?
Lynette: So why did you feel Bean's story needed to be told through a graphic memoir rather than a conventional written account?
Shiyun: First is accessibility. I wanted this book to be accessible to young people, and a comic is something that can reach them. And also, through the visuals, you can really experience the emotions more vividly.
TFD: For those of you who don't know, this is the book that we are talking about. It's called Shards of My Life. Who came up with the title?
Shiyun: Bean.
TFD: It's a powerful title. The use of the word "shards".
Lynette: When I read it, I felt like it cut through me. I really felt it. I could feel a stab right in my heart. And it's so well done.
Shiyun: And broken glass, there's something that's very painful about it. But broken glass also reflects light. So there's also hope in it. I think the book also has some of that. It's not all about pain. A lot of that is how we journey with young people as well. Like we were talking about solving problems: a lot of the time, I think where adults come in is really to give hope, and to let the young people see that there's hope.
Lynette: And what can art allow a young person to express that they might not yet have the words to explain?
Shiyun: For Bean particularly, she was very keen to tell her story to the world. And she was an art student, so drawing works for her. But it may not work for everybody. So it's not necessarily art. It's finding what suits a young person in expressing themselves. A lot of them make videos these days.
Helping Young People Tell Their Own Stories
TFD: With this book, whether it is in written form or video format or whatever the format may be, do you see more kids wanting to step forward because of this? Do you hope for that?
Shiyun: Last Friday we had a book launch, and we had ten youths from TTKC, aged eleven to sixteen, who came up and told their own stories. And after the book launch, they read the book and they said, "I want to write my own story too." So I think we can start a writing club from here.
TFD: Let's go back onto Facebook, I want to deal with this. And I'm going to take this seriously: you think you'll be able to start a writing club with this?
Shiyun: I hope so, if there are enough young people who want to do this.
TFD: National Library Board, are you listening? No, I'm serious about this. I'm dead serious about this. National Library Board?
Shiyun: After the event, somebody texted me and said, "Oh, I want to write my story, and the title is Lost and Found." Lost and found: you lost yourself, found yourself. So I told her, think about it, let's explore this.
What Can Parents Do When Their Child Is Struggling?
TFD: Wow. A question on our Facebook: as parents, you see your child on a horse that's hurling itself towards a wall. You'll do anything to stop it, right? If not, what do parents do? It's a hard place to be in when you see your own child spiralling.
Shiyun: I think, first of all, in Dungeons and Dragons there is a line called "check your perception". So first, check whether what you are seeing is a fact, and check with the person who is on the horse whether they are really crashing into the wall.
The other thing is, if the child on the horse is really crashing into the wall, are you ready to unplug? I think a lot of parents are not really able to unplug. It's still, "You have to go to school, you have to perform, you have to do this and that." Are you really able to unplug yourself and the child from the system, and heal?
For Bean, we learned in one of the chapters that she had to go to the hospital, and that was the best time of her life. Because for two weeks she could be in the hospital and just sleep. Unplug. That was the best healing for her.
Lynette: She just wanted to rest.
Shiyun: She just wanted to rest. She was so tired from struggling.
TFD: So life outside didn't give her that opportunity to rest.
Shiyun: Her mum really supported her, and was very much part of the healing journey. But there was still that "you still need to go to school, you still need to perform to expectations". You can't unplug yourself. If we take that metaphor of the horse crashing into the wall, how do you help this person? You have to unplug.
TFD: Can we unplug, and will we even allow it to happen? Especially in the society we now live in, where everything is targeted at an end result that has to be perfect. So it's not easy on the ground.
Lynette: Not easy at all. So stressful. And then they often compare themselves with other people. It just makes things worse.
Shiyun: And if someone goes to school, and everybody knows, from the parents to the teachers, "Okay, we need to give this kid special attention", then it's almost like constant surveillance. So you are even more plugged in, and it's even more stress.
TFD: It's very frightening. As I sit here and listen to you talk, put yourself in the place of that young person sitting on that horse. There's no control. You have absolutely no control, or at least you seem to have no control. And that is very, very frightening for a young mind to have to deal with.
Lynette: And so alone.
TFD: You feel incredibly alone.
What Should Children Know Before Going for Counselling?
Lynette: So I was wondering, what should a young person be told or understand before entering a counselling or treatment process?
Shiyun: We wrote about this in a chapter called "Paradox of a Black Box". Often, the first time children encounter counselling is probably school counselling. You're probably told one day that you're going for counselling, and you don't know what it is. We hear from quite a few primary school students that you go there and talk to somebody, but you don't really know what it is.
So I think one of the important things is that children need to be taught: what is this? Who is your counsellor? What are the questions that you can also ask your counsellor? And most importantly, if something feels a bit off in this black box, who else can you tell? Often, whether they are in primary school or secondary school, they are not told what other avenues there are, if something goes wrong in that room or you feel like something is not right.
TFD: You brought up a very interesting point. I don't think many kids who go for counselling realise that they can ask questions. They think they are there to be questioned, and to give an answer. And even that is wrong, because they're not there to be questioned, they're there to be counselled. So it's more a discussion than a question-and-answer session.
Shiyun: And different counsellors do it very differently. We also hear from different kids. Some kids say, "I go to counselling and it's usually a pleasant experience. I go there and somebody listens to me." But some of them experience it as, "When I go there, somebody keeps asking me about my problem, and I have to solve my problem." And that's different. So again, what is counselling? I think we all need to know, and the children need to know.
TFD: It needs to be explained to them, so at least they can have the right expectations.
Lynette: I feel you also need to explain to the children around the person being counselled what it's for as well, because they also get pressure from their peers.
TFD: Does that happen? I guess kids in the school would find out that one of them is going for counselling?
Shiyun: Oh, you will know that somebody disappeared from class. So they will know. So it's important that the whole school knows what counselling is.
TFD: Yes, I think so.
Shiyun: But you were saying, the people around the children: I think the parents especially need to know what it means that your child is going for counselling, and what your role in this is as well.
TFD: So there should be a discussion then between the school and the parents?
Shiyun: For some cases. In some cases it is a little bit tricky, because it can also involve the parents being the trigger for the child.
TFD: Right. But then I also worry because, Lynette, as a teacher, I'm sure you know, so many parents these days are so protective of their children. Counsellors, I feel, in many instances are going to run up against a wall where parents go, "No, my child doesn't need counselling, there's nothing wrong with my child." Nobody's saying there's anything wrong with your child. Your child just needs some help.
Shiyun: So it seems like it's not just the young people themselves. As a nation, we probably need to understand a bit more about mental health and what counselling is.
TFD: It's a little bit scary.
Listener Question About Mental Health Support
Lynette: We have a question from a listener. It goes like this: "I had a friend who was self-harming and suicidal, who kept going in and out of the long-stay ward at IMH. They would strip-search her and take away her phone, and each time she came out more broken. What else should her parents have done instead of, air quote, throwing her in? She ended up taking her own life."
Shiyun: Oh no. I've heard that some hospitals are actually kinder to young people. I've heard KKH or even NUH treat young people a little bit differently, more kindly. I think they can also look into resources from the social service side first.
TFD: But I also think it's not so much... I don't want to put the blame here on IMH. I think we need to also understand where the person was at that point. What kind of pressures were there from the home? What kind of pressures were there from wherever? Let's continue this conversation on air.
TFD: Lynette had a great question from one of our listeners. Let's go through it again.
TFD: As I was saying, I don't want to put all the blame on IMH, because it depends on what the family situation was, what the community situation was, what was happening with her peers. It's hard. It's very, very hard.
Shiyun: I was also thinking that one of the resources families tend not to want to go to is the Family Service Centres. Because the social workers could come in and advise, and also understand the family situation of the young person, and what resources out there could be better suited.
Finding Solutions With Young People, Not Just for Them
TFD: What do you hope parents, educators, and helping professionals reconsider after reading Shards of My Life? And educators, please get hold of this book.
Shiyun: We're into solving problems, right? We want to make sure our kids are safe. I think the most important thing is: how do we find solutions with them rather than for them? To always involve the young person, and always think about how the help feels like from their receiving end.
Lynette: Okay, cool. If you could ask every parent to change just one thing about how they respond when their child is struggling, what would you ask them to do differently?
Shiyun: Pause. Like we were talking about: check your perception, check your pulses, check your emotions. Let things sink in for a while. Not everything has to be reactive. Give the child some space. Give yourself some space.
Lynette: Oh yeah, that too.
Shiyun: I think that pause is very important. Don't go into this reactive mode. Breathe.
Final Questions: Listening, Coping and Youth Work
TFD: Thank you very much for answering all our questions. We're going to end with our quick-fire questions, which is something we do, and I love doing this because some of the answers are really good. Are you a listener or a problem solver?
Shiyun: I'm a problem solver, but you need to listen well to problem-solve.
TFD: See, that's where I'm a little different. I feel I always have to solve the problem, but sometimes I don't listen completely. So when I solve the problem, I just mess it up.
Lynette: And when you're having a difficult day, what helps you reset?
Shiyun: I tell myself nothing will change if I continue thinking about it. Then I switch off and I go and sleep. And I'm like, okay, it's the next day tomorrow. I need the energy for the next day.
TFD: That's nice. Finally, what's one misconception people have about youth work?
Shiyun: I think, especially with this conversation, that it feels like something that's very painful. Dealing with teenagers. But it's something that actually should be quite fun.
TFD: It should be. We want you to go out and get your copy of Shards of My Life. It's available online at 3pumpkins.co and in-store at Kinokuniya. We're suggesting that parents buy this book for their teenagers. We do remind you that there are references to self-harm in this book, so the book is very, very real. We say a very big thank you to Lin Shiyun for coming in.
Shiyun: Thank you.
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