Test anxiety or nerves used to be a primarily a problem of the younger set, grammar school through college. However, nowadays more adults are going to back to school and an increasing number of professions now require standardized testing for hiring and promotion purposes. Quite often a person's financial security depends on passing "the test."
Fear of test taking is not be confused with those with those situations where an unmotivated student doesn't put in enough time and effort studying. Honestly, little can be done for someone like that until they take a good hard look at what they truly want out of life and whether their expectations of "something for nothing" are realistic.
Yet there are many students who do the work and still blank out in the exam room. This is where a few sessions of hypnosis counseling can often work wonders.
The process of learning can be broken down into storage, retention and retrieval. You first encounter material, it is then entered into memory through repetition and then hopefully it can be retrieved later on when needed. Like when you are taking your board exams.
This chain of events can be influenced by what is known as "state dependent memory." Information is best retrieved later if your emotional state resembles the one that you learned it in.
This is why the military, law enforcement and first response personnel have training scenarios that are made to resemble harrowing conditions after learning a skill set. Its one thing to perform say first aid in a classroom and another in an actual emergency.
In test anxiety situations the student's nervousness impairs their ability to retrieve the information because they didn't learn the material in that heightened state. Fear of failing will trigger what is known as the fight or flight response. The body goes through chemical changes to prepare for decisive physical action, not higher order thinking. There are mental changes too in fight or flight too, a person's thinking tends to go negative and short-term as a survival mechanism
When working with a test anxiety client, some of the objectives include:
Neutralizing unconscious triggers for stress in the testing environment.
Increasing positive expectation, a lack of self-confidence can increase fear.
Releasing the emotional charge of past failures as these can keep a person locked in a negative pattern/
Usually 3 visits are all that are needed to enable someone to move past fear and into a more successful future. A complimentary Life Enhancement Strategy Session is offered to answer any questions you may have, to arrange either call (732) 714-7040 or click here.
P.S. Another academic or career roadblock can be the fear of public speaking, I can help you with that!