Do you believe that your physical and emotional reactions to taking tests are interfering with your ability to perform well on tests?
Have you told someone that you knew the answers, but that you just got overwhelmed and couldn’t focus during the test?
I feel like a bit of a fraud writing about test anxiety because I don’t really have it and I never have. If you’re rolling your eyes at me, knock it off – I have plenty of other anxieties. Just the fact that I say that I don’t have test anxiety is probably the reason I don’t have it. More on that in a minute.
What can you do about test anxiety?
A few years ago, a nurse in one of my continuing education courses told me that bananas help alleviate test anxiety. She even took a banana with her to her NCLEX exam! There’s actually some science behind the idea of bananas alleviating anxiety – probably the magnesium in bananas and the vasodilating effect of the magnesium. There’s not much empirical evidence out there about bananas and test anxiety, but if you like bananas then it couldn’t hurt to try them. For the nurse I talked about here, they were a miracle cure.
How about essential oils? There actually is some published material about the use of lemon essential oil as prevention of test anxiety. Again, the evidence isn’t strong, but it couldn’t hurt to try it.
Two of the most interesting interventions for test anxiety are meditation and mindful breathing. Aly (2018) reported that meditation was useful in lower anxiety specifically as it relates to math anxiety. Okay, it was a small sample size, but the evidence supporting meditation to alleviate anxiety in general is pretty abundant. Mindful breathing right before a test also has some evidence supporting it (Cho, Ryu, Noh, & Lee, 2016). Mindful breathing takes us back to one of our keys to success – being present. Ten mindful breaths before beginning a test can help you calm and focus your mind. What does being present mean during tests? It means staying focused in exactly what is happening right at the moment – not thinking about past tests or what happens in the future based on this test, just the test and the questions in front of you.
Possibly the most effective treatment for test anxiety is to just change what you say to others and to yourself about tests. What you say is what becomes true. As in, I say that I do not have test anxiety therefore I do not have test anxiety. Sounds crazy? The same thing works for starting IVs, but we’ll talk about that another day. For now, practice saying positive things about tests and see what happens.
The great thing about all these interventions is that trying them won’t hurt anything and it might just help. Have you tried any of these? Share your experience!
References
Aly, G. ed. (2018). Mathematics Anxiety and Meditation. Conference Papers — Psychology of Mathematics & Education of North America, 946–949.
Cho, H., Ryu, S., Noh, J., & Lee, J. (2016). The Effectiveness of Daily Mindful Breathing Practices on Test Anxiety of Students. PLoS ONE, 11(10), 1–10. doi.10.1371/journal.pone.0164822