The pressures that college students face can be extremely overwhelming. As a college student, you may be balancing many aspects of life all at once. Attempting to balance a healthy social life while putting copious amounts of time and effort into good grades can get tricky. Don't forget the financial challenges coupled with living independently and trying to maintain emotional and physical health. Among all of these hardships, students reportedly face the most anxiety when it comes to academics.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, and couples with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, Florida, North Carolina, and Utah.
Academics in College
College requires hard work and motivation. In college, coursework becomes harder, studying increases, and the need for good grades becomes more crucial. Many college students are on financial scholarships which require them to perform at a high academic level. Due to the difficulties and pressure, many young adults can develop academic anxiety while attending college. If you are struggling to maintain your mental health in college, check out our past blog “5 Ways To Prioritize Mental Health in College” for some tips.
What is Academic Anxiety?
Have you ever felt anxious walking into a classroom? Felt stressed out while completing an assignment? Or, felt under pressure when working on homework that isn't your strongest subject? You may have been experiencing academic anxiety. Academic anxiety makes you feel stressed and fearful.
What Exactly Is Anxiety?
Experiencing occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. However, people with anxiety disorders frequently have intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations.
These Feelings of Anxiety…
Interfere with daily activities
Are difficult to control
Are typically out of proportion to the actual danger
Can last a long time
Symptoms of Anxiety Include:
Feeling nervous, restless or tense
Having a sense of impending danger or panic
Having an increased heart rate
Breathing rapidly
Sweating
Having trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry
Having trouble sleeping (Learn more about How CBT Can Help With Your Insomnia)
Anxiety Comes in Many Forms:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Persistent and excessive anxiety and worry about everyday activities or events
Separation Anxiety Disorder
A childhood disorder characterized by anxiety that's excessive for the child’s developmental level and related to separation from parents or others who have parental roles
Social Anxiety Disorder
Involves high levels of anxiety, fear or avoidance of social situations due to feelings of embarrassment, self-consciousness and concern about being judged or viewed negatively by others
Read “6 Helpful Tips For Living With Social Anxiety” if you are struggling
I Think I Have Anxiety. What Do I Do?
Noticing and identifying your anxiety is a great first step. Anxiety can feel difficult to deal with but thankfully there are trained anxiety therapists near you who can help. These therapists for anxiety can teach you coping strategies to do on your own to help you battle your anxiety!
Reach Out To An Anxiety Therapist
Telling someone you are struggling with anxiety can be scary and intimidating. However, once you reach out for help, it can only go up from there.
When To See An Anxiety Counselor…
If you feel like you're worrying too much and it’s interfering with you work, relationship or other parts of your life
Your fear, anxiety or worry is upsetting you and is difficult to control
You feel depressed or have trouble with alcohol or drugs that come along with your anxiety
Anxiety Counseling at Anchor Therapy
Anchor Therapy has many anxiety counselors ready and willing to help. They use a multitude of techniques and treatments to help manage your anxiety. One of the most common and effective treatments is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, also known as CBT.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is an evidenced-based treatment which focuses on identifying, understanding, and changing thinking and behavior patterns. It can help a range of issues, especially anxiety and depression.
How Does CBT Work?
The First Step of CBT
The first step is to track where you are. We want you to start noticing what thoughts come to your head, when they appear, and if you notice any behavior that comes along with it that you'd like to change. If you do this for a few weeks, it will develop a baseline of where you are.
During the first steps of CBT, CBT therapy for anxiety will help you reframe and analyze the truth of your thoughts. In other words, figure out why you're having these thoughts and how you can turn them into more positive ones. In CBT therapy, we will go through your thoughts piece by piece to show you that you don't need to give weight to all of these thoughts. Thoughts come and go, but it is important to recognize them.
2. The Second Step of CBT
The second step is to focus on your feelings. Once you learn how to reframe your thoughts (turn them into positive thoughts), you should be feeling better already. Next, your CBT anxiety therapist will teach you coping skills which will help your mood.
3. The Third Step of CBT
The third step involves focusing on your behaviors. CBT counseling for anxiety says that our thoughts impact how we feel which then impacts how we behave. If you went through the steps to manage your thoughts, then it's time to change your behavior. By continuing to reframe your thoughts, you will notice a difference in your behaviors. For example, by telling yourself “it's ok, I'm not in danger”, you may automatically feel more relaxed. If you are committed to reframing your thoughts, your mind will go on “auto-pilot” and automatically go straight to the positive thought! Check Out "How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help Anxiety In College Students” for more information.
CBT at Anchor Therapy
When you come in for CBT, we start with an hour-long intake session in which we discuss your history and what you want to work on. During this session, we will discuss our plan together which will include how often we will meet, and what therapy will look like. The average length of CBT is about 12 sessions, but everyone is different. At Anchor Therapy, we are here to support you no matter the timeline.
Now that we know a little bit of information on generalized anxiety, let us get back to academic anxiety… What exactly is it?
After reading about anxiety and the typical symptoms, academic anxiety is simply anxiety related to academic, schoolwork, or school pressure. You may experience the same or similar symptoms when completing school work, studying or attending class.
Academic Anxiety In College
College comes with a multitude of new responsibilities that no one could have prepared a lot of students for. For a typical college student, their main focus is education and academics. When school work picks up, midterms are around the corner, and you feel like you're drowning in work, you may begin to feel an increase in stress and anxiety. Once these thoughts become obsessive and interfere with your work or other parts of your life, this may cause academic anxiety.
How Do I Know If I Have Academic Anxiety?
