Worried about your Year 12 exams? 3 ways to help anxiety

The high-stakes nature of Year 12 exams can bring out sudden anxiety in the best of students.

You might have felt this before or during an assessment. Sometimes it feels like a rising panic in your chest. Other times it’s like your mind has gone blank and you can’t remember anything. These feelings can make it difficult to focus.

The key to good exam performance is learning to manage your anxiety.

We are clinical psychologists who research academic stress. Here’s what can help.

Academic stress is common

Research shows one in six students experience extreme levels of stress during the final years of schooling. This involves unrelenting stress that disturbs sleep and wellbeing. While moderate stress is okay, too much stress can negatively impact academic performance.

In its simplest form, exam anxiety is a stress response like any other. It’s the activation of the body’s flight-or-fight response, which is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system takes care of things like your blood pressure, heart rate and digestion – the things you don’t think about.

The flight-or-fight response occurs when our brain perceives we are in danger, whether it is physical danger, such as fear of being bitten by an angry dog, or psychological, such as stuffing up a speech.

What anxiety in an exam can feel like

The flight-or-fight response might lead to physical symptoms such as:

• an increased heart rate

• an increased rate of breathing

• sweating

• a feeling of unease in the stomach

• tightness in the chest.

While these symptoms might seem handy if you need to flee or fight, it’s hard to see how they are helpful in an exam situation. Who needs dizziness and sweaty palms when trying to solve a quadratic formula?

Your brain can catastrophise the situation

As you head into the exam you might also face thoughts such as:

I’m going to fail. I won’t be able to remember anything. My mind will go blank.

But this sort of thinking increases the perceived danger of the situation.

Research shows thinking less catastrophically, and more realistically, about a situation can help reduce anxiety.

1. Challenge negative thoughts

To challenge these negative thoughts before or during an exam, it helps to ask yourself questions such as:

• Is it realistic that I will completely fail the exam?

• Is it realistic that I won’t remember anything?

• Do I actually need to get a perfect score to get through this?

• What would a friend say to reassure me right now?

2. Focus on your breathing

Another practical way to help reduce anxiety is by slowing down your breathing rate.

In an exam scenario, a full meditation session might be out of the question. But there are still exercises you can do.

For example, while you wait for the exam to begin, or during reading time, try to take a long breath in while counting to four in your mind. Then breathe out over a count of four. Repeat this while slowing down your counting. After a few rounds you will hopefully notice your anxiety start to lessen.

3. Make an exam plan

Look through the exam during reading time and find the questions you feel most comfortable with. Once reading time is over, aim to tackle these questions first. This can help build your confidence during an exam.

If you have long answer or essay questions, it can help to read over all the questions before writing so that while you are answering the “easier” question, your brain will be working in the background, bringing forward information you can use when you answer the harder questions.

This works because information is stored in our brain using networks, so reading questions repeatedly can activate the links between concepts in those networks. This means information might be more readily available when you come back to the harder question.

Stress isn’t always a bad thing

If you’re still feeling stressed, the good news is that mild to moderate levels of stress have actually been shown to improve academic performance. This is because the flight-or-fight response also increases mental alertness and motivation.

After the exam is over, you might feel relieved or devastated, or something in between. It is normal to ruminate over the questions and how you responded to them.

One way to bring yourself back down to a calmer state is to do some exercise. Take a walk or go for a run. This burns up the stress hormone, cortisol, and can help you recover more quickly.

If this article has raised issues for you or your child, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.