Does your child or teenager:

• Suffer from exam anxiety or stress?

• Struggle to study effectively?

• Do poorly in exams?

• Is exam stress or anxiety affecting their mental health?

It can be hard to watch your child go through this. And it’s frustrating when it affects us as well when we are trying to advance our learning / career later in life.

Up until the end of Year 8, I used to have a photographic memory. I could go into exams and recall what I had studied like I was reading off a page. And then it all changed in Year 9. What happened in Year 9, I hear you ask?

I was subjected to horrendous bullying. The girls from years 9, 10 and 11 made my life hell for two years. I escaped it for a year while living in Thailand as an exchange student. But when I came back, I was bullied again for all of Years 11 & 12.

And I switched off. I refused to study. I only did the bare minimum. For my HSC I didn’t study at all. I actually went out most nights. So, while I didn’t have “Exam Stress” or “Exam Anxiety” per se. What caused my complete studying reversal is what causes most Exam Stress / Anxiety. And that Bastard is the AMYGDALA.

The AMYGDALA is a part of our Limbic System. And it has two key roles: The Fight or Flight Response and it’s our Emotional Memory

1) Fight or Flight (or Freeze) Response

Most of us have heard of the Fight or Flight Response. Our Amygdala hooks into our senses and is constantly scanning for danger. Either physical or emotional danger. It’s not a detailed scan, it’s a surface-level scan because it has to act fast.

If the Amygdala perceives danger, it signals our Hypothalamus / Pituitary / Adrenal Response. Which sends a flood of Adrenaline, Noradrenaline, and Cortisol throughout our bodies. Our higher brain function gets switched off and the primitive part of our brain takes over with three key responses

• Fight – Fight our way out of the danger

• Flight – Run from the danger

• Freeze – Our fear response has activated so much that we completely freeze up and can’t move

Karen Young (psychologist) has written a brilliant children’s book called “Hey Warrior” that succinctly explains this process. I often have my adult clients read this book to get a better understanding of why we get Anxiety

2) Emotional Memory

The second function of the Amygdala is our emotional memory. It remembers how we felt about every single event in our lives. And if we experience a hurtful event in our lives now, that is similar to a hurtful event in our past. Our Amygdala is going to take us back to that first event and we are going to react from that space. Whether we were 3yo, 8yo, or 15yo. So, you are not dealing with your current situation from the present moment. You are dealing with it from past trauma.

And this is what happened to me. My Amygdala had equated school and studying with intense emotional pain (i.e. the years of bullying that I experienced). And if I was to study, I would automatically be reactivating all of that emotional pain. So my subconscious mind said a big HELL NO!!! And actively shut down my inclination to study.

I remember that after I had done the HSC, I swore blindly that I would never study again. I held true to that promise until I started studying Kinesiology when I was 38 years old. And it wasn’t until about a year into my Kinesiology Diploma that we made this breakthrough.

I have helped numerous teenagers, HSC students and adults over the years with their studying practices and with passing their exams. And we tend to focus on two key areas

1. Confidence

2. Brain Function

Confidence

What we believe shapes our reality. If we believe that we won’t do well in exams, then that belief forms our reality. So what we do in our Kinesiology sessions is to identify all of the Limiting Beliefs that a person may have around their ability to study and to do well in their exams.

Here are some examples of the statements that have come up and the initial subconscious response

I will never get great grades – YES

I will always be just below average – YES

It’s safe to study – NO

It’s safe to be intelligent – NO

The [insert last name here] are never allowed to succeed – YES

I am safe giving myself time to study – NO

I am great at what I do – NO

I am capable of getting in all of my assessments and reports – NO

I am a failure – YES

The above statements are from three different clients (2x HSC students & 1x Uni Student) and gives an example of the roadblocks that our subconscious mind sets up for us. It’s very important to identify all of the limiting beliefs that are floating around in the subconscious mind. Because they are the hand breaks that will prevent good grades and a stress-free experience.

