Exam Anxiety: Here’s How to Shake It (And Put In A Stellar Performance)

Exam Anxiety: Here's a Way to Shake It (And Put in a Stellar Performance)

The world can tend to feel a bit different at exam time, thanks to stress, exhaustion and way too many not so healthy (but so delicious) study snacks. And then there’s anxiety, hanging on a little too tightly. If only during the exam it would take itself quietly off to, you know, somewhere else, there would be no problem, but it doesn’t tend to work like that.

When it’s there it feels awful and can affect performance. You have enough to worry about at exam time so anything that can turn down the dial on exam anxiety has to be a good thing, right? Well here you go …

Researchers have found that a simple writing exercise can ease exam anxiety and greatly improve exam performance.

In a recent study, college students were given the opportunity to unload their test anxiety by writing about their exam worries for ten minutes before an exam. The idea was that by doing this, the valuable mental resources that were being taken up by worrying were freed up and made available to work on the exam.

According to associate professor of psychology Sian Beilock who co-authored the study, stressful situations take up working memory – the part of the brain that powers the retrieval and use of information. We only have a limited amount of memory, so the more that’s used up by worrying, the less there is available to nail the exam.

 Beilock is an expert on ‘choking under pressure’, a phenomenon that sees really capable people falling apart at the point of performance, not just in an exam room but also on the sports field, a high-stakes business meeting, an interview or anywhere there’s high pressure.

The Study: What they did.

 As part of the study, college students were given two maths tests. In the first one there was no pressure – students were told just to do their best.

The second one though! Just before the exam, researchers told students that the ones who did well would receive money and that other people in the team were depending on their success. On top of this, they were told that they would be recorded and reviewed by other teachers. Stressed yet?

Half the students were given ten minutes to write about how they were feeling about the test. The other half were told to just sit quietly.

What they found:

The students who wrote about their worries showed a 5% improvement in accuracy between the first maths test (given before the writing) and the second maths test (given after the writing). The group of students who didn’t write showed a 12% drop in accuracy between the two tests.

All up, that’s a 17% difference in performance between the people who wrote and the people who didn’t.

The results were replicated in a subsequent study with 9th grade biology students. Before an important finals exam, students were instructed to either write about how they felt about the test or to think about topics that weren’t related to the test.

Those who didn’t write had higher anxiety and performed worse than those who had, even when the student’s ability was taken into account. The writing task seemed to level the effect of anxiety – those in the writing group who had high exam anxiety performed just as well as though who weren’t as anxious. Out of the high anxiety students, those who wrote before the test averaged a B+ whereas the non-writers averaged a B-.

And finally …

The effect seems to be brought about writing specifically about thoughts and feelings related to the test, not just by writing in general.

Writing about your worries in relation to the task at hand is likely to be something that will help performance in all types of challenging situations – speeches, presentations, interviews, sports – not just exams. That’s good news for everyone – the world could always do with more brilliance. Exams measure ability and talent at a single moment in time and the reading of true potential can be skewed if anxiety steps in. Anything that can let potential shine through regardless of confidence or the tendency to be anxious is a good thing.

Pen, paper, now go be awesome.

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So ready to get started with ‘Hey Little Warrior’ in Melbourne. This is my fourth time this year presenting this workshop in Melbourne and we sell out every time.

So what do we do here?! We dive into how to support young children with anxiety. It’s my favourite thing to talk about. I love it. Even more than whether or not I want dessert. We talk about new ways to work with anxiety in littles so they can feel braver and bigger in the presence of it. This workshop is loaded with practical strategies. I love presenting this workshop.

(And yes - always yes to dessert. As if I would ever skip the most important meal of the day. Pffftt.)

@compass_australia
They’re often called sensory preferences, but they’re sensory needs.

In our adult worlds we can move our bodies and ourselves to seek regulation. If we don’t like noise we’re less likely to be DJs for example. If we don’t love heights we’re less likely to be pilots or skydivers. If we feel overwhelmed, we can step outside, go into an office, go to the bathroom, or pop on headphones for a break. If we need to move, we can stand, walk to get a tea. At school, this is so much harder.

When bodies don’t feel safe, there will be anxiety. This will potentially drive fight (anger, tantrums), flight (avoidance, running away, movement), or shutdown (in quiet distress and can’t learn). 

These are physiological issues NOT behavioural ones.

Whenever we can, we need to support physiological safety by accommodating sensory needs AND support brave behaviour. What’s tricky is disentangling anxiety driven by unmet sensory needs, from anxiety driven by brave behaviour.

The way through is to support their physiological needs, then move them towards brave behaviour.

Schools want to support this. They want all kids to be happy and the best they can be, but there will be a limit on their capacity to support this - not because they don’t want to, but because of a scarcity of resources.

There will often be many children with different physiological needs. Outside school there is nowhere else that has to accommodate so many individual needs, because as adults we won’t be drawn to environments that don’t feel okay. In contrast, school requires all kids to attend and stay regulated in the one environment.

For now, we don’t have a lot of options. Yes there are schools outside mainstream, and yes there is home school, but these options aren’t available to everyone.

So, until mainstream schools are supported with the resources (staff, spaces, small classes, less demand on curriculum … and the list goes on), what can we do?

- Help school with specific ways to support your child’s physiology while being mindful that teachers are also attending to the needs of 25+ other nervous systems. But be specific.
- Limit the list. Make this a ‘bare minimum needs’ list, not a ‘preferences’ one.♥️
Brave often doesn’t feel like ‘brave’. Most often, it feels like anxiety. If there is something brave, important, new, hard, there will always be anxiety right behind it. It’s the feeling of anxiety that makes it something brave - and brave is different for everyone.♥️

#anxietyawareness #childanxiety #anxietysupport #anxietyinkids #parent #positiveparenting
Recently I chatted with Sharon from the ADHD Families Podcast. I loved this chat. We took a dive into anxiety and ADHD, including anxiety at school and some strategies for schools and parents to support kiddos with anxiety and ADHD. Listen to the full episode 
here https://www.thefunctionalfamily.com/podcasts/adhd-families-podcast

thefunctionalfamily
Remember the power of ‘AND’. 

As long as they are actually safe:

They can feel anxious AND do brave.

They can feel like they aren’t ready for brave, AND be ready brave.

They can wish to avoid AND they can stay (or not be taken home).

They can be angry, anxious, and push us away AND we can look after them through the feelings without avoiding the brave/ new, hard/ important. 

We can wish for their anxiety, anger, sadness to be gone AND we can be with them without needing them to be different.

We can believe them (that they are anxious, scared, angry) AND believe in them (that they are capable).

When we hold their anxiety AND their capacity for brave, in equal measure and with compassion, we can show them that their anxiety doesn’t cancel their brave.♥️

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