Exam Stress

I know people working with teenagers sometimes wonder why they appear so stressed “what have they got to worry about, it’s not as if they’ve got bills to pay”! The reality is that life for them today is more pressurised than ever before, and school days in particular can be a very worrying time for young people, particularly when they have to take exams and whilst some pupils breeze through them for some it causes no end of anxiety.

Research conducted by Childline sited one of the top issues affecting young people today as being concerns around taking exams, and that the stress related to this can significantly affect their mental well being. The pressure on young people to attain good results for fear of letting their families, friends, school and themselves down is widespread. It is also compounded by the fierce competition for decreasing university places necessitating achieving higher grades.

Having interviewed thousands of young people over a ten year period as a professionally trained careers adviser and listened to their genuine concerns around exam performance, I searched for better ways to support them and assist them in achieving their full potential. I found that often bright pupils were significantly underperforming at exam level and therefore not reaching the grades they were more than capable of attaining due to severe exam nerves. Also, extremely bright pupils were choosing the more vocational BTEC qualifications that did not involve taking exams, then leaving to get a job instead of considering university as an option.

Whilst it has been said that at times a small degree of nerves can help in exam situations, what some pupils experience goes way beyond this and is severely debilitating. Teachers warned that the number of young people driven to self harm and suicide because of exam pressure was on the increase. Seventy five percent surveyed by the teaching union felt that young people were under more stress today than a decade ago. It can also trigger other mental health problems such as self harm and eating disorders.

When I work with young people I use a range of eclectic techniques to support them. A recent case study involved supporting a teenager who’d been forced to take a year out after finishing their GCSE’s because of the effect taking exams were having on them. They’d endured years of being paralysed by fear, what was particularly traumatic for them was the set up of the room and the expectation of silence for a long period of time. They’d been offered cognitive behavioural therapy but unfortunately it had not worked for them, moreover they felt that having to sit in a room and work through it had left them more anxious and distressed than before.

Initially of paramount importance is mental attitude and emotional state of mind walking into an exam room. If they walk in believing they are going to do badly there’s a good chance they will. As Henry Ford famously said “whether you think you can or think you can’t you’re probably right”. A range of visualisation techniques were employed together with confidence exercises and time line therapy to enable the student to literally see a positive outcome.

Although understandably after the first session there was doubt and disbelief since other attempts to resolve this had all failed, what I later learned had encouraged them to return for a second session was seeing the benefits of the exercises I’d insisted they do every day at home. These included breathing techniques and Thought Field Therapy (TFT) described as the power therapy of the 21stcentury.

It is a simple, rapid, and natural treatment that works with the body’s energy system. It can produce often immediate and dramatic results to those suffering from a variety of problems including anxiety and stress. Using the established meridians and acupressure points of the body, gentle ‘taps’ are administered in specific sequences. The advantage of this treatment is that young people can do this themselves at home.

After only three or four sessions the young person was able to sit in an exam room without sobbing and becoming anxious. “I feel in control and confident enough to go into a lesson without ending up in a state. I was given good techniques that are quick and easy for myself to do, so I always feel good, school is much easier now after 2 1/2 years of struggle”.

These techniques and strategies are not difficult to implement and I believe every pupil in schools should have access to them, in an age when as already mentioned young people are under more pressure than ever before isn’t it our duty to support them?