Debilitating and Facilitating Anxiety



Debilitating and Facilitating Anxiety

As you may have already experienced in life, some stress is good to have. It can keep your alert, attentive, and provide you with motivation. But, some stress can have adverse affects causing you to forget information and become very nervous before and during exams. This good type of anxiety is called facilitating anxiety and this bad type of anxiety is called debilitating anxiety.

Facilitating Anxiety keeps you motivated to succeed. This type of anxiety does not hinder test preparation and test taking abilities. In fact, this type of anxiety may help to improve performance.

Here are some examples of facilitating anxiety: an adrenaline rush before a big game or positive (but nervous) energy before a date. In the career world, it could be a rush of adrenaline before conducting an interview or butterflies before a big presentation.

Debilitating Anxiety has a negative affect and impact on a student's test preparation and test taking abilities. When someone has testing anxiety, they are feeling the influences of debilitating anxiety.

Here are some examples of debilitating anxiety: waiting until the last minute to study for a big test and feeling nervous and unprepared. Arriving to a test late and having to rush through the questions to answer them in time. Being pulled over for speeding with the knowledge that your insurance is going to go up as a result of the ticket. Or, in the career world, it could be missing a deadline or being unprepared for a board meeting.

What Can Help Testing Anxiety?

Tests, exams, essays, and projects are all ways for your teachers to make sure you are meeting the objectives of the course. And, outside of the classroom, being an effective test taker can help you meet the challenges you will face in the career world and in life. Tests are not a measure of your self-worth or intelligence; rather they evaluate a certain bank of knowledge.

Just like everything else, our attitudes and perception of test taking are very important. These attitudes can hinder or help with test taking success. If you have had positive and successful test taking experiences in the past, you probably have a good level of confidence with test taking. If you have had bad test taking experiences, you might experience a bit of anxiety before and during exams.

The best way to reduce test anxiety is to have a positive attitude and give yourself plenty of time to study. If you are not prepared for a test, it causes bad stress which in turn can cause severe test anxiety. This test anxiety can cause you to do poorly on the test. When you are prepared for an exam, your levels of bad stress will be low. Test preparation, attitude, and anxiety levels are directly related.

Alpert, R. & Haber, R. N. (1960). Anxiety in academic achievement situations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61, 201-215.

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