Your heart is beating in your throat even before you turn the exam paper over and read the first question. You try to remember a formula you’ve studied a hundred times, but your mind draws a blank. You’ve studied, you’ve prepared, and yet that nagging doubt remains there. A familiar mantra starts playing in your head: You should have put in more effort. You’re not as smart. You need to study more than others do. And this is just the first question. You’re going to fail. Soon, you’re trembling all over and sweating and your heart beat is going at what feels like triple its normal rate, and yet all around you, confident students are already writing. Before you know it, the proctor has snatched away your paper and you’re left with that awful question: how do I explain my failure this time?

At etcetera, we’ve heard from many students who suffer from test anxiety or testophobia and who experience this scenario on a weekly basis. So, to give them the information they need to understand and resolve this issue, etcetera spoke to renowned life coach and certified psychotherapist Dania Dbaibo Darwish.

Dbaibo points out that a certain degree of anxiety can actually improve performance. “Going into the test with some stress helps us perform well because our physiological response to anxiety makes us more alert and allows us to read better and avoid mistakes,” she explains. Testophobia, on the other hand, is extremely damaging: “with testophobia, the anxiety blows out of proportion, and brain activity becomes wildly chaotic! This handicaps performance.” Furthermore, testophobia could lead to long-term academic problems: “like any phobia, it comes packed with avoidance and escape mechanisms: some students, for instance, report being sick because they just don’t want to do the exam. But, of course, they can’t always escape,” Dbaibo concludes.

But what causes this phobia? “Thoughts and beliefs that are very negative like ‘I will fail, I’m not good enough or smart enough.’ When those thoughts get out of control, they create a physical response that can be unbearable,” she answers. Lebanese parents contribute to this problem  when they think the way to motivate their children is to make them feel bad. “By saying things like ‘you’ll never pass, you won’t amount to anything if you don’t do this and that,’ parents might feel they are pushing their children to work harder, but it doesn’t work that way. All it does is create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the children believe they are stupid and act accordingly,” Dbaibo elaborates. Parents also tend to focus on grades and make threats - “God help you if you don’t get at least a 90!” -  and this can also backfire and put the child in “fear mode.”

With simple but significant behavioral changes, parents can help their child manage testophobia. For example, Dbaibo suggests that parents encourage their children to reframe the way they perceive tests. “Encourage your children to think of tests as opportunities to demonstrate what they know and to track their learning progress,” Dbaibo explains. It is a better strategy to downplay grades and focus instead on effort and progress. “This is a better life skill to learn as we develop through life,” Dbaibo states. Moreover, the child should not feel he has to compete with siblings or other students.  “The standard of comparison should be the child’s own previous performance,” Dbaibo stipulates. Also, a child should not believe that his parents’ respect, support, and love are conditional on his academic achievement. “Children are to get good grades, in the end, for themselves - not for their parents,” Dbaibo points out. She counsels parents to foster a new-sense of purpose in their children: one that instills a love for learning. “It’s always important to remind the child that he is learning for curiosity’s sake. If your child complains about certain subjects - ‘I’ll never need geography and physics!’ - explain that taking those subjects expands general knowledge and trains unused parts of the brain,” Dbaibo recommends. Most importantly, parents should teach children to relax their over-arousal before it spirals out of control in the exam hall.

If the problem persists, one of the best treatment options for testophobia is the Cognitive Behavioral Approach which teaches relaxation techniques like deep breathing and realistic and positive thinking. “Students can be directed to revisit their thought patterns and change their catastrophic thoughts,” Dbaibo elaborates. Hypnotherapy is another option that works on subconscious processes. Sometimes, testophobia develops because of a previous failure that had a traumatic effect. “If that is the case, we can use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to wipe out the negative effect of that trauma,” Dbaibo offers. All of these approaches yield relatively fast results. “Sometimes one coaching session that provides the necessary skills is enough,” Dbaibo says. “So why suffer during exams on a weekly basis for years when the solution can be so simple?”

            Dania Dbaibo Darwish holds a Masters degree in Psychology from the American University of Beirut. She trained as a counsellor at AUBMC and holds certifications as a Professional Coach by the International Coach Academy (accredited by the International Coach Federation - ICF), a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Master practitioner by the International NLP Trainer's Association, a Hypnotherapist by the National Guild of Hypnotists, an EMDR therapist by EMDRIA, a Positive Psychology Certified Coach by SCM, and a Relationship and Couple Coach by ANIMAS. She is currently at a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) level with the International Coach Federation serving as a supervisory Coach. She is also the founding president of the "Lebanese Coach Association" (LCA), Vice President of the EMDR Lebanon Association, and a member of the International Coach Federation. Her own practice STRIDES was established in 2010.