Preparing yourself mentally for stress

After three years of hard study, many student loans and countless written exams, the graduate student faced only one more hurdle. Unfortunately, this hurdle was the one most dreaded by her.

It posed the greatest risk of failure. Not because she didn’t know the material, but because of the intense anxiety and fear she felt sure she would experience during oral examinations.

The problem was not new for her as she had experienced performance anxiety on numerous occasions throughout her education.

For several weeks preceding the oral examination she suffered such stress related symptoms as insomnia, muscle aches, nausea and diarrhea. Thinking about the examination process even caused her to feel faint and dizzy at times.

Her fears were so great she was even considering dropping out of school to avoid what she perceived as a terrible inquisition.

In a similar situation, a young man declined an invitation to join an honorary society because of his intense fear of having to ascend the podium and stand with a group of inductees in front of 50 or 60 people.

Declining the much coveted invitation left him feeling depressed and angry. Thinking back, he realized there had been many opportunities missed because of his fear and anxiety over appearing before a group of people.

A third scenario involves a young man whose performance in his job as a sales person has been greatly impaired because of his intensely negative reaction when told by a potential customer that they are not interested in his product. The anxiety and fear he experienced reached a phobic proportion and caused him a great deal of stress.

These three individuals might benefit from a stress-inoculation technique known as mental rehearsal. Mentally “rehearsing” a stress provoking situation while deeply relaxed often diminishes or neutralizes the fear and anxiety. Let’s look at example No. 1.

While in a deeply relaxed state, the student should imagine herself in front of the examining committee during the oral examination.

It is often helpful to visualize the situation first in a relatively non-threatening manner; i.e., she should imagine she is entering the examining room in a relaxed posture and feeling confident about the outcome of the examination. She should imagine this scene for a few seconds at a time while relaxed and then gradually mentally “expose” herself to a more anxiety producing scene such as introducing herself to the examining committee.

By constructing a hierarchy of anxiety producing scenes from lowest to highest and then visualizing these while relaxed, the student can begin to mentally experience the situation without the associate anxiety.

This same method can also be used to reduce the stress in situations No. 2 and No. 3.

Copyright c 1995 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.