Why Learning to Think Better is the Answer to Exam Stress

As Teachers we’ve all most likely seen the impact exam stress can have on our students. Firstly, it puts pressure on all those involved in supporting learners. Whilst we may have strategies to help, left unchecked, the stress levels experienced at exam time, can have a negative long-term effect on an individual’s future. Learning how to think better is the answer to any dis-ease.

It sounds dramatic but let’s break it down.

We can’t always know the dramas and life experience that our students have gone through.  We only know what they tell us, and what we come to learn about them during our time with them.

It’s why exam stress training is so important to Educators, and why we should always do our best to help students manage their feelings ‘in the moment’.

My interpretation of dis-ease

The longer our feelings of disappointment or dis-illusion go unchecked, the more likely they are to lead to dis-function and ultimately dis-ease.

I think of dis-ease as being out of ease with life, rather than having a diagnosed sickness.

If we think of dis-ease as ‘being out of true, or not ‘in balance ‘with ourselves and with life, then I see this as the early signs of personal stress.

If any feeling that puts us out of balance is left to run riot and unchallenged then it can develop into the stress label that we put on much of our negative reactions to exams.

Any level of exam anxiety can make students feel ‘less than’ in so many ways.  Of course we understand that they’ll blame the exams, the challenges, the teachers etc, but we know that what’s at the heart of all this is their thinking.

How we Think is the Answer to Dis-Ease

How our students Think about everything that is the root cause off the problem.

And it’s how they think about themselves and everything tied in with the whole shebang that leads them to feel the way they do.

Help them with their thinking and you’ve a line into the solution.

Teach them how their thinking starts, gets fanned by fear, and accelerated by their personal panic spiral, and they come to see that it not YOU, or the SCHOOL that they should look to for the solution, but that the answer lies it’s within them.

Once you teach a student that they need to take a personal responsibility for how they think. And that their Thinking is the key to how they interact with life, then you dramatically lessen the long-term impact of unmanaged exam stress.

Stress boils down to a fear that we are no longer in control of a situation.

When we stop blaming others for how we process things, learn to look to ourselves for a solution to the problem and come to believe in our capacity and capabilities, then we learn resilience.

Resilience helps us feel more in control and able to diffuse stress before it takes permanent hold and does long term damage.

So where do you start with changing a student’s thinking?

The first step is letting them know that their current fears around exams are ‘not their fault’.

We’ve al got good at blaming others or ourselves for how life feels. But step back a bit and we realise that these feelings are a result of our thoughts.

Now science knows that our thoughts and feelings are so enmeshed it’s hard to know what comes first but that isn’t the problem here. It’s learning first that most of our fears are triggered by a chain reaction built on science + a bad experience of two.

Simply, something sets of an upsetting reaction. In turn these fires off masses of stress hormones and next time this happens, and we get the same dread feeling (in our heart, our head, or body) we have the same or similar panic attack.

We haven’t yet learned that there IS a way past this. There ARE things we can do to interrupt the patterns.

We don’t HAVE to keep going through the same spiral of stuff each time.

So start to tell your students it’s not their fault they get spooked.  The answer is to find a way through it.  And then you share the different ways they might do that.

Get them alongside, agreeing to take responsibility for WHY and HOW they’ll manage their reactions next time they get spooked by exams, and you’re all on a winner.