With exams looming, I know that a lot of people are suffering with anticipatory anxiety. Even if you aren’t sitting an exam, life is stressful enough so I wanted to give you some insight on wellbeing actions that are scientifically based and different from the usual sleep and exercise more…
Catastrophising
Author (and worrier) Matt Haig refers to the tendency for worriers to catastrophise: ‘My worry has real ambition… My anxiety…is big enough to go anywhere!’ (Haig 2018).
An example of catastrophising would be: ‘If I don’t pass this exam then I may lose my job and not be able to cope’ This scenario is obviously really unlikely; nevertheless, if you are a worrier you will allow this sort of thinking to prevail, however unlikely the outcome.
As someone who is prone to catastrophising, being told “just don’t worry about” is possibly the least helpful comment you can get. I didn’t realise that was an option! Now I’m perfectly fine. (rolls eyes) We are always going to worry, and some of us have more low level anxiety than others naturally.
What we need to do is channel that worry – so here are your 3 tips…
- Worry time – have a ‘worry time’ each day, so worries have to wait to be reflected on at a particular time each day. I recommend you allow yourself 20 mins per day at a set time, and when you start to worry outside of this time, tell yourself this will have to wait until the 7pm worry time!
- Chunking – take each day one standalone step at a time without fretting about what lies ahead, i.e. one day at a time. I will look at 1.1.1 today, I will not think about the larger picture yet – follow your chunked study plan.
- The worry board – once a day, write any worries on sticky notes and put them on a notice board. More worrying worries should be placed closer to the top of the board, with lesser worries placed lower down. Once a day, review the worries from the day before to remove any worries that have been resolved and add any new worries to the board. This might sound strange, but the removal and adding of the worries shows how things are essentially transitory and don’t last.
Let me know which of these works for you – I personally swear by 1 & 2 on a daily basis and I have done the worry board when feeling really overwhelmed.
For those of you sitting exams next week, good luck with your revision and I know you are going to smash them!
You’ve got this!