Experiencing anxiety at school?
| Tuesday July 15, 2014 12:37
What causes anxiety in students?
Although moderate anxiety can positively motivate students to work hard to achieve their goals, prolonged anxiety can be detrimental to a student’s emotional and physical health. Students (as well as everyone else) get anxious when they experience some haunting thoughts. These haunting thoughts can become counter-productive in and outside school. Below are some common haunting thoughts among students:
Worrying about everyday organisational tasks
It is not every child who grows up innately organised and self-directed from an early age. Quite a handful of students worry a lot when they feel pressure from school and home to finish homework and submit it on time, bring the right books for a specific day to school, following instructions at school.
They also experience frustration when they have trouble coping with disappointment or managing anger. With the right intervention, disorganised students can develop some effective organisation skills.
Self-doubt
When they have a history of poor performance at school, students would normally develop anxiety and self-doubt. They would normally give statements like ‘nna tota ke sale ke paletswe ko ke neng ke tsena teng pele, ke itlhobogile’, meaning that ‘I have a long history of poor performance, so I don’t think I will make it this time around.’ Professional emotional and career counselling can help such students to regain their dormant abilities and consequently eliminate students’ anxiety to drop out of school.
Excessive desire for approval
Everybody wants to feel accepted and approved of. Students who have Special Education Needs (SEN), such as those with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), can feel frustrated when they feel misunderstood. This can make them to feel excessive need for acceptance and approval. Without effective emotional and educational intervention, such students can develop some disruptive behavioural patterns at school, due to frustration.
Fear
In some cases, students live with fear because they are being bullied by some anti-social people, both in and outside school. These students need professional help to deal with bullies.
Anxiety to acquire social status
Some students have a tendency of always comparing themselves with their peers. This habit is very unhealthy as it causes students to feel inadequate or inferior.
How can untreated anxiety affect students?
Low self-esteem and poor academic performance. When students are haunted by self-doubt thoughts, their self-esteem declines if such thoughts get prolonged. Self-doubting thoughts is also highly likely to result in poor academic performance. Professional academic assessment and intervention can greatly improve students’ performance and effectively reduce self-doubting thoughts.
Prolonged poor organisational skills
Unfortunately, without timely intervention, quite a handful of students start realising the importance of effective organisational skills at a much later stage. This might lead students to;
Miss out on some important life opportunities such as acquisition of good grades to secure the right places and sponsorships to pursue their dream careers. When they are misplaced in careers which do not tally with their interests, students would usually display low performance in their respective careers.
Eating disorder
Anxious students, have a higher chance of binge eating junk food, such as sweets, biscuits and fat cakes than emotionally stable students. Binge eating gives them temporary comfort and long-term weight challenges as well as other health related problems.
Dependency Personality Disorder (DPD)
Students with Dependency Personality Disorder would normally show some of the following symptoms; Always trying to fit in for fear of being rejected. Students who are trying too hard to fit in are prone to peer-pressure.
This tendency to depend excessively on others can later lead them to stick to abusive relationships for as long as they have a false sense of benefit from such relationships. Inability to make decisions or initiate actions without excessive reassurance from others, this can be a huge hindrance in school assessments which require individual effort.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
Students with ODD and anxiety disorders might show some of the following symptoms:
An adolescent history of uncooperative, defiant, hostile and disrespectful behaviour towards others and authority. ODD often disrupts the child’s normal daily activities, including activities within the family and at school.
Little or no remorse for causing pain to others
Consistent pattern of shifting blame to others for his/her failure History of high need for excitement for excitement, fun and living on the edge. Consistent use of alcohol and other mood-altering drugs A child who gets away with ODD can later develop a more serious condition called Conduct Disorder, which involves engagement in criminal offenses such as raping and murdering people. Such behaviour can immensely disrupt the offender’s career when they get in trouble with the law.
How can anxiety be dealt with?
Anxious students need some professionally designed emotional and academic assessments and tailor made programmes to help them reach their potential. A collective effort from parents, teachers, counsellors and most importantly students, can go a long way in creating productive citizens of this country.
*Victoria Sethibe is a practicing teacher and a school counsellor