He was a 20-year-old who was elated to get into the college of his choice in the US. Academically brilliant and a science contest topper at home, his buoyant life state changed in six months. During phone and video calls, his parents sensed no excitement in his voice, he gave one-word responses, his grades started dropping. “Everyone is smarter than me, here I am very average. I don’t have real friends, I cannot connect culturally, am not used to being so lonely….I am invisible and I feel guilty about spending my parents’ money,” he told Mumbai psychologist Urvashi Musale during a teleconsult that he signed up for, looking for a familiar and safe space.
“This is what we call identity collapse. It is a profound, often traumatic, psychological experience that occurs when a person’s core definition of themselves that’s tied to a specific role, relationship, career or belief system disintegrates. It leads to disorientation, feeling lost, emotional numbness, and difficulty navigating daily life,” says Musale who helps many students navigate lives in foreign universities on their own. The death of 22-year-old Karnataka student Saketh Sreenivasaiah in California has stirred anxieties about their mental health status that may be pushing them over the edge. As his friend wrote in a social media post, Saketh had stopped caring for himself, ate and talked less, survived on chips and cookies and even went to class in a bathrobe.
Performance anxiety and the guilt syndrome
Musale says that high achievers are silent sufferers because they cannot align themselves with a sudden shift and their new circumstances. “A student’s identity is performance-based in India. Parental conversations are always about how studies are going, their scores, their college applications, the career they should follow. Maybe even sports if the child is adept at one. It is also about competitiveness, how the boy/girl fares vis-a-vis others in their ecosystem,” she says.
From the parents’ side, there is expectation without preparing themselves with life skills instead. “So, students in a foreign university often experience performance anxiety and carry the guilt of not doing justice to their parents’ hopes and expectations, most importantly the money they have spent to send them to an elite institution,” says Musale. Her patient admitted that he had panic attacks over his classroom scores, that managing his daily life took up much of his time and he was too exhausted to study. And the more he tried to make up for it by staying up nights, the more he got caught in a vicious cycle. “He even grudged downtime and rarely participated in a group activity,” she adds.
Getting back on rails
Musale began with cognitive restructuring, a counselling technique used to identify, challenge, and replace negative or distorted thoughts with more realistic and constructive ones. “It helps individuals recognise that their interpretation of their surroundings is the problem, not the surroundings themselves. This encourages adaptive behaviour,” she says.
Musale shifted the focus from what role he was expected to play to who he was as a person. She then worked on his strengths other than academics. He was very good at doodling and sketches. “Through our conversations, we encouraged him to join an art club on campus. Since that was not about scoring but creativity, he felt accepted when he joined one such group. It is best to develop a hobby, build a support network around that hobby and take the pressure off. From the ‘all or nothing’ thinking, we changed it to ‘all for something.’ That did it,” says Musale.
She further helped the boy develop self-confidence, work on self-improvement, turn away from external validation and celebrate his own milestones. “I made him draw up a tracker on what he was last week to what he is now this week. That restored his confidence,” says Musale.
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She also coached him on conversation skills to neutralise cultural dissonance, explained the foreign dating culture and helped him with classroom communication. “Some students feel the need to be overtly loud to prove they can fit in. I tell them to look like an interested kid, no need to comment. Understand others by being an observer. Learn about the host culture with curiosity instead of comparison. And accept that adjustment takes time,” she says.
A coaching class for parents
Indian parents only have academic discussions with their children. “I tell them to shift gears from performance check-ins to emotional check-ins. Parents tend to have panic-based reactions to their child’s difficulty. Show interest in their non-academic life, give them permission for emotional loneliness, have real conversations, encourage them to talk to you when they are not at their best and certainly don’t talk about money invested or compare with a powerful peer or cousin working in Google or Nvidia,” advises Musale. She even teaches them to spot signs of maladjustment, in-your-face signs that are not taken seriously by new people around them, and recognise signs of loneliness and anxiety. “Missing home culture, food, family and routines can cause loneliness. This feeling is often strongest in the first few months, when they are also being assessed for their academic worth,” she says.
Most institutions offer mental health support and orientation for young foreign students. “A little awareness can go a long way. The boy has now mainstreamed himself, making good grades and most importantly is keeping alternative options open,” says Musale.
