Avoid the trap!: Understand Reassurance-Seeking to Reduce Academic Anxiety
One of the most pernicious characteristics of anxiety disorder: anxiety creates anxiety about experiencing anxiety. An example:
We’ve all been “nervous” or anxious before a first date or a job interview. This is called anticipatory anxiety - our minds imagine all the horrible things that could go wrong and it scares us a bit. Generally things go fine, our fear is relieved and anxiety soon dissipates.
Anxious learners anticipate that they will feel anxious at school - essentially, “I’m anxious right now because I fear I will be anxious later.” Anxiety itself becomes anxiety’s trigger. If school experience/academics create anxiety, fear is reinforced and increased: “I’m right to feel anxious about school because school makes me anxious, so tomorrow I’ll feel even more anxious.” And so the vortex continues.
This vortex leads to seeking reassurance to allay the anxiety.
Back to the first date analogy: You just aren’t sure your clothes are “right.” So you stand in front of a mirror changing clothes and shoes for quite a while. Inevitably, you ask someone, “Do I look okay?”
Unless it is a very good friend indeed, your person will give you a glance and say, “Sure. You’re fine.”
That answer is not good enough.
So you start asking detailed questions: “But are these pants too baggy?” “Do you think my shoes are too formal?” “Should I tuck my shirt in?”
These questions are your attempt to allay your anxiety through reassurance. Because your brain perceives an anticipatory threat (I will be embarrassed if I am judged unworthy by the date), you seek input to reduce the threat.
Reality, of course, can make no impact on this mental process. No one is going to hyper-assess the details of your outfit like you are. Likely, no one will really notice how you look beyond the first glance. Besides, getting yourself dressed is a skill you’ve mastered a long time ago. You do it every morning!
But today, because you are anxious, you have self-doubt. So you look outside of yourself for another person to relieve your doubt. And most of the time your doubt is not relieved because you don’t believe the person you asked.
Anxious learners seek our reassurance for the same reason: self-doubt. Typically we respond with logical explanations of why their work is correct or offer reassurance of the “you’ll be fine” variety. Neither works. Our explanations and reassurance miss the mark because concern about academic situations is not the issue.
If we are unaware of this behavior pattern, we may provide endless reassurance as we try to support the learner. Besides not addressing the root cause of the problem, our repeated reassurance actually reinforces the learner’s self-doubt. I have to be wary about falling into this trap, even though I know better. I think I make this mistake because my educator-default is to build understanding, so I (unnecessarily) re-explain the academic matter at hand.
We can help academic self-doubters in a couple of ways.
Help them identify a neutral “authority” (besides you) themselves to check against. Because they distrust their own judgment about their work, these kids really need examples and rubrics.
Use specific examples to remind them of past success and mastery. Specificity matters here. “You always do well” or “You did well on the last assignment” is too vague. If you hear, “Yes, but. .” in response to the examples you offer, abandon this approach. “Yes, but. . “ indicates they don’t trust themselves despite past success.
Check understanding. Instead of supplying an explanation, ask what the learner thinks they are supposed to do? Again, detail here is key. They need to hear themselves telling you details that prove to themselves that they know what they are doing.
When you are sure the student understands the assignment, kindly set a firm boundary. “Listening to you just now tells me that you know exactly what you are doing. I trust that you will be able to complete this assignment based on your understanding and skills, so I’m going to expect you to work on it independently.”
This affirmation with boundary-setting helps the learner take the risk to move forward despite their doubt. Over time, as they build up successful experiences despite their doubt, they build confidence and stop doubting themselves.