Working towards exams can leave you feeling stressed out, worried or even frozen with fear. Sometimes there’s added pressure from school, parents or even your peer group.

Occasionally, things can get so overwhelming it’s difficult to even assess how you’re feeling.

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not alone.

Exam stress is incredibly common, and it is valid to feel overwhelmed. However, remember that regardless of outcomes, you are the most important thing in this process, and looking after yourself, keeping as well as possible through exam season is your top priority.

What is Exam Stress?

Exam Stress is not limited to the day of an exam itself. Instead, it can be a lingering combination of emotions and negative thought patterns that occur in the lead up to exams, during the exam period and even after exams are over.

Exam stress can feel like a weight placed on your shoulders or chest. Sometimes it can feel like a heaviness in the pit of your stomach. It can feel like pressure from yourself, or others and can build and build inside until you’re full to bursting. Exam stress can lead to overwhelming feelings. This in turn can make it very difficult to focus, which may lead to more worry that you can’t study or can’t remember anything. If left uncontrolled, this can be like a vicious snowball effect, where with more worry, comes more overwhelming feelings and then less focus and so on. Excessive exam stress can make you feel terrible and affect how well you can learn and study. So, what can you do to help manage exam stress?

Identify what’s causes your exam stress.

Exams are stressful enough on their own, but there can be other things going on making you feel worse. Sometimes it’s helpful to find out if there’s something specific that’s troubling you, as can be much easier to tackle each issue on its own. Breaking your exam stress down into manageable chunks helps to combat feelings of being overwhelmed.

Feeling Unprepared

Do you feel you’ve covered all the material in school? Are there any areas you missed due to absence or disengaged from because they were challenging?

Have you got a good revision structure, or does it all feel a bit last minute?

Solution

• Have a conversation with your teacher and explain areas you find confusing or would benefit from a refresher on.
• Check out online resources such as BBC Bitesize. Sometimes you need to see a topic presented in a different way to understand it well.
• Starting revision early, spreading out topics into manageable chucks. A revision timetable can help make the best use of your time.

If you feel like you’ve not left enough time to revise, stay calm and remember it’s never too late to make a difference.

• First, don’t beat yourself up and try not to feel guilty. Time is limited, and it’s not the best use of your mental and emotional energy.
• Focus on what would be the most helpful thing to prioritise. Select the most important, overarching topics first and work your way through the material in the time you have. It can be helpful to pick a key theme, mind map the big ideas and then move on to the next topic.
• If there’s time, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes a teacher or classmate can be a useful resource in helping you prioritise what to study.
• Most importantly, go into the exam with a belief that you will know more than you think. Stay calm and give it your best try.

Pressure – From Yourself or Others

Are you putting pressure on yourself to achieve certain grades?
Perhaps your family or caregivers have certain expectations of achievement. This can feel like there’s a lot of pressure on you to make certain grades. Maybe you feel like there will even be consequences or disappointment if you don’t achieve in line with their expectations.

Solution

• Be kind to yourself. Think about all the things you have achieved so far. It can be helpful to write a list of all the things you like about yourself, and the things other people value about you too. If you find this difficult, ask a friend to help you. Sometimes it’s difficult to see ourselves clearly or kindly.
• If people around you – like your parents or family – are putting pressure on you, try to communicate how their behaviour or comments are making you feel. Let them know that excessive stress can be detrimental to your mental health and even compromise your ability to learn and perform in exams. It can help to tell them what you feel you are able to achieve and let them know that your expectations of yourself are different from theirs. Perhaps discussing the pressure you’re under at home with a teacher you trust would be beneficial.

Pressure – Comparing Yourself to Others

‘comparison is the thief of joy’ – Eleanor Roosevelt
Talking about exam stress with friends at school can be really helpful. But too much exam talk can lead to comparison. Do you feel like other people are doing better than you, spending more time on revision, or just not feeling the same stress you are?

• Remember, this is your experience, whatever you’re feeling or going through is valid and unique to you. Focus on yourself – comparison to others serves to benefit no one. This is your journey, assessing your learning. The best you can possibly aim for is to do as well as you can. Comparison serves to diminish your confidence and likely negatively impact your performance.
• Big talk is easy, nothing is guaranteed. Nobody knows what is really going on for other people, you don’t know how much revision your friends are doing, what grades they’re going to get or the fact they might be stressing out just as much as you.

