Exam pressure and study skills

It is coming up to that time of year again, when ‘A’ level students and GCSE students hopefully start to get all their books out and prepare an exam time table. This is a stressful time for the student, but also a stressful time for the parents. Hypnotherapy can be of great assistance in this area, which is something most people are unaware of.

One way hypnotherapy can help is by increasing the child’s ability to focus and concentrate. This is useful for all children, but in particular those who may have mild or severe attention deficit problems. Even a child with severe attention deficit disorder will usually have something they do manage to concentrate on and this can be anything from listening to their favourite piece of music, doing art work or playing on computer games, something parents will identify with! The hypnotherapist can instruct the child while in hypnosis to ask the part of their subconscious that is very good at focusing and concentrating on a particular task to teach the part that has struggled in the classroom situation or revision situation these particular skills, while also giving positive suggestions to the subconscious on increasing concentration and focusing skills, as well as having the child imagining themselves successfully focusing and concentrating at home or in school.

Giving the child confidence and improving their self-esteem is always very important in any situation, but especially if they do have an attention problem, because usually these children will have low self-esteem and lack of confidence. Hypnotherapy can also teach the child to be more organised in their homework and revision.

Dyslexic children could also benefit from hypnotherapy and NLP. Again discovering when the child is good at concentrating and focusing is important as well as giving them back their confidence and helping them to ignore or get rid of any negative or unhelpful beliefs about themselves, as they often consider themselves stupid or have been told they are stupid. What Hypnotherapist can’t do is cure ADHD/ADD or dyslexia, but improvements in certain areas is achievable!

Of course students without ADD or dyslexia may also suffer from anxiety, lack of confidence or struggle with attention (but not enough for a diagnosis) and can benefit from hypnotherapy by helping them gain more coping strategies by teaching them to be more organised and improve their ability to focus and concentrate better and improving their self-confidence. 

Improvements in enhancing learning is achievable through teaching skills like mind maps, mnemonics, linked stories, working in short 20 minute bursts and all this can be taught in trance, the best way to learn. Even using brightly coloured pens when revising is helpful as the mind learns in lots of different ways; feel, sound, colour etc. By linking words or concepts that are connected with the same colours, then the brain can make associations with things easier.

Sitting exams and how best to approach the questions is also something where hypnotherapy can help with. Of course keeping calm and confident is important but the hypnotherapist can teach the subconscious skills like checking answers and planning their work out etc.

Of course, if you think your child is struggling at school, it is always advisable to discuss this with their teacher in the first instance, because sometimes a few simple changes can be very effective. But if the need is there, hypnotherapy can be surprisingly effective in this area.