Exam stress

Manage Exam Stress with Hypnotherapy

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Once again it is that time of year. With University final exams and dissertations, not to mention A-levels and GCSES’s, it can soon become an overwhelming experience for many. The pressure to succeed can result in lost sleep, anxiety, anger, depression or sometimes all of these.

Hypnotherapy has emerged as a powerful tool that can help manage the heightened levels of stress. It can give the mind a holiday from the worries of it all, while at the same time helping the mind process all the information that is needed to best perform at your best. It takes us from our protective stressed out primitive mind and guides us towards a place where the mind no longer senses danger, our intellectual mind and we can relax and recover. It is from here where we come up with our best work, our best performances and our happy place. The more we can practise being relaxed, which hypnotherapy provides, the more we reduce worries, reduce stress hormones and allow ourselves to become our best.

Hypnotherapy is however more than just a tool for relaxation. It provides each individual with a tailored program and voyage of self discovery, arming you with information and directions that help unlock issues that are causing the problem in the first place. The visualisation techniques, used in hypnotherapy, can allow students to mentally rehearse the exam environment, giving time to prepare by imagining positive thoughts and positive outcomes. Visualising yourself in the exam room, sitting at your desk and everything goes well.

If this sounds like something you or someone you know would benefit from, please contact Illuminating Minds on 07725878880 or via our website.

How to cope with Exam and Work Stress

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The exam season is about to hit, and for many school children this can be a time of great anxiety and stress. A little bit of stress can be a good thing, and can help motivate us to achieve our goals, however for some this can become over-whelming, derailing our best efforts and stopping us from performing at our highest levels.

Exams themselves, don’t cause the anxiety. When we break it down, we realise that an exam is just simply a task that needs to be completed.  However, it’s the tricks that our mind can play on us, that can then cause the fear of the exam itself. This is an important realisation, because once we are aware of this, we understand that it is within ourselves that we can find the answer to the problem that we have created. This may sound harsh but its important that we realise that we are the captain of our own ship and can control the way we think about situations and events in our lives.

The great news is that you can take back control of the situation

Here in Dorset, I help people overcome the anxieties that surround exams and performance. The fact is that exam stress is the same as the stress suffered by those performing on the stage, or in Sport. It is grouped and labelled ‘performance anxiety’ and individuals can suffer to such an extent they are unable to think clearly. When we are stressed, we use the primitive parts of our brain. This area is designed to protect us from danger. This is a great thing when we encounter potential threats to our safety such as when a wasp buzzes around our head. We pump out hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline that help us to react quickly. Unfortunately, it can stop us from using the parts of our brain that allow us to perform well in exams.

Having been a teacher, I appreciate how difficult it can be for children to deal with exams. All you want for our developing children is to be able to express what they can do, when they want or need to be able to do it!

The following is a list of ways to reduce stress

  • One of the biggest ways you can reduce stress is to try and avoid those around you who are showing signs of stress. The reason for this is that stress can be contagious, and we mirror this when we are around people, in the same way that a smile can be contagious or even a yawn.
  • Another way you can help your stress levels is by keeping a calm environment to work or study in, perhaps having a plant in your study space.
  • Also make sure you have plenty of fresh food in the house, and ensure you sip plenty of water or drinks during the day to stay hydrated and keep your brain alert and functioning to its maximum.
  • Try to keep your study or work area decluttered, and use calming essential oils such lavender. You can also use Rosemary or Peppermint as these have been used for thousands of years as an aid to improve memory.
  • Try to limit time on social media, this not only stops you from wasting valuable time when you could be studying or working, it also can help reduce anxiety. Social media can be known to increase anxiety, especially if someone you know is spreading the panic online.
  • Also be aware that going analogue can be detrimental to learning. When you write information down, it lights up different pathways in the brain that aid learning and memory recall. For those of a creative personality you can use mind mapping techniques to build patterns of information that help you recall information and can be more fun to do.
  • Don’t forget to take regular breaks. Get outside and get some fresh air, its important to allow the brain time to consolidate what you have learnt.
  • Get some exercise, this way you can release feel good endorphins and help to relieve the symptoms of anxiety.
  • Get plenty of sleep, this is where most of your learning is processed into your long-term memory. Make the most of this, and let your brain recover for the next day.
  • Be positive and visualise yourself doing well. Your mind doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality, so instead of telling yourself you feel nervous, tell yourself ‘I feel excited’ or ‘I am well prepared for these exams’. The more you practise and imagine yourself in a relaxed state in the exam, the mind can then prepare the body for this.

One of the most important things to remember is that many of the most successful people in the world weren’t particularly academic. Leonardo Da Vinci for example didn’t have what we would call a formal education, and he didn’t do too badly!

