Exams making you feel anxious and stressed?

We can help with that - this approach empowers children and teenagers to identify and challenge negative thoughts and behaviours and replace them with positive, healthy ones.

Author

Jen - Primrose Kitten
August 05, 2024

How can we help students get ready for exams?

I strongly believe that you shouldn’t sacrifice your mental health for your exam results. That is why we’ve partnered with CBT4Me to give our students access to tools to help with exam anxiety.

Mental Health Relax GIF by All Better

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is not counselling. CBT is a highly effective form of talking therapy. The approach empowers children and teenagers to identify and challenge negative thoughts and behaviours and replace them with positive, healthy ones. Research has shown that  60%   of youth recover from their anxiety disorders following a course of CBT treatment (James, James, Cowdrey, Soler, & Choke, 2013; Warwick et al., 2017). 

4 weekly sessions offering practical approaches to managing exam stress; the sessions will cover the following:  

  • Understanding stress

  • Sleep Hygiene 

  • Managing worries 

  • Relaxation 

  • Panic 

  • Helpful behaviours for learning 

  • Balancing study and well-being

An accredited therapist will guide learners to understand exam anxiety in the context of thought, emotions, behaviour, and physical sensations. Therapists will present theories to understand maintenance patterns. Together, students learn how to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviour. Once this understanding is gained, the therapist will ask learners to practice behavioural changes before the next session. 

There are limited spaces per group; we know these will fill quickly, so don’t wait to sign up!

September Sessions (scroll down for October dates)

Session 1; Monday 9th September 4.30 -5.30

Session title: Understanding exam anxiety

We learn about stress, how to identify this in our daily lives using the CBT 5areas model. This model teaches how we fall into automatic unhelpful patterns in certain situations. We learn about automatic physical responses to stress and how to manage this, beginning with relaxation techniques.

 

Session 2; Monday 16th September 4.30 -5.30

Session title; Understanding Triggers and Worry management

The aim of this session is to stand- up to worries; we learn about worries, its impact on our goals, types of worry and skills to manage them

 

Session 3; Monday 23rd September 4.30 -5.30

Session title;  Problem Solving and activating behaviours

As part of the avoidance that happens with stress, we often reduce our enjoyable behaviours because we feel we may not have enough time. We can overcome this by changing our behaviours. Using the theory of behavioural activation, we learn to balance and approach our challenges. This session teaches to follow a plan not our emotions or thoughts and to face our problems.

 

Session 4; Monday 30th September 4.30 -5.30

Session title; Review and positive cycles

In our last session we revisit the skills learned and share our positive experiences of overcoming our worries, we look ahead into a future with a relapse prevention plan, helping us to share ideas on staying well.

 

October

Session 1; Tuesday 8th October 4.30 -5.30

Session title;Understanding exam anxiety

Session 2; Tuesday 15th October 4.30 -5.30

Session title;Understanding Triggers and Worry management

Session 3; Tuesday 22nd October 4.30 -5.30

Session title;Problem Solving and activating behaviours

Session 4; Tuesday 29th October 4.30 -5.30

Session title;Review and positive cycles

 

Difference between group and individual sessions

Group sessions are a great way to normalise the experience of exam anxiety. The sessions are generic, and learners in these groups have minimal/ no neuro-divergence.

Individual sessions are bespoke, providing adaptions to specific needs and learning styles.  

My name is Nayila. I've been working in the field of psychology for over  10 years. I specialise in  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which helps people change negative patterns of thinking or behaviour using talking therapy. CBT is demonstrated to be clinically effective and is the recommended treatment by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)  for the treatment of depression, anxiety, stress, OCD, PTSD, Phobia, Social Anxiety, Health Anxiety and many more!

 

Most recently, in the last 3 years, I have been supporting young learners in managing exam anxiety; the courses have been fun and extremely rewarding. I thrive on empowering learners to overcome their exam worries, which has led to increased confidence and improved exam success.