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From long hours to living costs, burnout is becoming a defining struggle for young Malaysians. Medical doctor Dr Loshseni Gunasegaran and Emotion Pod Founder Koh Su Yen break down the pressures and the structures needed to support youth wellbeing.
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00:00hello and welcome to it's about youth with me fake one burnout is hitting young Malaysians
00:13harder than ever especially among employees particularly Millennials and Gen Z's who are
00:19reporting that they are affected now between workplace demands and the realities of our
00:25economy many are feeling stretched thin and overwhelmed what's really driving burnout
00:31among our young Malaysians and how can we build or create a system that really supports youth
00:38well-being joining me on the show today to discuss this further is Dr. Locheni Gunasegaran she's a
00:44medical doctor with Pejabat Kesehatan Jelebuh as well as Ko Suyen the founder of Emotion Pod thank
00:49you both of you for joining me today thank you for inviting me pleasure having you in
00:54the studio to talk about something so important something that's really affecting a lot of youth
00:58in the country today now it's also burnout itself is just something that's been talked about more
01:04than ever and as young people are juggling things such as work side hustles responsibilities at home
01:11and more I wanted to know firstly from the both of you in your view why do you think this issue is so
01:17urgent today Sian should we start with you yes it's it didn't came to me important until I started
01:28conducting burnout workshops and it's being oversubscribed and for me personally I went
01:34through lots of episodes of burnout during my whole entrepreneurship journey which is entering the third year
01:39and I realized that burnout impact our life in so many ways we can't function we feel exhausted we we
01:48can't maximize our potential and youth nowadays they don't even know how to spot their own burnout and they
01:56cannot or couldn't regulate their own emotions I would say and it's impacting their family their job hunting their career their academy
02:08everything everything yeah everything and they can't find the exact words to describe their own emotion state which is burnout
02:18and when they came to my workshop then they realized that oh I'm actually having a silent burnout or I'm quite quitting
02:25in office because of burnout so all these things got got me to think that actually this is very common
02:33and it's more common than I thought okay I'd like to get into the factors a little bit later on but Loshini what do you think
02:42why is it such an urgent issue today okay adding on to what Suyin was saying to me burnout was actually
02:48working longer hours I think every job has hours of working with more than 24 or 36 on calls
02:57and night shifts so this hours actually has one of the on calls has brought me to feel the burnout
03:06where you don't skip your meals you overwork but I always feel the only thing you can overcome the burnout
03:16you're having your mentor a very good working colleagues your friends and family that support system
03:23actually means so much to us but we need to voice out we need to inform them what are we going through
03:29every and every burnout and also not only working I think family expectations as job interviews and also getting
03:39other effect what you call that social media is also one of the burnouts for our current youth at the moment actually
03:48yeah there's this sort of vicious cycle of comparing yourself with others especially when it comes to social media right
03:55I'm curious that you did mention your job is or being in your industry is something that is a lot of emotional pressure
04:02and intense long hours what are some signs of burnout that you see especially among healthcare workers
04:09you have a lot of sleep sleep sleep disturbance definitely not only emotionally you are down
04:16also physically severe headache you have working colleagues who fall sick because of skipping meals
04:26not having a proper good eight hours of sleep so these are all the signs and symptoms of having burnouts at the moment actually
04:34and your job is to take care of other sick people how can you take care of others when you yourself are feeling so overwhelmed
04:41I think when I have my burnout to me I always go back to the purpose where I started why was it a medical doctor
04:49so to serve the community and to divert my burnouts I usually get engaged in youth activities
04:56my leadership program and empowerment programs so that how I divert myself purpose I go back to my
05:03purpose I go back to my purpose and if this is not going to work for me definitely I go to my colleagues
05:10I think sharing and talking to each other actually make us feel very much better
05:15you're not alone in this
05:16yes we all are not alone in this no matter what you need a friend to lean on and a family if you need to go to them too
05:25so the emotional awareness is also something that you you've tapped into but it's not necessarily accessible
05:32or not everyone is aware of it
05:34Suyan prior to the recording we were also talking you've experienced burnout yourself as well
05:39can you share a little bit about what that period looks like for you and what had contributed to that
05:46wow
05:48a heavy question
05:49it's actually quite an important period for me to actually acknowledge my own burnout
05:59that happened when I was transitioning out from my corporate life to full-fledged full-time entrepreneur
06:11it's actually a lot of shift in mindset but I wasn't aware so I was still ramping up as though like using
06:22or leveraging my own corporate experience to run my own startup which is totally not workable
