Ending Test Anxiety With NLP and Hypnosis

Test Anxiety? Using hypnosis and NLP (neurolinguistic programming), it can be simple and quick to eliminate anxiety and turn it into competence based confidence.

Imagine having studied for an important test. You walk in and find that the most difficult part of the test is writing your name on the top of your paper. A few days later grades are posted, and you have earned an A. How much anxiety does that imagined test produce? Chances are, absolutely none.

NLP teaches that the structure of our thoughts determines the quality of our life and experience.

Now imagine just before walking into a test bringing up emotionally charged thoughts of humiliating failure, with a side of intensely critical self talk, and predictions of doom. Test performance in those circumstances is going to naturally degrade. That is a good example of bad self hypnosis. Hypnotizing oneself into an anxious state before a test is bound to get in the way of highest success.

Most of the clients that I have worked with for test anxiety admit to using something like the second strategy. They did not consciously decide to psych themselves into a losing mindset before tests. It "just happens" to them.

It is my job as a hypnotherapist to teach them how, with a little rehearsal, to put in a new self hypnosis routine that automatically bring up self confidence and engages their best performance on tests.

First, it is necessary to eliminate the self defeating mindset.

We can think of a thought as a sequence of impulses running through a set of neural pathways in the brain. To function properly, he pattern of impulses must repeat itself in the exact same way each time. Having the client reverse the sequence of the mental movies by running the images and soundtrack backwards from the end to the beginning causes a new set of neural pathways to be associated with the thought of taking a test. This causes the original emotions, the anxiety, to disappear. And, the client can then learn to associate new feelings of confidence in test taking. That is accomplished by simply using compelling mental rehearsal of success to generate positive expectations.

There may be other dimensions to eliminating test anxiety, such as assisting the client to develop new beliefs about his or her capabilities, and skills. And, there are some simple techniques to improve test taking skills as well. But, the heart of building test taking confidence is simply replacing the old ways of thinking about a test with expectations of success based on reasonable preparation and study.