Test anxiety can be hard to live with because it causes you to doubt your abilities and how well you can perform academically. This can then affect grades and get in the way of going where you want to in life. Learning to cope with it is the first step to getting better and learning to live with it. Test anxiety, like other forms of mental illness, does not have a definite ‘cure’ and different ways of coping help different people. It is important that you find the way that works best for you so you can get where you want in life.
It’s crucial that you identify if you struggle with test anxiety so you can start the process of learning to cope. Test anxiety is a form of performance anxiety, this will occur for certain people if there is a lot of pressure to do well or perform well. Some physical symptoms of this can be developing a stomach ache, feeling ‘butterflies’ in the stomach, headache, sweating, feeling shaky and having a racing heart. Physical symptoms are not the only way to identify test anxiety. Do you find yourself thinking negatively of yourself? Feel overwhelmed by tests and exams? These are a few of the mental symptoms of test anxiety. As mentioned before it is important to recognize possible test anxiety in yourself, then you can ask for help sooner.
Test anxiety affects many people and is possible in anyone, but it is more likely to affect perfectionists and people who will worry about anything and everything. These people believe that one or two mistakes mean that they failed or disappointed someone. Perfectionists will also feel disappointment towards themselves and this will further contribute to test anxiety. Test anxiety overall is more likely to affect teenagers as well ages ranging from 11 to 18 years old. In general, test anxiety can affect anyone but it is more common in the demographic explained previously.
There are multiple different ways of coping with test anxiety. One main mental part of test anxiety is falling into thinking traps such as fortune-telling and believing you already know the outcome of the test. The best way to cope is to reword the negative thinking and challenge the thinking traps. For example, “I know that I’m going to fail this math test,” can be changed to, “I don’t know how it will turn out, I can only try my best,”. Another way to cope is to try different breathing exercises. This will optimize the body’s oxygen intake and it may calm your nerves and relax you a little bit. These are only two methods of the many more that may work for you, but hopefully they will start you down the road of finding what strategy works best for you.
Test anxiety can be hard to cope with but the first step o deal with it is to know if you struggle with it and what coping strategy will work for you. Test anxiety is not just having other things on your mind during a test or not studying and doing poorly. It is a very mental thing and it gets in the way for a lot of people. However, the sooner you identify it within yourself and ask for the help you need the sooner you can get back on track with what you want to do in the future.
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Resources
Author: Mark Gilbert and Karen Gilbert. (n.d.). Test anxiety. Test Anxiety | Here to Help. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from https://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/workbook/test-anxiety#thinkingtips.
Hoffses, K. (Ed.). (2018, July). Test anxiety (for teens) - Nemours kidshealth. KidsHealth. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/test-anxiety.html.