By Tay Jing Xuan (20S03C)
Photos courtesy of Ms Chua Kah Hwee (counsellor at RGC) and Raffles Photographic Society

When you step into the school compound, you might find that thoughts about grades, competitions and relationships start to plague you.

Let’s take it a step further. Do they already race through your mind at home, in the middle of lunch, or even out with friends? For some, the answer is most likely a yes. School brings with it tremendous amounts of stress to perform well in all aspects of our lives. Who wants to have a ‘U’ blemish their results slips, or to have a record they held broken by someone else? There is no respite from the multitude of stressors hounding us day by day, and some might find it hard to cope.

However, for some, this becomes more sinister. What seems to be a perfectly normal fear grows uncontrollable—insomnia hits out of nowhere when you were sleeping just fine the night before, or a small cry suddenly turns into a breathless, crushing panic. There can be no trigger because this fear has taken root so deeply that it is ever-present, even without you knowing.

As these worries turn into something more sinister, they change one’s behaviour along the way. Soon, the way one treats the stressors in their lives transforms into something else.

But what is this “something else”?