this is a video for people who suffer from test anxiety I'm Dan Willingham I'm a professor who studies human learning I want to focus in particular on spiraling thoughts that's where something small happens and your anxiety blows it up into something huge in your mind so you're taking a test there's a few questions in a row that you know you don't know the answer to and from that you conclude I'm probably going to fail this exam and then you think well if I fail the exam I'm probably going to end up failing the course and
if I fail the course then I may have to leave school and if I leave school oh my gosh my parents are going to be so upset I'll probably end up never end up getting a good job and so on now there's a good way of dealing with spiraling thoughts which is realistic self-talk there are two things you want to focus on one is the likelihood that what you're anticipating is actually going to happen so when there are a few questions in a row that you don't know on an exam do you usually end up
failing the test or do you usually worry about failing the test but actually the grade ends up being okay and then also think about the consequences all right suppose the worst does happen and you fail the course does that mean that your path in life is really set there's no way to bounce back from this now some people try realistic self-talk and it doesn't work for them because they do it at the wrong time people tend to do this when they're feeling anxious in other words in the middle of the test but realistic self-talks are
required if you're trying to do it during the test you're anxious right so this is requiring that you set aside that anxiety and then start thinking logically right in the middle of the test that's just not going to happen so instead what you want to do is do the realistic self-talk like two or three days in advance of the test then during the test when you start to feel that anxiety rise that's when you can say no I went through this and I remember concluding that the thoughts I'm having right now these aren't really very
realistic okay the difference is that even though you can't think in the midst of anxiety you can remember in the midst of anxiety memory is just not as demanding of your mental processes so in the middle of the test during test anxiety you're still going to be able to remember that conclusion that you drew uh this isn't a comprehensive solution to test anxiety this is specific to spiraling thoughts but if you have that issue give it a try let me know in the comments if it works for you
