How anxiety has many Hong Kong Gen Zs in its grip, and the ways they are breaking free

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How anxiety has many Hong Kong Gen Zs in its grip, and the ways they are breaking free

While other emotions come to terms with Anxiety being a normal and necessary feeling for Riley, the film hints at the consequences when Anxiety becomes so persistent and severe that she completely takes over Riley’s mind.

Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, takes control in the animated movie Inside Out 2. Photo: Pixar/Disney/TNS

In real life, anxiety is the body’s response to stress and feelings of fear and dread. And in Hong Kong, Generation Z is experiencing more than its fair share of those.

Minal Mahtani, the founder and chief executive of mental health charity OCD & Anxiety Support Hong Kong (OCDAHK), sees this at first hand in her work. The most recent survey by insurance company AXA of mind health and well-being, released in September 2023, showed that, among Gen Zs in Hong Kong, only one in 10 respondents said they were “flourishing”.
Minal Mahtani is a psychologist and founder of OCD and Anxiety Support Hong Kong.
In addition, 67 per cent of Gen Z respondents reported experiencing moderate to extreme stress levels in the past year, compared with 53 per cent of all respondents.

When overwhelming feelings of anxiety persist for three months to six months causing high levels of distress and disruption to daily living and functioning, the condition may be considered as an anxiety disorder, Mahtani says.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact causes of anxiety, as it can be linked with other issues such as traumas and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), says Katrine Cheng, a clinical counsellor in Hong Kong.
Without warning, “the person may feel a surge of acute fear, anxiety or worries of losing control or even dying”, she says.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), symptoms of anxiety disorders may include trouble concentrating or making decisions; feeling irritable, tense or restless; nausea or abdominal distress; heart palpitations; sweating, trembling or shaking; trouble sleeping; and having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom.

About four per cent of the world’s population has an anxiety disorder – 301 million people in 2019 – and of those only about a quarter seek help to treat it, the WHO says.

Katrine Cheng is a clinical counsellor in Hong Kong. Photo: Katrine Cheng

Cheng offers emotionally focused therapy that allows a patient to enter the “foreign, strange, dangerous and terrifying places” of the mind with their therapist through in-depth conversations, enabling them to revise anxiety-inducing thoughts.

Mahtani is a proponent of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), a form of talk therapy that allows anxiety sufferers to identify, analyse and evaluate negative patterns of thinking. It prevents them from jumping to conclusions and coming up with worst-case scenarios, to looking at factual evidence for the most realistic scenario.

Resourceful Gen Zs are also finding solutions themselves.

Louisa Wong was diagnosed with anxiety at school. Photo: Louisa Wong

Louisa Wong is a 21-year-old student and poet. Her parents had been living as expats in the United States before they returned to Hong Kong to raise Wong. The family returned to the US in 2022 for Wong’s college education.

At the time, the need to adapt to a completely new environment worsened Wong’s anxiety.

She was recently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which shows up as having unstable interpersonal relationships and a distorted sense of self. This forced her to take leave from the Columbia University School of General Studies in New York, which is known for taking in non-traditional students who need more flexibility in their learning.

Wong has, since 2020, posted hundreds of vulnerable poems on her Instagram account @louisaspoetryy and has had her work published in books. Maintaining an online audience of nearly 80,000 followers often weighs on her mind.

Wong regularly posts raw and candid poems documenting her struggles with anxiety on her account @louisaspoetryy. Photo: @louisaspoetryy

At one point, she “fell out of love with posting online, fell back in love with it, [and] felt like a failure for losing followers and traction”, she says.

Wong has relied on writing and art to regulate her emotions. Her poems exude rawness and explore complex themes of childhood, maturity and life philosophies.

“Writing has been such a saviour for me throughout all of this because it is somewhere I can be free,” she says. “And if I choose to share it, it is not to garner attention or write the story of my life, but to let others use it as an outlet for their own emotions.”

Minal Mahtani demonstrates a mudra designed to “open” the heart and tap into feelings of compassion and affection. Mudras are hand gestures from Indian classical dancing. Photo: Minal Mahtani

For nine years, Kaul has been learning an Indian classical dance known as kathak, and she enjoys its therapeutic effect. She started developing an interest in psychology three years ago, and learned about Dance Movement Therapy (DMT). It promotes physical functioning, emotional well-being, cognitive health and social connectedness.

Vani Kaul teaches Dance Movement Therapy during OCDAHK’s support group meetings. Photo: Minal Mahtani
OCDAHK has offered a safe environment for her to explore this passion. Under Mahtani’s guidance and encouragement, they planned a DMT sequence that included hand gestures called mudras which are used in classical Indian dancing, which have been shown to relieve insomnia and feelings of lethargy, anxiety and depression.
For Mahtani, a certified yoga teacher, DMT is about moving the body in a way that feels right for the individual, doesn’t cause physical pain and allows the individual to be self-aware about how they feel throughout the process.

“Trapped emotions are stored in different parts of our body, and through movement these can get released which one should embrace and not be afraid of,” she says.

Kaul has found comfort in OCDAHK’s non-judgemental environment. Mahtani’s work has had a meaningful impact not just on Kaul but also on the community that she serves.

Wong is thankful for her family’s support during her recovery.

Wong is grateful for the support of her friends and family. Photo: Louisa Wong

She now knows, through self-awareness and reflection, how to recognise whether her anxieties are rational or irrational, a common indicator of whether a person has recovered from anxiety disorder.

Wong shares advice for those who are struggling with anxiety: “Being young creates a form of tunnel vision [about one’s future path] that is very difficult to break through.

“But I promise you, in life, there is so much more than the pain you may be feeling now. You have to believe in it because belief is what carries people through darkness.”

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