How to Cope Classroom Anxieties

Anxiety disorder is a kind of mental health disorder which can trigger feelings of worry, anxiety or fear at an intensity strong enough to interfere with one’s daily activities.

Cases of anxiety disorders can include panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder among the most prominent symptoms. 

Anxiety is not a very uncommon term for us. We all suffer from anxiety at many occasions and points of our life. And it is very natural to do so. Otherwise we can be suspected to have other kinds of emotional and intellectual disorders. 

So we can see absence of anxiety can also be a kind of disorder as well as excess of anxiety is of another kind. Here we are discussing the excess of anxiety. 

When anxiety starts crossing a tolerance limit then it starts entering into the boundary of disorder. That tolerance limit also highly varies from person to person and depends on multiple psychological, physiological, environmental and circumstantial factors. There are genetic factors also. 

Changing the tolerance limit is not an easy task and often an impossible one. Afterall we cannot change psychological, physiological or genetic factors as we want. We can try to diffuse them or divert them to change the negative effect to a somewhat positive effect. We can reprogram the brain to use anxiety constructively. But that is a very tough job with no surety on success rate. 

So let us first see how to avoid it in the first place. Avoiding diseases is the best thing before cure. It is a well known verse that “prevention is better than cure”. 

Students can get anxiety through many sources both inside and outside the school. We are discussing classroom stress. So we will try to find out the most potential sources inside their school and classroom.

Elder students and younger students have their own stresses related to school and class. Not all the stresses are the same for both. The most predominant stress factor of a young student can be due to separation issues. Younger students are more attached to their parents and care-givers. Schools create a space between that attachment for more than a few hours at least 5 days a week. That can be a big enough reason to get stressed for those young ones. 

Often those young students are quite incapable of doing their stuff like feeding, toilets and taking basic self-care. That can become a potential source of anxiety and inhibition for them in schools and classes. Most schools are usually at least 4 to 6 hours for the primary students. Still that time is too high for those very young toddlers to get stressed and anxious. 

Elder students have their all different sources of stresses and anxieties. Causes due to parental separation are hardly found in this age group. Still there are cases where we can find. The most predominant anxiety sources are social and academic performance pressures. 

Social pressures are usually among the highest in this phase of life. Many people think that social pressures and stresses are more in adult people. Many adult people may be experiencing high social and socio-economic anxieties and stresses. Adolescent students have their causes of anxiety and those causes  also cannot be negated or deleted. 

School environment, peer community, relationship issues, student-teacher interaction error or deficiency are some of the main issues that most usually can be found in any high school and college.  

Another ever known stress factors for mature elder students are their professional career and academic performances. Competitions and struggles for jobs or living are making things worse with every passing day. Academic pursuits on their own are challenging. Moreover, anxieties about career and future can make things much worse. 

Like any other physical diseases, there will be an immediate need to determine the presence or onset of anxiety disorders, once a student is suspected to be having one. Not there are any physical or mental ailments that can inflict damages as deep and versatile in humans as anxiety disorders. Moreover it can destroy the academic performances of even the best students.

Timely diagnosis and proper handling of the problem can help minimize the damages. But diagnosis is not that easy. Often even the sufferers are often not aware of them having such a serious problem. Others can even believe these all are just temporary mental states that are going to change.

It’s true everything in this world does change. But the question is not whether it will change or not change. But the actual question should be the quantity and quality of changes. And anxiety can never give a quality positive change.

But usually the quantity of negative changes are much higher than expected.

Due to this destructivity, it has to be diagnosed as soon as possible. Once the career, studies, health, etc. of a student gets jeopardized, then it has already been too late.

Diagnosis is not easy. Temporary and short term anxieties are common to all students and any human being. It is a sign of a healthy mind. But prolonged and chronic anxiety disorders are to be diagnosed and properly treated. Mental healthcare professionals can figure out such disorders through different symptoms and direct interactions and communications with the affected student. 

But neither a professional is always handy and nor is it always possible to discover the need for one. So what can be the way out? Let me discuss some of the prominent symptoms of an acute as well as a chronic anxiety disorder. Every acute occurrence can lead to a deep-rooted chronic one if left untreated.

Classrooms and schools often become the most usual as well as a potential source of anxiety disorders for young as well as elder students. For this reason, being able to cope with such a disorder right at the beginning can become a main edge over the disease condition. 

There are so many things that can be done to improvise any classroom or even school. Improvising the expertise and knowledge of the teachers can make a great step to counter onsets of anxiety disorder among the students right at the potential source. 