06:28because when you're running your own startup you basically going to chain yourself to business do A to Z
06:35yeah yeah first of all second is my mentors back then they didn't own business so they were trying to advise me
06:45based on their own corporate experience which I took in I realized that it didn't work
06:52and my inner circle collapse my social support system collapse my value in life got to be revised
07:03that period took me almost six months and I was so quiet about it because I was doing a lot of internal realignment
07:11ask keep on asking myself like what Loshini has mentioned why why did I take this leap
07:19why why I started this company called Emotionport why am I championing mental when I couldn't even do it on my own
07:27then I realized that it is so important to step up and jump out and think out of the box and look at my own nervous system
07:41how am I reacting to stressor how am I reacting to things that I'm not familiar with because a lot of youth in Malaysia
07:49what I realized are people that came forward they are not used to handling uncertainties
07:55they are not used to handling emotional difficulties
07:59that is what I realized about myself and I tapped into my own burnout experience
08:07and guess what the first engagement after this period of burnout of mine
08:13I actually conducted a burnout workshop and that burnout workshop wasn't anything clinical or site based
08:23it's more on I'm here I'm sharing my own experience I'm willing to be vulnerable and whoever came
08:30they tapped into my own wisdom and we actually started building on it and form a collective wisdom
08:37yeah as to how to tackle burnout because no one is alone and no one is and I learn and what I was trying to do during the whole burnout workshop was to create a sense of social connectedness
08:51sense of community that they are not alone their problem is not so hard to tackle and we are all here to support
08:59once you put down your judgment your critics your inner critics especially because you do not know most of the time you are actually condemning yourself inside
09:09yeah we are we are our own harshest critics
09:11correct yes yeah that's that's my thing for this yeah
09:15well thank you so much for sharing that and I think it's great that you are creating such a safe space for everyone to be vulnerable and to explore their emotions like this
09:25in that sense then coming from your workshops could you share a little bit about how emotional regulation can be used as a very practical tool for people to prevent burnout in the first place
09:37so based on my own experience I have also created this 4A methodology
09:43uh emotional regulation to me to emotion pod uh surrounds this 4A's uh 4A's yeah correct first awareness yeah second is uh acknowledgement uh third is uh uh acceptance the fourth is action but we always fail to do the first step which is awareness no one will just sit down
10:11there and realize that if i am surely very triggered with this so and so's person's statement but why
10:17they seldom i mean most people seldom sit down and ask why why am i being triggered why is this so um triggering to me
10:29a lot of people fail to answer that question but once they uh break through have this breakthrough then they can start doing the second and third and fourth A's
10:39is in uh in uh in their own life yeah so to me emotional regulation is how you modulate
10:45your own emotion back to your baseline yeah instead of having two extra of feeling angry or two extra of feeling joy
10:53is how you being zen yeah yeah in life yeah that's that's for me uh maybe you can actually add on as well
10:59yeah i think i'm agree to what i was saying was saying actually um being the question back again was
11:05actually on emotional regulation yeah so uh meeting a person i mean talking to them actually makes them
11:13feel better because you are in that phase of burnout you have felt how it feels i think advising another person
11:21to know that your experience actually makes them feel better yeah and uh you you've talked about how you you've
11:29confided in your colleagues understanding that we're not alone in this everyone is facing burnout to certain extent or
11:36they are able to relate to these sort of struggles um the fact that it is so prevalent what do you think is it something to do with our
11:43systems or our environment as a whole that's contributing to to youth burnout in Malaysia um rather than saying the system maybe i think every occupation has the burnout
11:57you might have a medical doctor engineer anything you know you have long working hours but i feel that it's on us how do we tackle the emotional and burnout
12:09um always have a option to think back the purpose why are you doing it find a solution how to overcome it like say you're having a very bad day
12:23you have worked very hard for 20 24 to 32 hours of working come back always reflect uh take time calm yourself down
12:34um always uh maybe you can start journaling do some journaling make you feel better always so that that are some ways you can do to
12:43actually overcome your burnouts as busy working adult yeah yeah because we won't have the time to you know go for shopping
12:51some people feel better going for shopping going out meeting someone because you have your daily work to be done the next day you have to
12:56get back to work on eight eight o'clock in the morning so maybe by sitting down and journaling and also uh speaking to a good friend of you
13:03sharing your or your burnouts with them make sure you always feel better so making time out of a busy schedule even just for a few
13:10minutes to do something as simple as journaling or calling a friend um i'm curious though that uh so yeah and what do you
13:17think is is those kind of um well-being or routines is it still seen as something more of as a bonus or is it do you think it should be
