This post is all about school anxiety solutions.
School anxiety pops up at the worst moments and it can feel unavoidable and inescapable in the moment. When you have that test coming up or that essay you need to finish in two hours when you literally just started, the anxiety is at all-time high.
That’s when you need to pull out your school anxiety solutions. From creating a calendar breakdown to catching that negative self-talk before it gets worse, this list will give you a bunch of ideas how to quit that anxiety before it affects your grades.
Remember: your anxiety comes from a good place. You want to succeed and your brain is trying to get you there, but it can also hurt you when it stresses you out more than you should be.
This post is all about school anxiety solutions.
SCHOOL ANXIETY SOLUTIONS:
1. Break tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Rather than avoiding the sources of our anxiety, which often makes them worse even though that’s our first instinct, we need to attack the sources of our anxiety head-on. One way of doing this is to take the tasks that are stressing us out and breaking them down into chunks.
When we break down these tasks, we want to create smaller tasks that are manageable and less overwhelming so we can get them done. Choose bite-sized tasks that you can do everyday to slowly chip away at the bigger tasks.
2. Use a planner or calendar to stay organized and on top of deadlines.
Whether you choose a digital or paper calendar, you’ll want to write down all of the upcoming assignments for your semester and block out time between now and the deadlines to finish your assignments without the stress.
You can even combine your bite-sized tasks with your calendar to give yourself specific goals for each time block along the way until your deadline.
3. Create a study schedule to avoid last-minute cramming.
Once you’ve broken down your tasks and scheduled in the exact days or weeks you’ll need to complete them, you’ll be setting yourself up to create the ideal study schedule. That’s when you set aside blocks of time for studying.
The important part about creating this schedule is that you stick to it. This can look like time-blocking, in which you write out all of the items you want to get done and write out the specific times you’ll get them done.
4. Seek out academic support, such as tutoring or counseling.
No matter how stressed out you get, you can’t forget about the endless amount of campus resources out there for you to use. Whether you get tutoring in a challenging class or you seek out counseling, you can get the help you need to work through stress and find those school anxiety solutions.
5. Take regular breaks to prevent burnout and reduce stress.
Schedule breaks into your day. You could use the Pomodoro technique and have break activities at the ready to make breaks easier to take and more productive.
These breaks can be as short or as long as you need, but it helps to plan it out ahead of time so that you can take a break with the knowledge that you are on track to get everything done you need to get done.
6. Exercise or engage in physical activity to reduce stress and anxiety.
Move your body in whatever way feels good to you. Go for a walk, run on a treadmill, or dance to music for a few minutes. We often think of exercise as something that has to be torturous in order to be valid.
That’s never been true, but it also can difficult to change how we think of exercise. So, instead of telling yourself to exercise, you might find it useful to think about moving your body in a way that feels good and benefits you.
7. Use positive self-talk and affirmations.
Positive self-talk takes practice, so be kind to yourself. Start by noticing the moments you are hard on yourself. Once you get into the habit of noticing those moments, start talking back and acknowledging them.
The more you understand how you speak to yourself negatively, the more you will define the affirmations that will help you out in the future. These affirmations will help you fight the voice in your head that tells you you aren’t good enough.
8. Identify triggers and avoid them or develop coping strategies.
You start off by identifying your triggers as you stumble onto them. You might notice your thoughts start spiraling or your breathing becomes shallow or your heart beats fast.
Once you get a handle on what triggers you, you can start avoiding situations in which they’ll pop up. But, you can’t always depend on that. So, it’s a good idea to develop coping strategies for when you get triggered. This can look like breathing exercises, journaling, and more.
9. Get enough sleep and maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
Schedule in sleep just like you would anything else. While it’s tempting to skimp on sleep when something has to go, please try to prioritize it.
Depending on where you are in your academic journey, this might feel like an impossible ask and it’s okay if you have to learn the importance of sleep by losing out on it. But, hopefully, you will come to realize that sleep is important enough you need to schedule it in like you do school.
10. Build a support network.
Parents, teachers, friends, family. Whoever it is, find the people who support you when you need it. Think of the people you support when they need it and the people who you feel the most comfortable with.
Whether or not your grades are suffering, you’ll be nervous bringing up your mental health struggles to people regardless of the reason. So, find the people you’ll be able to rely on when you’re the most stressed.
11. Practice relaxation techniques.
Enroll in a yoga class at your university or local community center. Find videos online that guide you through yoga routines. Try some meditation (again, go online for some great resources that help you through it).
12. Use visual aids or mnemonic devices to aid in learning.
Create fun visual aids to help you study. Plus, they’re fun to create. You can involve colored pens, highlighters, bubbles, drawings and anything that make it fun for you to take notes and retain the information you’re reading.
You can use mnemonic devices, jingles, and more to help you turn studying into a fun, productive activity. You don’t have to torture yourself to do well on your next test.
13. Focus on the process of learning rather than the outcome or grades.
Some classes you take will never be useful. It sucks, but we can acknowledge this while still doing well in them. However, for those classes you’ll take with you into college or your career, you want to take them and actually learn from them.
Clearly, grades are stressful and there’s no denying that the grade feels like it has a bigger impact on how you read on paper. But, keep in mind that you also want the classes that will prepare you for your future to do that.
14. Take a mental health day.
When you’re in class, it’s much harder to take a mental health day than when you’re working—and even then, you might not have an employer who sees mental illness as a valid reason to take a sick day.
Regardless, you sometimes need to take a mental health day even if that means you redefine it. That might mean you decide to cook yourself some food and take a day off from doing assignments.
It’s not avoidance; it’s prioritizing your mental health for one day and doing what you need to do to make that happen.
15. Use technology tools and resources.
Never forget how useful technology is. From tools like ChatGPT to something much simpler like Google Docs, there are so online study aids and apps that will make your life easier. Think about tools that help you highlight PDFs, so you can annotate and take your readings on the go.
You can also use apps like Libby that make it easier to keep textbook costs down; reducing financial anxiety is just as important to reduce school anxiety as figuring out ways to study more effectively.
16. Set realistic and achievable goals to build self-confidence.
Keep your goals achievable. Yes, when we’re planning for our future, we want to create goals that make us feel like we’re floating because that’s how we create the lives we want.
But, when we’re thinking about school goals, we also want to be compassionate. Our goals, as always, should align with the lives we want to build. And yet we want to make sure we’re not hurting ourselves in the process.
So, identify what you value. Once you do that, you can work from there to better understand what kinds of academic goals to create. Maybe it’s studying on a daily basis or creating a calendar at the start of every semester or maintaining a certain GPA.
17. Use study groups or study partners for collaboration and support.
Teach others and invite others to teach you. By creating study groups, you will always have someone to lean on and someone to support. It’s really easy to forget how much we offer in relationships, so you can create a study group and understand that it’s useful for everyone.
Find people you like in your classes, people who you feel are as dedicated to succeeding as you are.
18. Practice self-care activities.
Take a break when you need it. Whether you take a mental health day or tiny break, make sure you involve self care into your daily or weekly life. Take a bath when you can, read a book when you feel like it, or go for a walk.
19. Celebrate successes and accomplishments.
One of the keys to staying sane as a student is to let yourself feel the wins. When you finish your assignment on time, celebrate. When you get a B on a test, celebrate. When you get eight hours of sleep, go to class on a time, and eat a solid lunch, celebrate.
Treat yourself like you’d treat a friend because you’re probably being too hard on yourself.