Exams are a good way to test our ability to memorise information, and our ability to cope under pressure, but what they can’t do is test somebody’s entrepreneurial spirit, musical or sporting skills or capacity to be kind or indeed their common sense!

Illuminating Minds Hypnotherapy

If despite the above advice you are still feeling anxious about your up-coming exams, here at Illuminating Minds we use proven Hypnotherapy techniques to help an individual to regain the calm and balance required to perform at their best. So often we are taught how to observe and learn and be active, but what we aren’t always shown is how to be calm and rest the mind. There is a strong learning benefit in being calm. In my sessions I explain how anxiety is a process that can build up over time.  I use a stress bucket as a metaphor to show how anxiety and worries accumulate over time. This is where we store all our anxious thoughts in a queue waiting to be processed. During REM sleep we process our anxieties, removing the emotional negative parts.  But if we have too much to process, the quality of our sleep can suffer, and we get caught in a vicious circle of sleep deprivation and heightened anxiety. Hypnosis or trance breaks this circle by simulating REM sleep and can help us process our worries and empty our stress bucket. It can also help us to focus and visualise how we want things to go during our exams or at work in a calm and methodical way.

If you feel Hypnotherapy could be of benefit and you would like to learn more,  contact Illuminating Minds now and we can start getting you back in control and on a path to your own success.

How Stress can affect us and how we can fight back.

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What is stress ?

To answer this, we first need to step back in time to meet our primitive ancestors, the cavemen. In those long forgotten days, our ancestors would as a matter of daily live find themselves walking along on the open plains of the African savanna and would have the potential to bump into a hungry pride of lions. In order to survive they would’ve needed a rapid response system, that bypassed the controlled conscious mind and allowed them to either stand and fight with their weapons, or run as fast as they could. This system we know today as the fight, flight or freeze response. As soon as they were aware of the lion, a signal would be sent to a part of their brain called the Amygdala, which acts as the warning siren when we are under attack or threatened. With the help of the Hypothalamus, which regulates all the chemical responses in our body and mind, we would release two hormones these are the stress chemical messengers of cortisol and adrenaline (epinephrine). These hormones give our body the lightening fast response it needs to take immediate life saving action.

In modern times however the ‘Lions on the planes of Africa’ has become a traffic jam, or a critical meeting at work, or a parent suffering with a life changing illness, or arguments with partners. The accumulation of a multitude of stressors, if prolonged, can have a major impact on the quality of our lives. It can if left unchecked these start to affect our health, which can manifest itself in numerous ways. It could start as a tension headache, or stomach problem at first, the effects of the hormones in the blood can restrict the blood flow forcing our blood vessels to constrict, restricting the oxygen flow to our heart or brain. This in turn, over time, can increase our risk of developing heart problems or even stroke.

The main hormone that triggers many of these health problems is cortisol. This is released by the adrenal gland and sits above the kidney. This hormone feeds our anxiety, which in turn causes our adrenal glands to produce more cortisol, so we can end up living in a vicious circle. The net result of long term cortisol production, can be weakened bone or muscle tissue. It also slows down healing, impairs digestion, affects metabolism and weakens our immune function. Listed below are some of the signs to look out for when we experience stress.

Symptoms of Stress on the body are

  • Change in sex drive
  • Chest pain
  • Fatigue
  • Headache
  • Muscle tension or pain
  • Sleep problems
  • Stomach upset

Effects of stress on your mood

  • Anxiety
  • Feeling overwhelmed
  • Irritability or anger
  • Lack of motivation or focus
  • Restlessness
  • Sadness or depression

Effects of stress on your behaviour

  • Angry outbursts
  • Drug or alcohol abuse
  • Exercising less often
  • Overeating or under eating
  • Social withdrawal
  • Tobacco use

How can we combat Stress ?

So how can we turn the tide of the impact that stress can have on our bodies and mental health ?

In my clinic we tell our clients about stress, and how it builds up into what we call a ‘Stress Bucket’. When stress builds up, it can sometimes overflow, and this is when we can start feeling out of balance and a sense of losing control of our lives.

One of the best tools we use to empty the stress bucket is Trance. The reason we use Trance is that it simulates REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). When we go into REM during our sleep we re-run stressful emotional events, and we replay them and change them from being an emotional memory to being a narrative memory (a memory we have control over). This is why when someone upsets us during the day, and we still think about it later on, it’s not until we have slept on the issue, that we awaken in the morning and wonder what all the fuss was about. We have removed the emotional content from the memory. This is natures way of helping us reset and move on with our daily lives. The same is true when we go into trance.

Hypnotherapy facilitates a sense of calm and relaxation and provides the process with which the mind can reduce its cortisol levels allowing us to release our worries, so that when it’s time to go to bed, we can have a more restful night’s sleep and regain the balance and sense of well being we ultimately seek.