13:26made more of a priority um and what does a healthy support system really look like realistically
13:33the golden rule is always take care of yourself first and don't see well-being uh as a luxury uh thing in your life
13:46it should be a must-have in your life because if a person failed to take care of their own well-being
13:54they cannot function yeah properly they cannot maximize their potential and they have a lot of doubts
14:00self-limiting belief or even periodically uh crashing which is not going to be very very sustainable in
14:08in anything they want to pursue uh and what i think is a lot of people they do not have this awareness of
14:17their own emotion they do not prioritize their own well-being um maybe because of how they brought up
14:23how we are being brought up how our culture shape us to always achieve to be uh result driven
14:30go driven yeah even even when you score 95 um where's the right correct yes that actually happened to me
14:39yeah so just sharing from my experience so a lot of people have this perfectionism in them
14:46tendency let's let's not label people as oh you're a perfectionist no we all have the tendency to be a
14:54perfectionist uh person right uh what i would always suggest people is there's no right or wrong there's no
15:02fixed thing to do but you should have your own ritual you should actually come up with a set of
15:08well-being uh practices to anchor yourself to ground yourself to tell yourself that you are the most important
15:16person in the world if you fail to take care of yourself how you're going to take care of people you love
15:22or how you're going to have the capacity to pursue your passion to your to function uh at work right
15:30so that is what i did for myself uh i have me time uh 5 30 to 11 a.m is my me time um i will do a lot of
15:40reading i cook you know i meditate i journal that's very important to me to actually function and to
15:49contribute back to the communities that i want to serve or i'm serving right now yeah that's that's
15:55for me i mean maybe no she can share yeah so just adding on to whatever she was saying right journaling is
16:01the number one and also me time i think me time is very important to every youth nowadays because they've
16:07been juggling with work with family expectations and also uh social media expectation nowadays everything is on
16:15social media a child excels in education uh in top job opportunities everything is social media see it's
16:21another youths oh why i can't do that that it's also a breakdown for every youth i feel so we think we
16:29should reduce the comparison of uh you among the youths yeah do your best you don't have to beat the
16:35best of everything do what you can do what you're capable of doing yeah okay i think on the flip side i
16:41also would like to add that a lot of people didn't cultivate the ability to validate their own
16:49uh achievement recognize their own uh small wins right um we should have that we should not get external
16:59validation constantly because if we are constantly yearning for the external validation where's the end
17:05where's the end why not start from today like telling yourself i'm enough i woke up i clean up i wash up
17:15i'm heading out it's good enough because for people who suffer or experiencing burnout these are all the
17:23things that is going to take extra effort and no one was there or he or she is not aware that burnout
17:29we're not getting out of burnout takes effort but they've failed to recognize that the first thing
17:36first is to reduce the inner critic yeah yeah that they they these things that you've mentioned they
17:43sound simple enough it's sort of like a mindset shift the self-affirmation positive um affirmations to
17:50ourselves i'm curious then what's stopping us what you know if if this is what can help towards alleviating
17:58burnout what's stopping you from beginning these routines in the first place fear to me do you
18:04think so actually i would agree to see fear fear of doing it yeah it's like facing it yeah because
18:11it's not familiar and it's like an uncomfortable feeling it's an unpredictable situation well in that
18:17actually i think the starting for a youth to do it it's a bit tough so i think exposure i would say
18:24exposure to overcoming mental health is also a very uh it's been not very common among the youths
18:31nowadays as well i would say normalize well-being uh conversations among your friends families i know
18:39this is not common in malaysia uh that is also one of my goal as the emotion port founder is i want
18:45people to talk about their own well-being constructively healthily in the mama because we have so many
18:52mamaks right and everyone goes to mama and i want to hear people talk about it when i pass by not not
19:00to type into their personal life but actually to normalize it don't see it as a taboo and and no
19:08judgment because everyone needs support and we need to function as a collective um group to excel and to
19:17forge forward to adopt best practices in mental health uh area in life yeah and speaking about uh
19:25best practices i'm moving a little bit more to that positive affirmation part i just wanted to
19:30acknowledge that the both of you were selected as two out of just five malaysian um fellows under this
19:36year's asian youth fellowship congratulations on that um tell me a little bit about your experience
19:42from the fellowship what stood out for you and were there any particular lessons when interacting with
19:48fellows from other asian member states were were there any lessons you think malaysia can adopt when
19:53it comes to youth well be well youth well-being or building resilience thank you for the actually um
20:01among 100 nominees i think the five of us were selected myself suyan uh we had shane we had ra brian
