Exam anxiety: what to do about exam anxiety

Exams are very irritating, but a kind of necessary evil for teachers to check that you have absorbed the material properly. Unfortunately, an exam is also a kind of snapshot in time, and if you are having a bad day, it may not look so good to your teachers. If you also suffer from anxiety instead of being able to work with your knowledge in your normal mood, this can be paralyzing[1]. So what do you do then?

If you suffer from exam anxiety, you are very afraid that you will fail a particular exam. In extreme cases, this can even lead to thoughts of suicide and causes a great deal of stress.

Where does exam anxiety come from?

Exam anxiety comes from multiple factors. The importance of an exam is often high. Passing or failing, for example, ensures that you may or may not get a diploma or may or may not be able to move on to the next school year. The consequences of that, in turn, can have a lot of impact on your life. So it is not so very strange that you consider passing this exam important, but considering something important does not immediately mean that you should become very afraid of it.

If your environment has many expectations about how you will do on an exam, this can cause anxiety. For example, if your parents tell you to pass "or else" this can trigger anxiety.

In addition, you may associate all sorts of values with the exam. For example, you might feel it enhances your image, earns you brownie points with those around you, or leads to being treated with more respect if you pass a certain exam. These kinds of expectations and concerns can trigger anxiety responses in your body.

However, those values and thoughts may not necessarily be accurate. It’s therefore important to take a closer look at them so that you can associate healthy values and thoughts with exams.

Social pressure to perform well for an exam is one of the main reasons why people get exam anxiety.

Another reason may be time constraints. If you don't feel you have enough time to prepare for the exam, or if the exam itself only gives you a short amount of time, this can also cause exam anxiety[2].

Exam fear medication

Actually, there is no medication that specifically helps with exam anxiety. Besides, this is also only a temporary solution and you can get numerous side effects from medication that are not always helpful either.

By the way, a little anxiety can be good for your school performance. It's not meant to be totally unnerving to you, which may cause you to not think at all during your exam because it just doesn't interest you anymore.

Anxiety doesn't always have to affect your school performance either[3].

Overcoming Exam Fear

There are some things that are helpful to realize for overcoming exam anxiety. An exam is part of training not only because it gives the instructor insight into whether you have mastered the material well. It also offers you insights yourself as to whether you have absorbed the material well and can be a trigger to improve your learning journey. Seeing it as a test for yourself rather than a test for the course can already eliminate a lot of stress (source 2).

One thing that is also helpful to realize is that if you do your best, you will already go very far and you don't have to worry much. After all, you can't do more than your best.

Exam fear tips

There are several ways you can tackle exam anxiety. Initially, you get some tips to help you do your best.

Tip 1: Join the class

It may be appealing not to pay attention, but then you may miss important information. So store your smartphone , take notes and ask questions if something is unclear. In the end, you mainly have yourself with it if you don't ask questions. The instructor will appreciate it.

Joining the class has a 10% impact on what you achieve academically[4].

Tip 2: Plan your study time and relaxation time

When will you study for the exam, and when will you relax? By planning your time well and sticking to that schedule, you can get better grades on exams[5].

Tip 3: Move and learn

Exercising daily can also improve your grades, at least for children up to age 17[6]. In particular, having good fitness has a correlation with good grades[7]. So exercise has the purpose of building fitness.

Research on college students found that students who moved at least 1 hour daily were more likely to achieve higher grades than those who did not[8].

Tip 4: Sleep 6 to 8 hours a night

Being well rested is important for your concentration and focus. Several studies show that sleepiness is not good for your grades during exams. Therefore, always try to get enough sleep[9].

By the way, don't worry if you have a sleep disorder, in fact, the same study shows that they are just as likely to get good grades, and people with sleep disorders were in both the groups of people with good grades and those with bad grades.

Tip 5: Eat healthy

Healthy eating is important for your body and mind. In U.S. research on the correlation between health and grades, it was found that students who ate a salad at least once a week were more likely to get higher grades than students who ate a salad less often (source 8).

Healthy eating can mean eating 2 servings of fruit, 2 servings of vegetables and a handful of nuts daily. Fish and lean meats are also very healthy.

In addition, eating breakfast has been looked at and it is also good for your grades[10].

Tip 6: Make use of self-affirmations

Self-affirmations are, for example, phrases such as“I can do this,”“I’m doing my best,” and“I can figure anything out.” By regularly writing down these kinds of statements about yourself, you can go a long way toward improving your academic performance[11]. This is because it can shift your mindset, which in turn boosts your motivation to put more effort into your schoolwork[12].

More help to overcome exam anxiety

In addition to these tips, you can also seek help to overcome exam anxiety. For example, research on adolescents with exam anxiety shows that hypnotherapy helps reduce anxiety.

In the process, school performance improved 10 to 15% after hypnosis. The students all went from a score of between 50 and 57% to a score of between 67 and 70%. This compares to a score of between 5 and 5.7 to 6.7 and 7.

In the study, students received 2 hypnosis sessions per week in the month before an exam. Those sessions used relaxation techniques, techniques to manage exam anxiety and gave them positive suggestions about their abilities stored in the subconscious.

The suggestions given to the students included tips on time management, learning and retaining knowledge, improving self-confidence and motivation, relaxation, and positive self-affirmations (such as tip 6) about their abilities during the exam.

Symptoms such as forgetfulness, nervousness, sweating during the exam and blackouts during the exam completely disappeared for the students who had received hypnotherapy, this was also visible to the teachers and parents of these children[13].

So hypnotherapy for exam anxiety can be very interesting, but what can you expect when you go to a hypnotherapist to overcome exam anxiety?

Initially, it's nice to know that sometimes 1 or 2 sessions are enough to get over your exam anxiety. So it's not like the above study that you necessarily need 8 sessions. Generally people get 3 sessions and if necessary more to solve a problem.

You will meet with the hypnotherapist who will explain what hypnosis is. Then you are put into hypnosis with relaxation exercises and then the treatment begins. Indeed, you may be given suggestions that you can repeat at home, such as:

"I'm smart."

"I can learn every day."

"I am calm and focused during the exam."

Depending on what causes you to get the anxiety and what problems you then have, you may also get suggestions other than these three.

But in addition to these 3 suggestions, you can also get a conversation to find out where your exam anxiety comes from. For example, perhaps you subconsciously fear that your family will think you are just stupid if you fail an exam. These types of beliefs can then be changed with other exercises so that you link other consequences to passing or failing the exam. This allows you to relax more during the exam and focus purely on the questions and answers, rather than the consequences.

Want to learn more about hypnosis? Then come to the free online master class .

Or sign up for one of our training courses. Ideal if you want to help people and children overcome their fears.

Sources: