Article ยท 4 min read
Exam anxiety: how to calm down before a paper.
Exam anxiety is the racing heart, dry mouth and blank mind that hit before a paper. It is normal, treatable, and almost always passes with a few minutes of breathing and grounding.
Why your brain freezes the night before
When the body senses a threat, real or imagined, it pumps adrenaline. Adrenaline is great for running from a tiger and terrible for remembering organic chemistry. The fix is not to think harder, it is to lower the adrenaline first.
Three things you can do in the next 10 minutes
1. Box breathing (2 minutes)
Breathe in for 4, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold for 4. Repeat ten times. This single trick down-regulates your nervous system faster than any pep talk.
2. The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding (3 minutes)
Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste. Grounding pulls you out of the spiral and back into the room.
3. Move for 5 minutes
Walk to the window, do ten jumping jacks, splash cold water on your face. Movement burns the adrenaline. You cannot think yourself out of a body state.
If you are panicking right now
Message itsokay on WhatsApp. It is free, anonymous, and replies in English, Hindi or Hinglish. The first message is the hardest. After that, breathing.