Schools can keep arranged for professional help. They can visit the school from time to time and interact with all the students. They can deliver content, written or spoken, to educate and the students. Such an arrangement can be one of the best things for the students. 

But many schools do not have these facilities due to either economic barriers or other problems. Nowadays there are some devices like mood testers which can hint on the health of the user. Students can be time to time tested with such devices. 

This is a question that can vary with many reasons and factors. One important factor is the duration of the problem. If a student is suffering from suspected chronic anxiety disorders for quite some time then that can be taken as a sure case of medical attention. When the symptoms relevant to anxiety disorders are more prominently intense then it is very urgent to seek medical help.

Medical help always does not mean medicines and hospitalizations. In the realm of psychology there are a lot of scopes of therapies like counseling. Often such therapies can generate very satisfactory results and get the patient cured. When such therapies are not working then the role of clinical psychiatry starts, where the doctors have to administer medicines and other treatments according to the condition of the patient.

Sometimes, specially in cases of panic attacks, maybe the anxiety disorder is chronically not so severe, but due to some instantaneous effects can produce some major subsidiary or collateral symptoms including fainting, cardiac arrests, convulsions, etc. Such cases are extremely sensitive and can be life-threatening. So immediate medical help becomes mandatory. 

Though we are discussing classroom anxieties, that does not mean that parents do not have a role to play. Parents may not have much to do about the classroom or school environments and situations (in most cases). But parents have so much to do in the life of their child who is the student of the classroom and school. 

In the same school and in the same classroom, there are so many students. Not every student will develop such anxiety disorder symptoms. If so, then it is a matter of concern to find out why one or few students are susceptible to developing something like that. There can be many variables and angles of the problem. 

I am not able to discuss all the dimensions of the problems and variables over here in this article. This would need the space of a book and an article is not sufficient. But I am just sketching an overview so as to facilitate the thought power of all concerned. 

There can be issues with the food of the student, or the internal health. There can be problems at the home which is just compounding in the classroom to give an effect of classroom anxiety. There can be problems elsewhere. The student may be weak in studies. Or maybe one particular subject is the root of all the problems. 

I have seen many students almost phobic to Mathematics. Every Mathematics class becomes like a nightmare and every Maths teacher becomes the source of terror. This can happen with other subjects also, but Mathematics is the most common reference. 

There can be genetic problems. Or some physical problems that are generating some kind of inferiority complex. Demographic anxiety is also a very common thing both among the younger as well as the older students. For example, I have seen many such issues arising due to the height, shape, color and looks of a child. 

Even the age can matter a lot. In a class if a child falls back in age, and becomes the youngest of the class, then there are chances that he or she is susceptible to anxiety with peers and classmates. All these and many other such issues can become a potential contributor to classroom anxiety disorders. And not all of them exactly have their roots solely within the classroom or school. 

Ideally it is true that a student will find his or her second home in their school as it is there they shape their future by using the present time. And whatever shortcomings they may be having, but the class and school are not to add on or generate more loads of anxiety for the students. But real life is not always so picturesque. 

Every instance of classroom anxiety has to be properly analyzed to find out the ratio of the composing sources. How much share or percentage does the classroom or school is holding and how much comes from any other sources. Or where are the errors in the life of the student due to which something like anxiety disorder is onseting at such an early age. In this search, I am sure that in the most usual cases the parents can find very significant roles to play to cope up with the problem. 

When we are discussing classroom anxiety then the teacher(s) must be having some very important role to play in the students life and career. The most unfortunate story is that teachers often become one of the greatest sources or factors of classroom anxiety for students. Teachers can become a great source or a great savior, depending on his mind and motive.

For our purpose we are assuming that a teacher would be eager and earnest to become a savior, and hence we have a point to continue on that. 

When a student feels insecure or unanchored in his class then the first and the best person he would try to access right there is his teacher(s). Even parents come later when the issue is within the school and class premises. If teachers are no solution, and so do one’s friends and classmates, then parents usually are called by the student to play some crucial role. 

Young students cannot convey and explain the things they feel during anxiety and elder students do not want to convey and explain. As a result both can become enough introverts to suffer all by himself. This can lead to a major disruption or destruction in the studies, career, health and even to overall life conditions of the affected student.

In this article we discussed the possibilities of student’s classroom anxieties. The sources and coping resources and their functions and activities. In the consecutive articles we would be discussing how parents and how teachers can search, find out and cope with a student’s classroom anxiety.