Stress, including exam nerves, is a perfectly natural phenomenon, the body’s response to challenging situations, but it can significantly affect students’ performance as well as physical and mental well-being. The exam period poses an increased psychological and mental burden to young people, and the associated stress can cause anxiety symptoms, sleep problems, loss of appetite or an increased urge to eat, irritability, and difficulty concentrating, all of which make exam preparation even more difficult and can lead to worse results. “We often hear about these types of complaints from adolescents during the entrance exam and high school graduation periods or around the time of equivalency exams,” emphasizes Consultant Psychologist Melinda Cserép.
Any type of stress triggers complex physiological changes, the primary purpose of which is to aid adaptation; for example, they can contribute to focus or even quickness. In exam situations, rapid heartbeat, short breath, and sweating are unpleasant but familiar reactions for virtually everyone. “The difficulties arise mainly if we consider the tasks at hand to be unsolvable and associate too much fear with them, with which we actually only manage to increase our anxiety,” stresses Melinda Cserép. As the consultant psychologist at Semmelweis University’s Pediatric Center adds: Fortunately, this also means that resolving the situation and alleviating the tension is largely up to us.
An important part of managing stress properly is not to start preparation only in the last few days before the exam.
The first step is prevention and planning: During preparation, it is worth maintaining a structured daily routine, with regular sleep (at least 7-8 hours a day are recommended), a balanced diet, and conscious rest. Daily exercise is especially important, which can be regular sports or any physical activity that the person enjoys doing. These simple lifestyle factors, which make the preparation period more structured and predictable, can in themselves alleviate anxiety.
Among stress management techniques, it is worth learning a few simple breathing exercises that have a calming effect and can be used immediately before an exam. One such technique is prolonged exhalation, in which slow inhalations are followed by exhalations that last about twice as long. Diaphragmatic breathing, also known as abdominal breathing, increases sustained attention and reduces cortisol levels. These methods are most effective when incorporated into your daily routine not only on the day of the exam, but weeks in advance.
Psychological preparation is also an important factor. As the expert points out:
Repeatedly reminding themselves what the exam will bring them closer to and why it is important helps people have the proper focus. We usually recommend that adolescents recall difficult situations that they have successfully overcome in the past. Negative thoughts can be common before exams, and they tend to reinforce anxiety.
It is worth formulating positive, self-encouraging sentences and thoughts that remind us of our previous successes, which we would also say to our best friend to cheer them up.
The positive presence of parents is also extremely important during these weeks. They need to monitor their child’s state of mind and recognize when it becomes difficult for the child to cope with anxiety on their own. A supportive, accepting attitude and encouragement can all help exam takers not to feel alone. Conversations, humor, and time spent together can also go a long way in alleviating the anxiety associated with performance situations.
Children experience a lot of stress even beyond the exam period, as we wrote about in our recent press release.
The number of children who self-harm is constantly rising in Hungary as well, with children starting at an increasingly younger age, often as early as in their tweens, regularly and deliberately inflicting pain on themselves to alleviate their anxiety and inner emptiness, warns a psychiatrist at Semmelweis University. The essence of self-harm is that physical pain relieves the inner, psychological pain that overwhelms the child, or it temporarily shakes them out of the narrowed state of consciousness, the feeling of emptiness that weighs heavily on them. The world is no longer a safe place for children, as epidemics, wars, and the climate crisis have become part of their everyday lives, and they hear and talk about these issues at home, at school, or elsewhere.
Eszter Csatári-Földváry
Translation: Dr. Balázs Csizmadia
Photos by Bálint Barta, Attila Kovács – Semmelweis University
