How To Deal With Exam Stress
WHAT’S THE ISSUE: How can parents support their child to be more psychologically prepared for exams? The issue of how to deal with exams stress is more than just about getting good grades; it’s about developing life skills, stress management skills.
Too much exam stress can cause students to:
- blank out (i.e. forget everything they know – even if they studied a lot).
- panic in an exam or get really anxious, resulting in not doing as well as they could have done on a particular exam.
- avoid beginning their exam preparation until it is too late to revise all of the material thoroughly enough to get a good grade.
This video is for parents who want to do everything they can to help their child do their best in their final exams, while also seeing the exams as an opportunity to develop valuable stress management skills that are useful for their adult life.
HOW TO DEAL WITH EXAM STRESS
SIDE NOTE: If you prefer reading over watching videos, you’ll find the video transcript below.
HOW TO DEAL WITH EXAM STRESS WITH TAPPING SKILLS
Many people assume that all it takes to get good grades in exams is to try hard and to study a lot. And I’m here to tell you, it takes more than that. You need to focus on psychological factors to. The mistake many students make is to underestimate the importance of psychologically preparing themselves for success on an upcoming exam. As a result, they fail to achieve their potential and to show what they truly know in exam conditions. This is why I want to talk to you today about the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, also known as “tapping”. What is tapping? Tapping is a self-soothing stress management technique that is being used in preschools, schools and universities all over the world to help students release stress and anxiety so that they can learn better. When I’m working with High School students who are preparing for exams, I use the Emotional Freedom Technique to help a student identify the root cause of their exam stress, and to process it and release it so they can study in a calm, confident, and focused way.
TAPPING INTO THE ROOT CAUSEs OF EXAM STRESS
Some students are stressed about an exam, because they’re scared they’re going to fail. Other students are stressed about an exam, because they used to be really good at that subject, and lately they haven’t been doing as well on tests or smaller exams. And so that’s affected their confidence. It might be that they’ve developed a bad habit of delaying, starting to study until it’s too late. So they’re stressed because they know that this bad habit is preventing them from achieving their potential in exam conditions, but they don’t know how to break the cycle. It may be that this is the first time they have to memorize so much information, and they’re terrified that they’re going to forget everything and they’re going to blank out in the exam. Maybe they’ve had some bad experiences in tests and exams in the past where they’ve panicked or they blanked out and they forgot the terms and the information that they’d studied and memorized. And so they’re scared that this is going to happen again in the final exam. By unburdening themselves from unhelpful levels of stress, a student then frees up their energy to be able to focus on ways to bring their study skills up to the next level, so that they can be more effective in preparing for their exam.
EXAM STRESS, TAPPING AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS
Athletes know that psychologically preparing your mind for success is just as important as how much effort you put into practice. Similarly, successful students know that getting good grades in exams takes more than just trying hard and studying a lot because unless you are calm enough and focused enough to notice details when you are studying for and sitting exams, you will struggle to achieve the ambitious grades that you were hoping for. And this is where the Emotional Freedom Technique can help. You’ll find links below, if you’d like to learn more about how tapping came about and how it’s being used in education and the research behind it. You may also want to look up Dr. Peta Stapleton’s research yourself. Dr. Stapleton is a world-renowned psychology researcher who explains the science behind how EFT works to reduce stress in the body. For example, tapping has been found to reduce our cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is released by the brain when we think of a situation that causes us stress.
THE BENEFITS OF TAPPING AWAY EXAM STRESS
When a student is feeling stressed about an upcoming exam, their cortisol levels go up. That is a less than ideal state in which to be studying in. When we tap while the student thinks about the stressful situation, the tapping calms down that biological stress response. Reducing the stress response also allows the student to access the front part of the brain, the frontal lobe, or the Prefrontal Cortex, which is responsible for higher-order thinking. More advanced thinking. In order to do well and get a good grade, you want to be able to think in a more advanced way. Accessing this part of the brain is very important. That’s not possible when a student is stuck in the back of the brain where the amygdala is, which is where the stress response gets triggered. Reducing the stress response and calming the amygdala down so that the student can access the Prefrontal Cortex is also important, because this is the part of the brain that’s responsible for making wiser choices about how we organize our time. It can help a student to strategize better, and to problem solve better – and to think of better ways to organize their day, their sleeping routine, their morning routine, their study routine – so that they can get the best results out of their study efforts.
WELL-BEING SUPPORT FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
I’m a professional Youth Mentor for Stress Relief. If you’re a parent who is thinking of hiring me to work one-to-one with your child as a personal Youth Mentor, this online tapping workshop is an opportunity for your child to meet me on Zoom, to try the Emotional Freedom Technique out for themselves and see if it works for them. To get a taste of the kind of work I do. And it’s also a chance for them to see if they would like working with me as a person. Because no matter how good a technique or a method is, if you don’t like the person you’re working with, if you don’t feel comfortable with them, if you don’t feel safe with them, it’s not going to work.
UPCOMING ONLINE STRESS RELIEF WORKSHOP for students
To purchase an e-ticket, click here and look for the green button that says “TICKETS”.
I hope you found this video helpful in deciding whether you want to sign your child up to this workshop. Take care. All the best.
About the author
Eleni Vardaki offers private and small-group stress relief services online to parents, teachers, and students. Her mission is to help bridge the gap between mainstream education and the wellbeing skills students need to thrive in the 21st century. She believes in doable, sustainable interventions for student wellbeing in family and school cultures that value positive mental health.