Brain Function

The second part that we focus on is the brain function itself. This is a full-on acupuncture correction. I have 20 different Brain Function corrections that I can do, but the one that comes up the most is “Overactive Survival” which is when we are stuck in a fear response (i.e. fight, flight or freeze). Or “9 Palaces” which works on the Limbic System.

Ironically this correction is better done as an Online Remote Session than it is done face to face. Both work well, but if I can do the session remotely, the amount of crystals that I can put onto the acupuncture points increases massively. For a remote session, it’s not uncommon for me to be putting between 10-20 crystals on a single point (on the client’s energetic body). Which is something I couldn’t do in physicality.

Now some of you might be wondering how effective an Online Remote Kinesiology session could be for Exam Anxiety and Stress. So, I asked one of my UK clients, if she would be willing to detail her experiences with the Online Remote Kinesiology sessions that we have done for her Exam Anxiety / Stress. And here is what she has shared.

My name is Grace, I am 17 years old and I am from the UK. In 2022 I sat my GCSEs which are a set of exams normally taken by students aged 15-16. For GCSEs you normally study ten subjects, with Maths, English and Science being compulsory.

Any test or exam sends me into complete panic and stress mode. To add to my anxiety about the upcoming exams, there was uncertainty about whether my exams would go ahead in the summer due to COVID. The previous year’s GCSE grades were awarded by classroom assessments, coursework and teacher-predicted grades. 

I had mock examinations in January 2022 which went on for a week and a half. I felt even more stress and anxiety as the government still hadn’t announced whether public examinations would go ahead in the summer, so it wasn’t clear whether my mock results would be used for my real GCSE grades.

When I feel anxious, I have sharp pains in my stomach, or I feel nauseous, or my hands and legs start to shake. Every time I walked into the hall to my mock exam, I felt nauseous. 

After I completed my mocks, it was announced by the government that all exams across the UK would go ahead in the summer of 2022, this was going to be the first year of public examinations since the summer of 2019. 

I spoke to Liesl about what things I could do to help me keep calm when taking my exams. Every night from 17th May till 23rd June, Liesl gave me a healing to say before I went to bed as well as a healing to say before entering the exam hall to keep me calm.

The difference to how I felt in my mock exams to the real exams is incredible. I felt calm walking into my exams, I felt calm sitting my exams and for some exams I felt confident in them (which is rare for me).

I strongly believe that Liesl helped me through my exam period even though we are on opposite sides of the world. Both my parents and even some of my teachers came up to me and said they noticed that I appeared calmer and more confident. 

I received my exam results in August and I was delighted with my results, most were higher than myself and teachers were expecting. I really cannot thank Liesl enough for all the help she gave me from the other side of the world. 

With one of Grace’s sessions before her exams, we went through each subject and identified what some of her key concerns were. Here are some of the limiting beliefs we found.

• I am great at remembering history – NO

• I will answer all of the questions with enough understanding and detail to get top marks – NO

• When I read the maths question, I can easily work out what type of maths it’s asking for – NO

• It’s easy to switch my brain into Spanish mode when I am doing the Spanish exam – NO

• I understand enough chemistry to pass this exam – NO

So as you can see, we can go as macro or micro as we need to go when dealing with exam anxiety and stress.

If you have a teenager who is currently studying their HSC or (year 12 equivalent) and is experiencing Exam Anxiety or Stress. Then I would recommend at least 12 sessions. If you can start in Year 11 that is preferable, but if not, we can still make great strides if we start at the beginning of Year 12.

Generally, I have found that a 90-minute session every four weeks is all that is needed. We need to allow time for the healings from the session to integrate before we do the next one. 

One final thing to note: All of my clients who I have helped with Exam Anxiety / Stress have ended up getting great marks in their exams. So, if you or your teenager is currently studying and you want to be able to maximise your success, then regular Kinesiology sessions will help you to achieve this. Book a Session today