63% of college students in the U.S. felt “overwhelming anxiety” in 2018. This was before COVID-19 drastically changed how schools deliver education. If you’re a student in college, you are probably no stranger to dealing with anxiety in school.
We get that college students are more likely to commiserate about their anxiety through memes (totally valid!) and that it can be hard to find time and energy to look for a therapist.
Whether you choose to seek professional help or not, I’m here to give you advice for handling anxiety, and you can use these tips for the rest of your life. Read on for some helpful and immediately actionable tips for anyone experiencing anxiety in school.
1. It’s Not Your Fault
Unfortunately, anxiety is a natural part of life. We all feel it! Our anxiety is there to help us mobilize! But sometimes it can become overpowering and debilitating. Most college students experience some form of anxiety, but we should not be normalizing students’ anxiety.
Managing anxiety is incredibly challenging. It’s exhausting, and people battle with anxiety symptoms throughout their lives. If you are a college student struggling to manage your anxiety symptoms, the skills you will learn in therapy will benefit you in all areas of life.
2. Learn More About Anxiety
Knowledge is power! If you want to manage anxiety, you’ll want to know what you’re dealing with.
This is because anxiety can take many forms. In some people, it may take the form of social anxiety, or it may only appear in the context of romantic relationships and attachment.
Amongst college students, I commonly see anticipatory anxiety, test anxiety, social anxiety, and separation anxiety. If you’ve been to therapy before, or even if you’ve just been browsing the web, you probably know some things about your anxiety already.
It may be helpful to keep track of when you notice your anxiety popping up. Are there patterns you can sort out? When do you feel most anxious? In what situations do you feel anxious?
You probably remember. That feeling of your heart falling through your chest right before a test. That feeling you get when your partner doesn’t reply to your text messages for a couple of days.
Keeping track of our mood and anxiety can tell us a lot about how to approach treating and managing the symptoms. You can also read more about the major types of anxiety.
3. Sleep Hygiene Is Paramount
First of all, I know how hard it is to get the sleep you need in college!
It can feel impossible to balance the demands of a rigorous courseload with the million and one things you are juggling. Clubs, social lives, relationships, internships: the whole gamut.
Even if you miss out on a party or you’ve been procrastinating on an essay until the last day. Do your best to get 7 hours of sleep when you can. Creating routines and rituals for preparing for bed can be helpful in winding things down. Drinking a warm cup of tea, lighting a candle while doing some journaling, taking a warm bath, can all help your body get cues that it is time for bed.
Sleep is absolutely critical for anyone that is even slightly prone to anxiety.
It is super unfair. I know that the more anxious you are, the harder it is to quiet your mind, quell insomnia, and get to bed. It’s a negative feedback loop!
The less sleep you have, the more anxious you are, and the less you sleep. What to do? What I recommend is to learn how to sleep.
There are many resources and guides for improving sleep hygiene, and I really do know how hard it can be to get to bed.
4. Nix Unhelpful Coping Mechanisms
We all have our coping mechanisms. For some of us, it’s late night scrolling on social media. For others, it’s binge drinking.
These are not the same, and they do not have the same effect on your overall mental health in the long run.
I’m going to entreat you to take a deep survey of your coping mechanisms, as you know yourself best. If your coping involves heavy use of substances, please know that alcohol and drug dependency can increase your anxiety over time.
Here’s a popular coping mechanism: avoidance. I know it feels like you can only take a breath if you dodge those emails, or if you put off having a hard conversation with a friend for just another day.
The problem is, if you keep avoiding the problem, you never develop the skills to properly cope! When dealing with anxiety, unfortunately, you don’t want to avoid the trigger. Leaning into it and having a whole script ready for when you do can be very effective in getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable!
As a professional therapist, I want to help you write those scripts, so you know what to do or say when you need to.
5. Communicate With Others
I know it’s easy for me to tell you to communicate when sometimes communication can seem like the hardest thing in the world to do when you’re anxious.
Have you seen the first episode of Nathan Fielder’s ‘The Rehearsal’? His client asks him to rehearse a difficult conversation with a coworker. Together, they rehearse the most absurd worst-case scenarios.
Playing out all the possible outcomes can be helpful in reality testing. Anxiety has a way of warping reality and making our brains go to the worst case scenario. Your professor will not tell you that “you’re worthless and a huge disappointment and that you don’t deserve to be in class.” Often, the worst-case scenario will not come to be, if you communicate.
If you’re really struggling, please have honest conversations with those in your life. I mean your professors, your significant others, and your family and friends. Read up on conversational skills for those who experience stress and anxiety, and try to practice some of them.
More Tips About Managing Anxiety in School
If you’re experiencing anxiety in school, you’re not alone. With the right techniques for handling anxiety, you absolutely can get through this.
Actively communicate your struggles to those in your life like professors and family. If you feel like college is too much of an obstacle, know that seeking professional help is always an option.
From my end, I have years of professional experience coaching and working with people that have anxiety. Feel free to reach out to me if you need anything.
The Deep Connection Between Sleep and Anxiety, Explained
High quality sleep is essential for your total health and wellbeing, and it goes hand-in-hand with anxiety. Get the facts about sleep and anxiety here.
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