**Test Anxiety & Academic Performance**

Who Can Benefit from Test Anxiety Hypnosis?
Test anxiety is one of the top five areas people seek out hypnosis. ” Anyone wanting to achieve optimal results in exam performance can benefit from test anxiety hypnosis. Stacy has helped children, teens, college students, adults, and retirees seeking a new career through test anxiety hypnosis.
Here are a few tests people have received help for:
Bar exams
Professional board licensing exams (Physicians, massage therapists, police, real estate, etc.)
Entrance exams
Wide variety of school subject exams
Driver’s license tests

When Does Test Anxiety Occur?

Test anxiety occurs whenever a student is psychologically distressed about an upcoming exam. The worrying and negative thinking interferes with studying, leads to agonizing study times and testing conditions and usually results in lower test performance.

What Are the Symptoms of Test Anxiety?

Most people have some test anxiety so anyone can benefit from test anxiety hypnosis. Many have moderate to severe anxiety with the symptoms manifesting below:

Physical – headaches, nausea, diarrhea, extreme body temperature changes, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, light-headedness or fainting, rapid heart-beat and/or dry mouth
Emotional – excessive fear, anger, depression, disappointment, uncontrollable laughing or crying, feelings of helplessness
Behavioral – fidgeting, pacing, avoidance, substance abuse
Cognitive – racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, ‘going blank’, negative self-talk, feelings of dread, comparing yourself to others, reliving past failures, difficulty organizing your thoughts

What Does the Scientific Research Say about Test Anxiety Hypnosis?

Here a few summaries:

In a small study (Graham and Vettraino, 2010), 6 of the 8 family medicine residents taking the Family Medicine In-Service Training Exam completed the hypnosis program and reported it reduced stress, was relaxing and they enjoyed participating. Five reported reduction in test taking anxiety and three felt it improved test scores.

In a recent study of 10 children age 13 and 14, (Mathur and Khan, 2011), anxiety and scholastic achievement scores were obtained before and after hypnotherapy intervention. Pretest anxiety scores ranged from 80-92% while post test anxiety scores dropped to 60-68%. Pretest academic scores ranged 50-57% while post intervention scores increased by 10-15%.

Further, anxiety symptoms of forgetting before the exam, excessive nervousness, sweating before and during the exam, going blank during the exam were all controlled or eliminated after hypnotherapy and these were observed by teachers, parents and the children themselves.

Using cognitive-behavioral hypnosis, (Sapp, 1990) studied college students in a demanding psychology course. The hypnosis group reported a significant reduction in test anxiety and an improvement in academic achievement. An evaluation 6 weeks after the treatment showed that the hypnosis group maintained their gains in achievement and reduction in anxiety.

What Will You Learn?

Breathing and quick relaxation techniques
Positive thinking skills
Basic study skills for optimal memory consolidation
Hypnotherapy Suggestions will include:
- The release of past failures
- Positive end result imagery
- Confidence and ego strengthening
- Focus and concentration
- Excellent memory retrieval
- NLP “swish” and “anchoring” techniques