20:08also shuffling yes so five hours represented malaysia for this program asian youth fellowship
20:14organized by the um singapore international foundation and also our national youth council of
20:22singapore a very beautiful program for the youths i think we are all very gifted to be one of the
20:28nominees and also participant in the program uh throughout the whole it was an eight days program but then
20:35four days in singapore and four days in malaysia intense yes fully intense program yes i think our
20:42program starts at eight till ten thirty eight fifteen yeah very particular the timing it's 15 up to 10
20:49night or more 14 hour days for you right but trust me when uh it was a worth program i think every youth
20:59should go for this i think they spoke on leadership on sustainability sustainability and also we had very
21:07good speakers coming in from malaysia and also from singapore to encourage the youth on lots of lots of
21:13community programs and also our leadership programs it's a very beautiful program on top of it i would like
21:21to add on um i find the informal small talks among the fellows are the most useful one uh for me personally
21:31because i was there i was yearning to understand what's happening with the other countries especially
21:38when it comes to well-being issues how they are tackling how their community is uh looking into it
21:45then i realized that well-being or poor of awareness of emotion um literacy is lacking it's not only
21:54malaysia it's a shared chat yeah it's a shared challenge uh first of all second is a lot of
21:59countries are tackling it differently what i realized the most common thing is to build a community
22:06they are so willing to even travel like uh eight hours to the kampong
22:12to talk to the kids about what is emotional about and the i think b40 challenges is also quite common
22:20among all the aSEAN countries actually we share the same challenges i think all the youths actually made
22:26in so much of effort to travel all the way to the kampong area they go to the rural areas to share what
22:33about among the uh regarding mental health issues you know taking up challenges like teaching education for
22:39them so a lot of them actually done a wonderful job among all the other participants of the aSEAN
22:46program this and uh this aSEAN youth fellowship has given us opportunity to tap into the collective
22:53wisdom i'm constantly using this word because it's so important um to see or to actually reference from
23:00others how best we can lead our community and how best we can leverage on each other's resources so at the
23:08last day of the event we actually had a session where all the fellows came together to talk about
23:15how we can help each other in this region which is so important and what we notice is a lot of people
23:24they are so good at doing their own stuff and we should actually look into other people's leadership
23:32and how best we can um tap into this collective wisdom and lead our own communities yeah it's not a
23:38competition but rather we it is not we're working together correct it's a collaboration collaboration
23:43yeah and yeah i like how you pointed out the the inclusivity inclusivity part of it ensuring that
23:50nobody gets left behind traveling to rural areas um getting the b40 community involved in all of this
23:57um in that sense i think that really aligns with aSEAN's theme for the year right inclusivity and
24:03sustainability where do you think um or how can regional collaboration here that collective wisdom
24:09you talked about suyan how can that really help to build a more healthier or a more supportive
24:14environment for young people i uh let me take this uh question i think in the near five to ten years
24:23um moving forward what i hope is the level of emotion uh literacy will be increased uh progressively
24:34with a lot of community initiative and second is what i hope is there's a um improved uh policy making for
24:46well-being industry because i i do believe uh policy has certain power in changing people's life
24:55and i want that to um be very inclusive include how a policy can make sure our education syllabus includes
25:08well-being topics so that we can start planting seeds or future generations are more aware of their own
25:14emotions and could actually um increase their own ability to develop their own self yeah correct from young
25:23so that i yeah that was what i realized our education system didn't include that much
25:30i wasn't normalized what are your thoughts i think i agree to what suyan was saying actually as down the
25:36road about five to ten years time it should be normalized mental health and youth well-being should be
25:42normalized and i think we should decrease the cases of mental health issues among the youth and also
25:49adults yeah it should be normalized like speak out come out come over you have any issues find someone
25:55speak to them find a solution uh no harm to have breakout uh burnouts but actually speak to someone to help
26:02you out how to get things uh move moving forward actually yeah keeping things open without fear of judgment
26:10and all coming together to judge anyone actually yeah or label anyone yeah labeling is also a big thing
26:16among the youth i think that can be a whole yes but um we've actually run out of time for today but
26:24thank you so much to both of you for sharing your insights i really appreciate it congratulations again on
26:29being part of this year's asian youth fellowship i've been speaking to loshini gunasegaran a medical doctor with
26:35pejabat kesihatan jelebu and kosu yen founder of emotion pod this has been it's about youth with me
26:42fae kwan thank you for watching and good night
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