Exam Room Anxiety – Anxiety Hypnotherapy Ely and Newmarket

Do you suffer with exam room anxiety? You revise and know your stuff when you feel calm, yet as the exam gets closer your stress and anxiety levels just rise and rise.  And then, on the day, just when you want to perform to your best, your exam room anxiety kicks in and you panic, struggle to think clearly and it’s like all your knowledge has somehow faded away.

Exam anxiety and stress can mess up all your hard work and plans. You may be fine with your subject when the pressure is off. Yet anxiety will block your ability to think clearly and make decisions. In the exam room you struggle to think and focus and you burn up and waste so much energy as your heart races and the panic attacks.

Recently, I’ve been helping several students to manage their thoughts, feelings and emotions around exams. Mocks have been taking place and they’ve gone from believing they can’t do exams successfully to being calm, positive and confident as they head towards their end of year exams in the summer. Exams are not just all about the learning and knowledge. To perform to your capability you need to be in control of your thinking as you revise and in the lead up to exams, and then to calmly manage how you feel from before the exam starts and right through to successful completion.

You don’t want to be wasting your revision time stressing out and letting your anxious imagination run wild. All the anxious thinking, dwelling and catastrophising stops you learning and retaining the subject matter you are covering.  You become more focused on thoughts of failing, messing up and going blank in your exam. It can interfere with your eating and sleeping. The worrying, rather than the learning, revising and getting everything covered, starts to dominate your mindset and leaves you feeling stressed, tense and agitated.

Symptoms of Exam Hall Anxiety & Stress

As with all anxiety, there can be many uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that, with exams, are all centred on things going negatively or not as well as you would like them to. What if you go blank in the exam? What if you have panic and can’t answer the questions? What if you fail and all your hard work comes to nothing?

Physical symptoms can include things such as a racing heart, sweating, nausea, tension and headaches, amongst other things. Those anxious thoughts can be filled with doubt, what-ifs and worst case scenarios about going blank in the exam room, not getting everything learnt in time or failing the exams and what that might mean for your future. You may struggle to concentrate, have a feeling of dread, experience negative self-talk, perceive yourself as doing worse than others and worry about letting yourself or others down. You might feel excessive feelings of dread, fear, anger, frustration, helplessness or feeling low.

I’ve worked with clients where they are filled with anxiety that they may fail upcoming exams, as well as helping those who have previous bad experiences in the exam room such as having a panic attack, going blank or being unable to remember what they revised. Often it may be the case that you are fine in the classroom or in general tests (because you know what you need to know) but all the pressure of the exams that count for something just knocks you off course and you can’t perform as well as you know you are actually capable fo doing.

Yet despite all of these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, it is possible to feel calmer, boost your confidence and have a sense of control over what you think and how you think.

I’ve covered exam anxiety and stress, along with some suggestions for coping more effectively, in these earlier articles:

Hypnosis and Exam Anxiety – Could hypnotherapy help you perform to your best in exams?

How To Beat Exam Stress & Anxiety – Cambridge News

Now Available – Exam Stress & Anxiety Guide

Exam Stress and Test Anxiety Help – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Ending Exam Anxiety in Ely – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

And you may want to have a look at my Exam Stress and Anxiety Hypnosis download, designed to help you to feel calm, confident and in control before and during your exam: Exam Stress & Anxiety Hypnosis Download

Tackling Exam Anxiety

Now, as a first step towards dealing with the anxiety, I’d suggest grabbing your copy of my free exam stress guide from this page: Exam Stress and Anxiety Help

And you can get a free relaxation hypnosis download to help you get better at switching off and feeling calmer. Head over to this page: Free Rapid Relaxation Hypnosis Download 

There’s evidence to support hypnotherapy for helping with exam anxiety (as well, of course, as helping with any other anxiety, stress or low confidence issues you may struggle with and that can contribute to how you are in your exams). You can learn effective strategies for interrupting those unhelpful thoughts about your exams and you can learn how to manage your feelings and to stay calmer. Sure, you will have a bit of stress and adrenaline, just like everyone else going into an exam, yet at the level where you feel confident, focused and self assured and are able to stay composed and perform to your best. Even better, these strategies can be applied on the day as you are waiting around, in the exam room in those quiet moments before the start, and even quickly during the exam itself to help you manage your own thoughts and emotions.

Rather than struggling with the anxiety and letting it impair how you do, you can go into your exam feeling calm, confident and in control so that you can successfully perform to your best. And if you have exams coming up this year then I wish you every success in going through them calmly, confidently and successfully. You’ve got this!

To your exam success,

Dan Regan 

Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Seeking help to overcome your exam anxiety so you can perform to your potential? Book your Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session with Dan to learn more now: Appointments

Find out what other people have said after their anxiety hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: What People Say

And check out these powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away with exam room anxiety and stress: Hypnosis Downloads