Catastrophising – Worrying About the Future

Catastrophising means that a person fixates on the worst possible outcome and treats it as likely, even when it is not. Often when catastrophising, people will project their fears into the future. For example, catastrophising might make you think, “if I fail this exam, I will never get through school, and I will be a total failure in life”. This is even though you know that many successful people have failed exams, and failing an exam isn’t proof that you won’t be able to find a job. A person who is catastrophizing might not be able to acknowledge that.

What can you do?

• Recognizing irrational thoughts: Catastrophizing often follows a distinct pattern of escalating thought processes, like tumbling further and further down a flight of stairs. When a person learns to recognize these thoughts, they are better equipped to handle them.
• Knowing when to stop: To cease the repetitive, catastrophic thoughts, you might have to say out loud or in your head, “stop!” or “no more!” These words can break the stream of thoughts and help change the course of their thinking.
• Thinking about another outcome: Instead of thinking about a negative outcome, try to focus on a positive one or even a less-negative option.
• Offering positive affirmations: When it comes to catastrophic thinking, you have to believe that they can overcome their tendency to fear the worst. You may wish to repeat a positive affirmation on a daily basis.
• Practicing excellent self-care: Catastrophic thoughts are more likely to take over when a person is tired and stressed. Getting enough rest and engaging in stress-relieving techniques, such as exercise, meditation, and journaling, can all help you to feel better and avoid catastrophic thinking.

Life Events

Are there other factors outside of examinations that are piling on the pressure?
Are you going through significant life events, like a house/school move or bereavement?
Are you experiencing difficulties in relationships with those close to you? These m ight be family, friends or romantic relationships.
Do you have caring responsibilities that take up your time and emotional energy?Have you got mental or physical health problems that are getting in your way?
If this is going on for you, what can you do?

The most important thing is to make sure your school is aware of any circumstances that
may be negatively impacting your learning and ability to succeed in your exams.
Get your parents or an authority figure like your doctor to write a letter explaining your circumstances and the extra help or consideration you might need. There are lots of provisions that schools and examination boards make to help students facing extra challenges. Please don’t be embarrassed or unsure about coming forward.

What practical things can you do to combat exam stress?

• If you’ve addressed the specific things that you’re worried about and exam stress is still bothering you, it might be helpful to do some practical things to reduce stress.
• Promote ‘happy chemicals’ There are four primary chemicals that drive the positive emotions you feel: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins (sometimes referred to as D.O.S.E.). Doing things like hugging your family, having a really good deep belly laugh, doing exercise or even taking a cold shower can release these happy chemicals. That’s why it’s important during exam season to connect with other people and make time for things that you enjoy.
• Take care of your physical health. Neglecting your physical health can make all the challenges around exam season more difficult to tackle. This means prioritising your self-care, doing the things that make you feel looked after. These include the basic things: brushing your teeth twice a day, washing regularly, eating nourishing foods. As well as simple things like taking a luxurious bath with candles, buying some expensive moisturiser and taking the time to lovingly apply it or even going for a massage, hair cut or beauty treatment. A healthy sleep schedule is really important. Without good sleep, the simplest of tasks can feel exhausting and difficult to face, let alone revision and managing exam stress.
• Keep to a regular routine. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every night and morning.
• Keep your sleeping space for sleeping. If you can, don’t work in your bed or put-up flashcards near to where you are sleeping. Keep your sleep space calm and revision free.
• Blue light is bad! While any kind of light can suppress the secretion of melatonin, the hormone that makes you feel sleepy, blue light at night does so more powerfully. Blue light from electronic devices throws the body’s biological clock out of whack resulting in difficulty in getting to sleep and poorer sleep quality. There is even evidence to suggest that exposure to blue light at night decreases the body’s ability to produce serotonin, the happy chemical, the next day. So do your best to keep electronic devices out of your bedroom.

Finally, and most importantly, STAY SAFE.

If you feel overwhelmed, or like you want to hurt yourself, support is available for you to talk things through. You deserve help as soon as you need it.

To talk with someone confidentially about how you feel, you can:
Ring HOPELINEUK on 0800 068 4141 or the Samaritans on 116 123.

If talking to someone feels like too much, you can text communicate by texting ‘YM’ to Young Mind’s Textline on 85258.

If you feel like you might, or if you have hurt yourself physically, this is an emergency. You

can:

Call 999 and ask for an ambulance.

Tell an adult you trust and ask them to call 999 for help.

Mental health emergencies are serious. You aren’t wasting anyone’s time.