Generation Grit: Inspiring troubled youth to seek new lease of life

For years, Asher Low felt ugly and worthless. Lifted up by his religious faith and support network, he later founded a charity reaching out to youth with mental health woes, in this series on millennials who beat the odds.

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Growing up, Mr Asher Low felt he was short, ugly and never good enough. His body image woes, plus other problems, led to depression and he tried to kill himself. Today, he is the founder of Limitless, a charity that helps troubled youth.
Mr Asher Low, founder of youth charity Limitless, in his home. Having lived with mental health issues for years, he set up Limitless in 2016, using his own money as well as his wife's. He now takes home less than $1,000 a month, as the charity's fund
Mr Asher Low, founder of youth charity Limitless, in his home. Having lived with mental health issues for years, he set up Limitless in 2016, using his own money as well as his wife's. He now takes home less than $1,000 a month, as the charity's funds are still very limited. ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR

The voices which tell you that you are not good enough may never go away, no matter how much you have defied them.

Mr Asher Low understands that.

From his mid-teens, the 32-year-old social worker felt he was short, ugly and would never amount to anything.

Mr Low suffered from body dysmorphic disorder and would obsess over perceived flaws in his appearance. His body image problems and feelings of worthlessness led to such self-loathing that he tried to take his own life.

Mr Low - whose biblical name, Asher, means "happy" in Hebrew - said: "I could spend three hours doing my hair. I would style it but hated how it looked. So I would wash it and do it all over again. It was an obsession. Popping my pimples was also an obsession.

"When I looked into the mirror, I saw that my nose was not straight, my complexion was not good and I was too short... I felt that everything about me was not good enough and I could never measure up."

It took many years, but he crawled out of that funk, helped by his Christian faith and his support network in church. He started a charity, Limitless, to reach out to youth who struggle with depression and other mental health problems.

Now married, he is the father of a one-year-old son, who gives him much joy.

Yet the abyss is never far away. For him, resilience is a daily battle of the mind.

An only child, Mr Low was very close to his father, a polytechnic lecturer, who died of cancer when Mr Low was just eight years old.

He has many fond memories of their time together. One of his favourites is of the time his family was trekking in the Rocky Mountains in the United States and his dad heard a rustling sound.

"My dad thought it was a bear and told me to run. It turned out to be a very big porcupine and we had a good laugh," he said. "My dad was willing to lay down his life for me. He left a very big hole in my life after he passed away."

Mr Low missed his dad for another reason. Being small and slender, he was bullied in school and called nasty names. A psychiatrist helped him manage his anger, but he wished his father was there to talk to. At home, both he and his mother struggled with their own grief, and their relationship soured.

Mr Low said of his mother, a teacher who later ran a tuition centre: "I was not an easy kid and she was not an easy mum. We both had our own eccentricities."

In Maris Stella Primary School, he found solace in his best friend and started hanging out with the friend's cousin, who was a gang member.

While Mr Low never joined the gang, he began staying out late with them and getting into fights. His results in the Primary School Leaving Examination were well below his expectations, and he was posted to the Normal (Academic) stream.

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This affected his self-esteem even further. On top of being short and skinny, he thought, he was stupid.

But it was a blessing in disguise, Mr Low said, because he found good friends and nurturing teachers at St Andrew's Secondary. With their support, he could finally focus on his studies and his grades improved.

He scored four points in his best three subjects in the N-Level examinations and was the school's top student at that level. He also got into the popular Business Management course at Nanyang Polytechnic.

What no one knew was that while his academics had improved, his mental well-being had not. He continued to struggle with feelings of worthlessness and depression, but kept the pain to himself.

"I had an inferiority complex," he said. "My friends teased me about my height, which I laughed off while I was really hurting inside."

He began suffering panic attacks, finding solace only in sleep. Several times, he sat on the window ledge and contemplated suicide.

Mr Low said his Christian faith kept him out of bad situations and stopped him from ending his life.

His tumultuous inner life made him decide, after he got his business diploma, that the corporate world was not for him.

Instead, he wanted to make an impact on young people, which spurred him on to earn a degree in social work at Monash University in Australia. While studying to be a social worker, he also finally received counselling help.

In 2016, he founded Limitless, a charity that reaches out to troubled young people. "I knew there were youth out there struggling, but they wouldn't seek help due to the stigma of seeking help or for fear of being ridiculed. So we have to go out to find them."

He had planned to help gangsters and school dropouts turn over a new leaf. But he found that where help was most needed was with depression and other mental health woes, which get too little attention.

He decided to make mental health a key focus for Limitless.

His friend, tattoo artist Deborah Seah, 33, a volunteer at Limitless, pointed to Mr Low's passion for helping troubled youth and the sacrifices he has made to get the charity going.

In the organisation's first year of operations, he did not draw a salary. Whatever funds were raised went towards paying the organisation's only other staff member, a counsellor. He and his wife Joanna, 35, pumped in close to $10,000 of their own money to get Limitless going.

The couple survived on his savings and Joanna's income as a senior dietitian. Mr Low also teaches Krav Maga, a form of self-defence, to supplement the family's income.

Today, he takes home less than $1,000 a month, as the charity's funds are still very limited. It gets by on donations and funding from organisations such as the Tote Board and National Youth Council for some of its programmes.

Limitless conducts youth outreach and counselling. It takes its campaign, It's OK To Be Not OK, to schools, where it talks to students about mental well-being and teaches them how to talk to friends who are struggling. The message for students is: Don't be ashamed to seek professional help.

Mr Low says his relationship with his mother has improved over the years and that the birth of his son has lit up his life.

Yet the feelings of inadequacy and depression never really disappear, he said.

"My life is pretty okay right now. I like where I am. But the voices telling you that you suck never stop. You just learn how to drown them out so that it doesn't affect you," he said. "You learn how to cope."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 10, 2019, with the headline Generation Grit: Inspiring troubled youth to seek new lease of life. Subscribe