When 26-year-old Ron Yap was in secondary school, he’d spend hours at the void deck thinking over every social situation he was in, fretting over what he said or did.
He was obsessed with ‘perfection’. This manifested in a compulsion to empty his bladder by going to the toilet multiple times every night.
His actions caused friction with people around him, and his anxiety only increased his sense of alienation.
But upon discovering an Instagram post about obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, he realised what he had. After receiving an official diagnosis in 2019, he decided to create content around mental health. Hence, @mentalhealthceo was born.
Despite his tender age, Mr Yap is now a freelance coach, consultant, content creator, and hopefully soon, a counsellor and published author.
We recently caught up with him to learn more about his story. Here’s what he has to say.
Mr Yap’s father passed away when he was just three, and his mother had to raise the family as a single parent thereafter.
He says this brought about many more financial and personal issues that manifested in anxiety. For example, he’d sit at the void deck after school for two to three hours, replaying social situations in his head.
Mr Yap would also find himself going to the toilet constantly, sometimes for four to five hours before going to bed. Needless to say, this interfered with his sleep and life.
Only in 2019, while browsing Instagram, did he realise he exhibited many symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and eventually sought treatment at the Institute of Mental Health.
Though many people with OCD are depicted as clean freaks or germaphobes, Mr Yap says OCD can manifest as completely different based on the person.
“The reality is that I have a condition. To have that label, in some sense, was a weight off my shoulders,” he shared.
Knowing he had OCD also helped his family understand what he had and that it was not something he had control over, allowing them to accept him better.
He shares that he is lucky as his family has been non-judgmental about his condition, a luxury not everyone has.
Like with so many side pursuits, Mr Yap found that his hobby of sharing posts related to mental health eventually became his main focus, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
At the time, the Nanyang Technological University communications graduate was on a university exchange in the United States when the pandemic forced the authorities to call everyone back to Singapore.
This gave him more time to create content surrounding mental health. He started studying other content creators to see what works.
With mental health becoming a huge focus amid the global lockdowns, Mr Yap saw his Instagram posts on Mental Health CEO gain traction, though it took a while to build a following.
Source: @mentalhealthceo on Instagram
But with the traction came the detractors. Mr Yap received several comments questioning his credentials to talk about mental health.
“One comment I got, verbatim, was ‘You have no right to make content because you’re not a professional’,” he shared.
But he countered, “That’s not true because anyone can make mental health content, including survivors with lived experience.”
Yet, realising the need to upskill himself, Mr Yap enrolled himself in a Graduate Certificate in Counselling in January this year, with the eventual goal of getting a Master’s in Counselling.
He also sought advice from other mental health content creators to ensure his posts were more accurate.
When Mr Yap finds himself losing motivation, he turns to all the positive feedback from followers about how they’ve learned more about themselves through his posts.
One challenge Mr Yap had to grapple with as a mental health content creator was being too available to his followers.
After he put on his bio that he was available as a listening ear, he received messages from others about their issues and woes.
But he soon found that there was only so much he could do as a person living on the other side of the world.
He also found himself developing a “saviour’s complex”, thinking that because he could help someone before, he would be able to “save” others too.
Of course, this was not the case. It made him realise he had to be responsible for himself before others and, more importantly, avoid saying things that may worsen the situation, given how delicate they can be.
Now, instead of giving advice or trying to solve their problems, he tries to direct people to other resources that may be more qualified or suited to their needs.
While @mentalhealthceo may not be a direct source of income for Mr Yap. Still, his reach has several uses, not least in helping other mental health content creators, especially professionals without marketing experience, reach out to more people.
His coaching, he says, constitutes most of his current income.
But plugging off from work has been one of Mr Yap’s biggest challenges, which the mental health community terms “productivity guilt”.
“The idea is that with the time you are spending relaxing, you could be . . . earning money, or in the service industry especially, you could be helping people,” he explained. “This makes you feel selfish, like you are shirking your responsibility.”
“But the benefit of being in that mental health space is that there are many messages about self-care — you have to take care of yourself to help others.”
Without a boss to report to, Mr Yap has to find a way to manage his own time and ensure he does not procrastinate too often — especially in a work-from-home world where social and work lives tend to blend.
Often, he finds himself working into the wee hours as many of his clients are based across the world in the United States or Europe.
To counter this, he has rented space at WeWork to ensure separation between his work and home environment. He allocates Saturdays as his rest days — watching YouTube and gaming videos to relax.
Meanwhile, he reserves Sundays and Mondays for research to create more content on his Instagram page.
Though he graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree last year, Mr Yap isn’t eager to work in a corporate job for now as he feels he can do and earn more while self-employed.
It’s not the easiest endeavour, of course, but he has been busy ensuring he has the income to continue pursuing his goal of being able to help as many people as possible.
It does not help that being in a single-parent family, he still holds remnants of a scarcity mindset. Luckily, he has a supportive community that reminds him to prioritise self-care.
Though he is a one-man show for now, he knows he’ll need to hire more people to expand his business, and he hopes to eventually offer one-stop solutions for clients to grow and manage social media brands focusing on mental health.
He’s learned a valuable lesson — that he cannot do everything alone.
Mr Yap holds a passion for filmmaking and still hopes that he’ll be able to pursue his dream of becoming a director in future.
But for now, the fulfilment of helping others as others have helped him through his mental health journey takes precedence.
While once Mr Yap fretted over every social situation, he is now equipped with the skills and confidence to navigate them. And he believes others can get the help he has too.
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Featured image by MS News and adapted from Mental Health CEO on Instagram. Photography by Brad Lee.
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