Managing Test Anxiety, Part One: How to Prepare Before the Test

Dec. 14, 2020
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Updated April 10, 2022
By Sam Katerji, MA, RP

Some students experience such high anxiety in testing situations that they are unable to prepare for tests or to perform well even when they are prepared.  We refer to this experience as ‘test anxiety,’ and it can occur before, during, or after a test or other evaluative situation.

Test anxiety is experienced in a variety of ways.  Do you recognize any of these experiences?

Physical Signs:

  • shallow or rapid breathing
  • Upset stomach
  • Sweating
  • Muscle tension
  • Headache

Cognitive Signs:

  • Thoughts such as, I can't do this or I don’t know anything
  • Going blank or writer’s block
  • Trouble understanding or organizing thoughts
  • Being easily distracted
  • Remembering the answers only after the test ends

Emotional Signs:

  • Fear or anxiety
  • Frustration or anger
  • Panic or an urgent need to escape

Behavioural Signs:

  • Fidgeting
  • Crying
  • Shaking
  • Avoidance (i.e. procrastination)

What Makes Test Anxiety Worse?

The cause, expression, and intensity of test anxiety differs among people based on various biopsychosocial factors as well as situational factors.  Try to identify what applies to you in the following examples.  The first step to coping with a problem or beginning to solve it is knowing what is wrong.

Biopsychosocial Factors:

  • Focusing only on your grade or the consequences of failing
  • Having negative beliefs about your abilities in school or yourself in general (e.g. I can’t do anything right)
  • Being consumed by emotions instead of doing what’s needed for your goals
  • Worrying about past negative feedback
  • Being afraid of future judgement or the expectations of others, including family, potential employers, or people you look up to
  • Ruminating about poor grades on previous tests
  • Comparing yourself to others and judging yourself as ‘less than’
  • Striving for perfection with inflexible and unrealistic standards or excess worry about making mistakes
  • Having poor study habits
  • Not eating or sleeping or drinking too much coffee before the test

Situational Factors:

The pandemic has changed everyone’s sense of normalcy, and it has impacted the way tests and exams are written.  This year, you’re not writing exams in the AC or lecture halls that have become familiar.  Remote learning has made your home the norm for all of your work.  Studying and completing tests in your house can be difficult when family or roommates use the same internet or simply aren’t quiet when you ask them to be.  You may now be expected to perform while using a lockdown browser. 

Other situational factors can include the expectations of your instructors.  Instructors may be vague about material covered on a test.  Perhaps they haven’t shared the style of questions or the marking system for the test.

How to Manage A Few Days or More Before the Test

If your test is more than a few days away, work to address anxious thoughts and work on the skill of tolerating the unpleasant feeling of having anxiety.  You may have heard in the past that how we interpret situations leads to how we feel about them and how we behave in them.  We can use this system to our advantage: having more helpful and realistic thoughts about tests can lead us to feel better during the test and potentially do better as well. This is not simply about thinking positively, it’s about thinking realistically.
Those who struggle with test anxiety often have ‘catastrophizing’ thoughts. These thoughts focus on the worst possible outcome, which often is not realistic or likely. For example: if I don’t get an A, then I’ll never have a future or I can’t do this.

Identify your thoughts and worries about your upcoming test and then use the questions below to reframe them to be more balanced and realistic.  What is the factual evidence that makes the thought true?  What is the evidence that makes the thought untrue? Given all of the evidence, is there a more helpful way of thinking about this?

  • Am I confusing a possibility with a probability?  Your worry may be possible, but is it likely?
  • Have I had this thought before, and did it turn out to be true?
  • If I looked back on this thought in 5, 10 or 20 years, what will I say to myself?
  • Have I been judging myself unfairly or harshly?
  • Am I predicting that something bad will happen?  If so, how likely is it to happen happen?  If it does, how bad will it be?  What will I do?  How might I cope and move on with my life?
  • Is there a more realistic, and kinder, way of thinking about myself or this situation that is more likely to help me achieve my goals?
  • What’s the kernel of truth from both sides? For example, I can be anxious and still do this.

The following mindfulness practices and having perspective are the recommended ways to manage and lower test anxiety.  Mindfulness helps us to see our present distress as a single moment in time.  In this way, we can detach from catastrophizing thoughts and reduce our suffering.  Here are some additional ways of increasing groundedness and mindfulness to help manage anxiety:

  1. The Worry Well Activity – when you have a worry that can’t be addressed immediately, add it to a ‘worry list’.  Then, pick a time for when you will focus on that list.  This helps to release it from your mind for now.  When the time comes, allow yourself to worry about the list, then do something you find relaxing afterwards.
  2. Grounding: put your feet flat on the ground and take some very slow and deep breaths…inhaling for a very slow count of 5 and exhaling for a very slow count of 5. Check out this video: How to do Deep Breathing
  3. Guided meditations. This is a great list of guided meditations.  We particularly suggest "The Five Minute Breathing Meditation" and "The Seven Minute Meditation for Difficulties"
  4. Download a mindfulness App.
  5. Plan ahead for exam day. What is your exam-day prep? What might help you stay focused and keep anxiety at a manageable level? This could include exercise, a favourite TV show, or listening to music that energizes you or puts you in ‘the zone’ to write an exam, or perhaps music that calms you.

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Part Two: Managing Test Anxiety on the Day of the Test.  We will discuss how to use your time whether you are prepared or not, and how to control your anxiety in order to perform while you are writing.