Help, my teen has social anxiety

Experts say parents play a crucial role in helping their adolescents to overcome the condition

- Venessa Lee Senior Correspondent

In secondary school, Ms Sara Cher was far from a shrinking violet. She asked questions in class and was an active member of the drama club, her co-curricular activity.

When she started experiencing social anxiety and panic attacks in Secondary 3 — sometimes slipping out of lessons to hole up in the school toilets for more than an hour - people around her thought she was “faking it”, recalls Ms Cher.

She is now a 23-year-old undergraduate in early childhood education at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.

Feeling that she was “on the outside of a lot of conversations” and lacking a sense of belonging in school, she had physical symptoms such as tightness in her chest and a sensation of not being able to breathe.

She says: “There would be a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. I felt like people were staring at me.”

Ms Cher channelled her teen experiences as she prepared for her professional acting debut in a play about how the teenage brain works, titled Brainstorm.

The production in October is by Gateway Arts, a theatre company for young people. It tackles issues such as teens’ relationships with their parents and peers, gaming, aspirations, academic pressure, fear of rejection and anxiety about socialisation.

Her fellow cast member Matthias Teh, 26, has also experienced social anxiety, particularly in his late teens and early 20s. He sometimes endured moments of feeling lost, awkward or depressed as he was finding his footing in the theatre industry and going through national service.

Mr Teh, a freelance performer, theatre educator and bartender, says: “A lot of my experiences became that bridge between me and my teen character. Theatre-making has been a good opportunity to take negative experiences and alchemise them into something beautiful and, hopefully, helpful in the world.”

WHY PARENTING MATTERS