Did I answer correctly? What if I don't get a good grade? What if I fail? Did I forget to say something important? Did I write everything needed in my answer? What if I don't get the grade I want?
The "What if" and "Will I" bring too many doubts and rarely, if ever, provide certainties. Doubt fuels anxiety and, interestingly, increases the likelihood of exactly what is feared happening, as the focus of attention and effort is on the fear of failing rather than the desire to do one's best.
Many young people feel lost in these doubts, especially during the phase of school exams and/or when test scores gain extraordinary weight in their daily lives and future goals. They find themselves torn between anticipating their performance on tests, presentations and exams, and trying to verify post-assessment if everything went well, what they got right or wrong, mentally reviewing as much as possible to see if they got everything right. In these situations, they are in a state of hypervigilance that skews their realistic reading of the situations and tasks, in addition to creating a negative interpretation of what others will think of them.
In these cases, we speak of Social Anxiety, more specifically Performance Anxiety, as the fear is limited to speaking in public and/or having a performance negatively evaluated by others.
In this form of anxiety, the fear of making mistakes, not achieving what they set out to do, being negatively evaluated by others, not meeting expectations, can both motivate them to face their fears and block their performance in various forms of evaluation. Here, the results tend to be lower than expected, expectations are disappointed, and fear wins. It wins because the situation happened as predicted and wins because it brings further fear towards future evaluation situations.
They study a lot. Some even study too much. They try to have everything under control so that nothing goes as they fear, but a set of thoughts tells them they might not or won't succeed, that they will fail, and sometimes they even think they are less competent than others, weakening their self-confidence even more.
And the fear? It continues to strengthen as, instead of facing their fears and increasing their efforts contrary to what the fear indicates, these young people end up increasing the fear of everything happening just as it appears in their negative thoughts. Doubt and insecurity grow, and anxiety also increases its proportions and cognitive, emotional, and behavioral expressions.
Anxiety's role is to signal possible dangers and important moments for each of us. However, in its extreme form (negative), we lose confidence in ourselves, miss opportunities, feel diminished, and often fall into the temptation of trying to control it instead of dealing with it and accepting it in its essence. On the other hand, if we don't experience it, we don't feel the satisfaction of finding a good grade on the report card nor the contentment after successfully facing anxiety-provoking situations, which are important for our growth, whether personal or professional. We need anxiety, but in a regulated way.
Learning to manage anxiety for tests, exams, and other forms of evaluation in an increasingly competitive society becomes an essential tool for the entire life journey.
