May 28, 2025

Exam Anxiety, Management Guide for Parents and Students

The exam period is often accompanied by intense psychological pressure, both for students and their families. While a certain level of stress is normal—and even helpful—excessive anxiety can hinder students’ performance and burden both them and their families. Below, we explore what anxiety is and how to manage it.

The Nature of Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural bodily response to real or imagined threats. For example, exams may seem like a threat or danger to a child, even though they are not. Throughout human evolution, fear and anxiety have been useful (e.g., it’s helpful to fear and avoid wild animals), and even today, a moderate level of stress can motivate us and aid our academic efforts. However, excessive anxiety can have negative effects, reducing performance and causing distress.

Some common manifestations of anxiety include:

Physical symptoms:

  • Heart: fast heartbeat (tachycardia), often felt like pounding or racing.
  • Sweating, e.g., in the palms or all over the body, even in the absence of heat.
  • Stomachaches, nausea, and lack of appetite.
  • Difficulty falling asleep (due to constant thoughts about exams).

Cognitive symptoms:

  • Negative self-evaluation, catastrophizing, ignoring positive outcomes, generalization, and personalizing.
    E.g., “I didn’t do well on the math quiz → I have gaps in knowledge → I won’t do well on the final exams → I can’t do anything right,” etc.

Behavioral symptoms:

  • Avoidance of activities associated with stress (e.g., skipping sports practice during exam season).
  • Seeking reassurance repeatedly.
  • Irritability (e.g., being asked politely to tidy up and responding with yelling).

The Student’s Experience

Exam-related anxiety is often rooted in the pressure students feel to succeed and their fear of failure. Many students may feel that their self-worth depends solely on how they perform in exams. This creates an internal conflict between the desire to succeed and the fear of being rejected by parents or teachers.

Increased effort, when not accompanied by realistic goals and proper energy management, may lead to physical and emotional exhaustion. On the other hand, avoidance or procrastination may offer short-term relief but ultimately worsens anxiety, as delaying tasks makes them harder to tackle later. Anxiety affects both mood and self-perception.

Recommendations for Students

General advice:

  • Take care of your sleep (e.g., stop studying after a certain time, avoid screens 1–2 hours before bed).
  • Prioritize rest and pleasurable activities that promote well-being (e.g., exercise, time with friends).
  • Talk to people you trust about your concerns.

Exam preparation techniques:

  • Focus on what you do well and recall previous successful efforts.
  • Break large amounts of study material into smaller, manageable chunks.
  • Maintain a healthy diet (watch out for caffeine and energy drinks).
  • Try to view any demanding task as a challenge (“Let’s see how far I can go”) rather than a problem.

Techniques for managing anxiety:

  • Treat anxiety as natural and temporary—observe it without rejecting it.
  • Even if something seems difficult or impossible, try not to avoid it. Gradually exposing yourself to it is more helpful.
  • Redirect your attention—bring your focus back to the “here and now.”
  • Listen to your favorite music.
  • Try journaling how you feel.
  • Make a realistic schedule.
  • Identify your most productive study hours.
  • Take short breaks.

The Role of Adults

The attitudes and expectations of parents and teachers can significantly influence adolescents’ anxiety levels. Often, parental concerns about performance are tied to hopes for future academic or professional success. When these expectations are not expressed moderately, they can create an environment of excessive pressure and stress for the student.

Guidelines for Parents and Teachers

  • Keep in mind the impact your expectations have and the harm that can come from viewing excellence as the only acceptable outcome.
  • Foster a calm and safe home and study environment (e.g., provide a dedicated study space, avoid shouting during study time, don’t interrupt constantly to check on studying).
  • Encourage participation in extracurricular activities that promote relaxation.
  • Listen carefully, without interrupting, and ask for clarification to ensure you understand.
  • Share your own stress management strategies, without imposing them.
  • Acknowledge that anxiety is normal (e.g., “It’s okay to feel this way—it happens to all of us”).
  • Remind your child of past obstacles they have overcome.
  • Express acceptance, love, and support regardless of the outcome.
  • Talk about your own experiences with failure and how you managed them.

Final Remarks

Exam anxiety is a complex psychosocial phenomenon with various effects on individuals and their support systems. Early recognition and preventive management can promote not only academic success but also emotional resilience. Coordinated support from both family and school creates a stable foundation for empowerment, where performance is assessed in relation to personal growth and not viewed as the sole indicator of worth.