Exam Stress – managing your exam nerves with positive self talk

Mind go blank during an exam?

Find that you can’t think straight?

Have negative thoughts about failing your exam?

If you have answered ‘Yes’ to any of these questions, you are not alone.  As the Easter holiday comes to an end, the exam season begins in schools, colleges and universities across the country, these fears will really worry a significant number of students.  It isn’t just students who have these worries as workers are often required to take on new skills and knowledge for their job – and this often brings on the dreaded exam nerves they thought they had left behind at school.

As an experienced teacher and hypnotherapist, I know that exam nerves affect the confidence and ability to successfully complete the exam.  Often it is the most hard-working of students who suffer – they really want to achieve success.  Effectively they put the pressure on themselves and use negative thoughts and self talk to keep themselves anxious.

What is negative self talk?

It is the things we say to ourselves that we would never dream of saying to another person!

Does this sound familiar?

• My mind will just go blank.
• I can’t think clearly.
• What if …   I don’t know the answer?
  What if … there’s something on the paper that I have not studied?
  What if … I answer the question wrongly?
• I’m so thick.
• Don’t be so stupid!

See what I mean: you would never call your friend ‘stupid’ or tell them that their ‘mind is blank’, would you?  And yet you do this to yourself, over and over again.  All of this is sending a message to yourself that is, at best, not useful and, at worst, building a belief that you will fail.  Self fulfilling prophecy is well documented: believe you will fail and you probably will.

What can I do to change this?

Listen to your own thoughts and identify what it is that you are saying to yourself.

Work on the most frequent of those thoughts first – often by changing this one, the rest will stop of their own accord.

Take notice of your self talk (the voice you hear in your head – we all do this, it does not mean you are going mad!).  Note the following:

• Whose voice is it?  (yours, teachers, parent, etc)
• Speed of the words – fast or slow
• Tone of voice – stern, sarcastic, belittling, etc.
• Volume – a quiet whisper or loud and clear, etc.

Take each of these attributes and change them.  Look at these examples as to how you may do this – although your own choices will always be better.

• Let the voice be that of a cartoon character or give it a strong foreign accent

• Speed up the message or slow it down to a snail’s pace (which ever makes it sound more ridiculous)

• Change the tone – high pitched and squeaky or a low, dull, flat tone can really help lose the power of those words.

• Alter the volume – very loud to very soft or vice versa and often no sound can be useful (think about that!)

If you are trying this as you are reading along, (and why wouldn’t you?) you will be smiling by now.  You won’t believe how many clients I work with laugh as they change to Daffy Duck or some long drawn out American drawl!  What they all find is that when they have ran the new voice through their heads a few times, the power of the message has gone.  Funnily enough, they find it hard to get the negative voice back again, even when I ask them to try.  These hypnotherapy and NLP based techniques work time after time.

A present for yourself – a new, positive message

Now would be a good time to give yourself the present of a really useful thought.  A really positive thought will open your mind to the possibility of exam success and once that possibility is there – well you know about self-fulfilling prophecies, don’t you?

You might want to experiment with something like this (although your own positive thoughts will work best for you):

• Key words I notice in the exam question link me to the things I know well.

• The quietness of the exam room lets the information I need come to my mind clearly.

• I enjoy the challenge of the exam as I can answer the questions confidently.

Now that last example sounds good, doesn’t it?  I better you never thought you would be thinking that when you first began to read this article.

If you need further help with techniques like these, why not go and see a hypnotherapist or NLP practitioner.  More hints and tips are available on line at www.nodressrehearsal.co.uk.  Exam stress and nerves start as thoughts; a hypnotherapist will help you to change those thoughts to something more positive.  You will use these skills long after the exam is over, so what have you got to lose by trying.

If you are a teacher who wants to help your students reduce their exam stress, you will find useful resources at www.funresources.co.uk.