Since anxiety differs from each person to the next, so does academic anxiety. You may experience a variety of symptoms related to your school work. There are physiological symptoms (physical), cognitive symptoms (thoughts/ fears), and behavioral symptoms (how you act). Everyone is different, but you may have experienced some of the symptoms below if you have ever struggled with academic anxiety.
Physiological Symptoms Include:
Nausea
Elevated heart rate
Nervous sweating
Muscle tension
Difficult relaxing
Fidgeting, feeling “antsy”
Headaches
Dizziness
Cognitive Symptoms Include:
Inability to maintain attention/ stay on task
Memories are blocked from retrieval while testing or studying (anxiety blockage)
Trouble accessing the right memories or applying appropriate knowledge
Negative internal self-talk that impacts motivation and performance (“I can’t do this, I’m never going to pass”) - Check out “How CBT Can Help Negative Self-Talk” for support
Intrusive thoughts impact ability to remember/ process learning (Learn 6 Ways To Handle Intrusive Thoughts!)
Behavioral Symptoms Include:
Avoidance or procrastination of anxiety-inducing task
Intentionally putting low effort into a task due to fear of failure
Working on an unrelated (non anxiety-inducing) task
Giving up or saying “I don't know” instead of preserving through anxiety-inducing task
I Have Experienced Most Of The Above Symptoms… Now What?
If you identify with several of the above symptoms, you may have academic anxiety. You are not alone. Many college students struggle with academic anxiety and, as scary as it may seem, there are many ways to manage it. Since everyone experiences different symptoms, it's important to identify the differences between symptoms, so you can determine what management techniques will work the best.
Are You Experiencing Physiological Symptoms?
If the answer is yes, one of the most effective ways to reduce these physical manifestations of anxiety is to practice relaxation techniques. If anxiety is causing a fear response in the body that interferes with the ability to focus, then students can prioritize calming the body to manage these responses.
Relaxation Techniques Include:
Practicing mindfulness
Meditation techniques (If you’re interested in learning more about meditation, check out our past blog “How Meditation Can Lead To Stress Reduction”)
Muscle relaxation exercises
How to Handle Cognitive Symptoms
I’m trying to overcome my anxiety, but I’m struggling with worrisome thoughts. How do I overcome my negative self-talk?
If you are struggling with this, these are called cognitive symptoms. These symptoms don't manifest in the body, but they can change the way you think. As mentioned above for physical symptoms, relaxation techniques are also useful when attempting to calm the mind.
The relaxation techniques will help link the mind and body together to reframe the anxiety. By setting proper goals, reframing your thoughts, and fostering skills and abilities related to self-regulated learning, you can combat your academic anxiety.
What Is Reframing for Anxiety & How Do I Do It?
Reframing is the process of taking negative thoughts, and reframing them into more positive and helpful thoughts. These negative thoughts typically increase anxiety, stress and depression.
By reframing, over time, you will slowly produce more positive thoughts than negative ones. For example, while studying you think to yourself, “I am never going to pass this exam. There is way too much material. I'll never understand”. You would begin the reframing process by, first, identifying the negative thought. Take a moment and let yourself feel the feelings that come along with the thought and realize it is just a thought. Thoughts are like clouds, they come and go.
Now, you can reframe the negative thought. By turning this more positive, you can reframe the statement by thinking, “This is a lot to study, but luckily I have enough time. I can do this.” It sounds way easier than it is but, by continuously practicing reframing, it can decrease your negative thoughts in a flash.
Mindfulness Can Also Be Used For Cognitive Symptoms…
Mindfulness is a great technique to help students conquer intrusive thoughts. Mindfulness is a type of meditation that directs attention from unhelpful thoughts to focusing on the present moment. Engaging in these exercises can help to lessen issues in attentional focus and keep students in the present moment while studying or taking exams.
How to Handle Behavioral Symptoms
Are You Noticing Changes In The Way You're Acting?
If the answer is yes, then your symptoms of anxiety are manifesting in the way you behave or act. Along with relaxation and reframing techniques, an effective way to reduce a common behavioral symptom of anxiety, task avoidance, would be to learn self-regulated techniques.
Some examples of self-regulated techniques include:
Organization
Preparation
Use of a planner
Dedicate a study spot to help reduce anxiety and avoidance
So, How Do I Feel Better?
Reach Out To An Anxiety Therapist!
An Anxiety Therapist Can...
Provide treatment
Explore coping mechanisms
Identify and manage the factors causing your anxiety
Help you learn techniques to lessen the behavior
How Can Anxiety Therapy Benefit College Students?
Build up your self acceptance and self esteem
Increase interpersonal and communication skills
Help with better expression and management of emotions
In anxiety counseling, you can learn to understand how your thoughts contribute to your anxiety symptoms. In therapy for academic anxiety, you can develop new ways to look at schoolwork and studying, learn stress management techniques, have a more positive outlook on life and school, and learn to navigate general anxiety while attending school.
If you are battling academic anxiety, you are not alone. Students can explore a combination of relaxation exercises, self-regulated habits, and anxiety counseling to find a management system that works for them.
Sabrina Zayas
is studying Human Services with a concentration in Administration and Family Policy at the University of Delaware. She’s a senior and plans on getting her Master’s in Social Work after she graduates. In the future, she would like to work in domestic violence or homeless shelters, hospitals and schools as a social worker, and her ultimate dream goal is to be a therapist.
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR HELP FROM A PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR TO ASSIST YOU IN MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE, CONTACT US
WORKING WITH US IS EASY
Fill out the contact form below.
Our intake coordinator will get back to you with more information on how we can help and to schedule an appointment. We will set you up with an experienced licensed therapist who specializes in what you're seeking help with and who understands your needs.
You’ll rest easy tonight knowing you made the first step to improve your life.
