Exam Nerves
Anxiety, on the face of it might be regarded as the enemy of any prospects
of doing well in an exam. This is true of excessive anxiety that is
being channelled into contemplating the worst case scenarios in your
upcoming exam- you begin to imagine yourself facing all the topics that
you feel weak on, or sitting staring blankly at the questions, your
mind just not responding. Anxiety however, from a slightly different
perspective, can be experienced as the sort of stimulation that will
actually engage you in a very direct way with the material in front
of you. The point is to have a certain degree of equanimity about anxiety
appearing as a natural "on" switch to allow you to focus very
directly on bringing forward the information and skill in presentation
that you need.
The direct suggestions in hypnosis do not ask the subconscious to blot
out anxiety but to use the energy it arouses to sharpen all the metal
faculties and allow that direct response to happen. If you walk into
an examination in a state of serene confidence you may actually be lacking
some of the edge you need in what is, after all, a rather heightened
situation. If we reframe anxiety in this way, as a welcome element of
arousal, it immediately defuses the red light effect . If I feel that
I must be totally calm and relaxed in order to do well
then the presence of anxiety will signal to me immediately that I am
in a potential disaster situation, the more I focus on anxiety in this
way the more I cause it to escalate, so I am actually creating an effect
opposite to the one I want.
It sounds paradoxical but when I embrace the anxiety as an ally I
already create a degree of relaxation around the arousal it creates,
this is the sort dynamic relaxation that an athlete uses in a high level
contact sport. Once you step into this type of feeling it can become
totally absorbing. Instead of being blocked by the anxiety you use it
to create the fluid state that you need to respond to the exam situation.
So you could say the direct suggestions are making the anxiety feelings
themselves a trigger for a response of what you might call dynamic relaxation
which allows you to bring that energy to bear on what's in front of
you( the exam) instead of it appearing in the form of a complete block
to your mind . This can actually be rehearsed in self hypnosis as well
as every time anxiety begins to trigger about the exam in the weeks
running up to it, so that the subconscious is reoriented to a new effective
response.
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