Situational phobias arise in certain situations that generate a great load of anxiety and fear. This is the case of testophobia or the fear of exams , a disorder of which we can perfectly understand the origin, but not so much its development or its consequences , since testophobia can paralyze you. We tell you all about this terror of the evaluation tests in our dictionary of phobias .
What is testophobia
Testophobia is the fear of exams or tests, the fear of academic evaluation that ends up flooding other aspects of your life. Because it is really that evaluation of your knowledge, skills or abilities that is at stake in this phobic disorder.
But, who is not afraid to take an exam? Especially when it comes to important exams, end of career exams, public exams or even a test that you take in a job interview. At the end of the day you are playing a lot and it is normal for anxiety to appear. But not so much that anxiety and fear prevent you from taking the exam .
Symptoms of testophobia
In the case of testophobia, it is not about the typical nerves or that feeling of doom when the time of an exam that you have not prepared as you should approaches. You are not going safely and you fear to fail. So far everything normal. Even if you are well prepared, you will suffer the nerves of any type of evaluation.
But when you suffer from testophobia it does not matter if the exam is important or not, if you have it prepared or not, because all you want is to flee, avoid or escape from that situation . You avoid by all means putting yourself in that situation that generates all the symptoms of anxiety, from tachycardia to panic attack to shortness of breath . But, can you avoid taking exams throughout your life? Hardly.
And if you get it from a certain age, the easiest thing is that you are missing opportunities to develop professionally and personally. For that phobic disorder that leads you to avoid any type of evaluation .
Causes of testophobia
As with all phobias, the origin of this fear of exams can be found in a previous traumatic experience. If you’ve ever failed an important exam and it had negative consequences for your life, you may develop this phobia. And of course, if you already have an anxiety disorder, it will be very difficult for it not to come to light in situations such as a test.
However, in the case of testophobia we have to look more at a problem of self-esteem and that self-demand that sometimes drives us and other times slows us down . Among the most frequent causes are that low self-esteem that makes you think that you will never be sufficiently prepared to pass that exam, that you are not worth as much as for that.
The expectations of others are also important when it comes to understanding both the drain on your self-esteem and the pressure you put on yourself. Self-demand or excessive perfectionism are the breeding ground for anxiety problems and, therefore, also count as important drivers for developing a phobia.
Treatment of testophobia
Testophobia has treatment and goes through psychological therapy. It does not matter if you are at an age where you will not have to face more tests, because the existence of the phobia already indicates a problem that you must solve. Thus, cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effective in phobic disorders . But there is more.
Because testophobia does not stop arising in a very stressful situation and you have to learn to reduce anxiety through relaxation, meditation and breathing techniques. And you also have to work on self-esteem , believe more in your potential and reduce what you demand of yourself.