Quick Summary
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Exam fear is the fear, anxiety and stress that arise in a student during an exam in school, college etc.
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3 Symptoms of Exam fear: Physical, Emotional & Cognitive Symptoms.
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To overcome exam fear you can prepare and plan, meditate, make lifestyle changes, revise & avoid comparison with others.
Table of Contents
The exam period brings out fear, anxiety, and stress among students. This common fear is known as exam fear or exam phobia. The term ‘phobia’ means fear of something. Exams are conducted to gauge the knowledge of students. It brings out positive changes in personality development. Several factors can contribute to the fear of exams, such as a highly competitive environment, the fear of failure, and low self-confidence.
What is Exam Fear?
Exam fear or exam phobia can be defined as the fear, anxiety, and stress that arise in a student during an examination in school, college, or competitive exams. Recently, a survey was conducted by the NCERT. It was found in the survey that 80% of students suffer from exam anxiety in classes 9-12. As per the Childline show, the number of counseling sessions taken by the experts also doubled last year.
But how to overcome the exam fear of failure? Overcoming exam fear is not an impossible task. Students can change their approach towards exams by adopting new habits. This way, they can reduce anxiety, maintain their mental health, and confidently face the upcoming challenge. They can do their studies in the right direction with positive energy. They should know the proper reasons and symptoms to tackle exam fear. Read all about tackling exam fear in this article.
What are the Causes of Exam Fear?
Before seeking solutions for how to get rid of fear, one should understand the causes of the fear of exams. The factors that cause exam fear can be categorized into personal, surrounding, past experiences, and academic pressure. The causes can vary among different persons. Let’s know about some universal causes of exam fear in detail.
1) Personal Factors
Personal factors are associated with an individual’s personality. Personalities can be broadly categorized into two types: those with high self-esteem or confidence and others with low self-esteem. A person with low self-esteem and high knowledge will have low productivity in exams compared to someone with high confidence and less knowledge.
The reason for this low confidence can be negative self-talk. Negative self-talk means doubting your ability to compete with others. Fear of failure or not achieving success can reduce the potential of a person, and they may not be able to realize their hidden abilities. To cope with fear, one should not lose confidence during exams and should engage in positive self-talk. Without worrying about outcomes, one must enjoy the learning process.
2) Surrounding Factors
In addition to personal factors, one’s surroundings can determine fear. Student life is surrounded by parents, peer groups, teachers, and classrooms. Parents are the constant source of motivation and confidence for their children. However, the pressure from parents can develop exam fear and anxiety in students. This can lead to bad habits, injuries, mental stress, and a defensive attitude.
Parents can play a primary role in identifying their children’s abilities and motivating their improvement. Similarly, a low self-esteem peer group cannot help in gaining confidence. Exam situation demands a positive peer group that can support its members.
A competitive environment can bring out creativity among students, but an unsupportive environment cannot. The fight to reduce fear can be dealt with individually and collectively. Getting a favorable environment or surroundings is every student’s responsibility and right.
3) Previous Experiences
Previous or past experiences are a major factor in shaping a student’s thinking capability. Poor performance in previous exams can cause some students to lose confidence. Stressful events during exams can cause students to underperform. Sometimes, scolding or negative remarks from teachers and parents can make them vulnerable to experiencing fear. Bad experiences from the past can be replaced with good ones through the active involvement of parents and teachers. They should treat each child differently. One positive remark can help them overcome fear.
4) Academic Pressure
The current academic system treats every child equally. Some students are not able to bear the load of daily targets. They must prepare for regular tests, exams, and daily targets. There will be limited time available for thorough exam preparation. Limited time creates stress and fear of failure among students. Expectations also keep on increasing from teachers and parents.
All these factors create a competitive academic environment. All students are not able to perform well under academic pressure. Exam fear can be reduced by giving students relaxation from academic pressures. Healthy competition should be promoted, and daily targets can be replaced with weekly targets.
Symptoms of Exam Fear
The symptoms of fear can be physical, emotional, and cognitive. These symptoms can make life more challenging for students. This can also make them socially isolated. Fear of exams is not a big problem; its consequences can be stressful and lead to anxiety. Certain symptoms need to be controlled to deal with this.
1) Physical Symptoms
Normal symptoms are sweating, breath shortness, headache, nausea, rapid heartbeat, faintness, etc. Further, the intensity of fear can cause panic attacks. Exam fear can have life-threatening implications. These symptoms should be taken seriously. Seeking a professional’s advice is helpful during these conditions.
2) Emotional Symptoms
Exam fear gives rise to many emotions. Some emotional symptoms include stress, anxiety, fear, disappointment, negative thoughts, less confidence due to poor performance, and a blank mind during exams. With proper mentorship and meditation, these can be handled. Schools and colleges can promote yoga classes in their institutions. These all can help in dealing with exam fear. Normalizing the exam situation and its fear is the need of the hour.
