A webinar titled “Staying positive during the Covid-19” was conducted via Zoom by Master of Psychology (Industrial and Organisational Psychology) programme under Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FAS) on 7 November 2020. The webinar saw an attendance of 232 participants. The moderator of the webinar was FAS Department of Psychology and Counselling lecturer Dr Nurul Iman binti Abdul Jalil.

The webinar provided an experiential and activity-based workshop that allowed participants to explore how chronic stress becomes imbedded in the body as “energy residue” that can lead to anxiety, exhaustion and negativity besides empowering them with simple, easy-to-learn methods that can do right away to recharge body and mind with positive energy.

Invited as the speaker was Master of Psychology (Industrial and Organisational Psychology) programme Industry Advisor Karl LaRowe. He is a licensed clinical social worker and is certified as a mental health examiner. He has extensive experience in mental health as a crisis intervention specialist and therapist programme manager, clinical director and expert witness in court commitment hearings. He is also an international speaker. He has conducted over 1,000 workshops for more than 50,000 professionals on three continents on how to transform the stress and exhaustion of compassion fatigue into energy and empowerment.  He is also the Best-Selling Author for the book “You Are Good Enough”. Finally, he is also an HRDF trainer.

After Dr Nurul initiated the talk, Karl took the virtual stage by greeting the participants, “Thank you and welcome all participants to the webinar. It is a pleasure to be here to share with you how we can stay positive during the stressful pandemic.”

He started the presentation by addressing some current situations on how people face stress, anxiety, mental health, etc. during the pandemic. He also listed a few specific Covid-19- related stresses such as financial and job loss, personal and family health, uncertainty about the future, media overload (secondary trauma), Isolation (i.e., physical and emotional), family pressures, disruption to routines and coping with mortality.

Besides, Karl also highlighted stress faced by students particularly the psychological impact of Covid-19 and lockdown among university students in Malaysia. Student stresses such as financial constraints, remote online learning and uncertainty related to their academic performance, graduation and future career prospects were also addressed in his presentation.

In his presentation, Karl also exposed participants to a few Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction methods which included somatic awareness, conscious breathing and mindful movement to discharge the energy residue of stress. He coached and demonstrated how each method can be used to discharge and become positive. Besides, he also covered how to embrace the practice of self-compassion as an effective method for embodying positive energy.

He ended his presentation saying, “We cannot re-write the chapters of history that has already passed, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, but certainly a different normal.”