3) Cognitive Symptoms
Apart from physical and emotional symptoms, cognitive symptoms include lowering concentration power, procrastinating things, comparing oneself to others, and pessimistic thinking. This can be improved through proper guidance, maintaining high self-esteem, recognizing abilities, and sharing problems with family and friends. Steps should be taken at an individual level too. Think about your inner capacities and work to enhance that capacity.
Effective Strategies on How to Overcome Exam Fear
If one is aware of causes and symptoms, it becomes easier to find effective strategies to overcome exam fear. Do you know how to get rid of fear? There can be many ways. Everyone should follow some methods to overcome fear. Know about the strategies in detail.
1) Preparation and Planning
Proper preparation and planning can reduce procrastination on exam day. Planning involves your daily to-do list. Time management is one such way to complete all important activities on time. To manage time, one can prepare a study plan. A study plan will be based on daily study routines involving revision too. Timetables should involve extra-curricular activities along with study time. The study plan should be based on achievable goals. Students should know their abilities to complete the targets.
This will reduce mental anxiety among the students due to exams. They will feel more confident and motivated after the completion of daily targets. They will know their abilities and interests with this plan. Exam day productivity can be more on the exam day due to reduced fear.
2) Doing Meditation
Meditation is a way to gain mental peace and a time to introspect your inner thoughts. Students can spend time with themselves through positive self-talk. Twice daily, an individual can perform breathing exercises with a slow and deep breathing pattern. It helps in calming students facing pressure. They learn to keep themselves anxiety-free during exam-like situations. Students will learn to balance their emotions, gaining high self-esteem and willpower to deal with pressure.
They will focus more during the exam and reduce mistakes due to fear. Meditation gives rest to the brains of students for a while.
3) Making Lifestyle Changes
Through lifestyle changes, stress can be reduced, and exams create this pressure. Lifestyle changes involve living a balanced life. Lifestyle changes include following a healthy diet, exercising daily, and proper rest to your mind. A healthy diet means more fresh fruits, cashews and nuts, green vegetables, and required supplements. These little things can relax your mind and increase concentration power.
After adopting these changes, students will not feel exhausted and overwhelmed due to fear. Lifestyle balance will maintain physical and mental health. As a result, academic achievement will give them a certain level of satisfaction.
Related Read: Easy Ways to Overcome Laziness & Stop Procrastinating
4) Revising Consistently
Among all the ways, revision is the most important key to dealing with fear. The constant revision will reduce the fear of failure among the students. Regular revision will keep the facts embedded in their mind. Management of time is essential while revising the syllabus. We should give equal importance to all syllabi. Do more revision of those topics that you keep forgetting. Students can make a few short points after revision. Revising consistently will improve your learning skills, and anxiety will be less during exams. While revising, there is room for improvement. Fear would help students avoid making mistakes in exams.
5) Avoid Comparison
Parents and teachers should avoid comparing one student to another. Reduced comparison will help them showcase their inner abilities. Unhealthy comparison is directly related to stress. So, one should not compare themselves with their peers. Instead of comparison, they should do regular positive self-talk. Healthy comparison can lead to a healthy mindset with positive thoughts during exams. Students and teachers together are responsible for tackling this environmental hurdle. We can organize certain sessions and mentorship programs for parents and students at school.
Exam fear, stress, anxiety, physical and mental health loss, and academic pressure surround a student’s academic life, making it difficult to overcome. But very few people are aware of how to overcome fear. The causes of fear vary at an individual level. So, the solution should also be dealt with at an individual level. Each student is unique, and their problems are too. But “how to overcome fear”? This demands a unique solution. A unique solution is possible with the cooperative attitude of parents, teachers, peer groups, and students. Fear should be taken as a genuine problem now. Recognition of problems is the first step towards ending the problem.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
What is exam fear?
Examfear or exam phobia can be defined as the fear, anxiety, and stress that arise in a student during an examination in school, college, or competitive exams.
What are the symptoms of exam fear?
The symptoms of fear include physical symptoms like sweating, headache & nausea, emotional symptoms like stress, anxiety, fear, disappointment, & negative thoughts and cognitive symptoms include lowering concentration power and procrastinating.
Why do I get scared before exams?
There can be several reasons for fear like low self-esteem, negative self-talk, fear of failure, academic pressure, surrounding effects, and comparison with others. The pressure from parents can develop fear & anxiety in students. Fear of failure should be minimized to deal with the fear of exams.
How can I deal with my fear of exams?
You can overcome your fear through preparation and planning beforehand, meditating to reduce stress, making lifestyle changes, avoiding comparison with others, and constantly revising to improve your learning skills. These methods will reduce anxiety and stress before and during exams.
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