Hi

I'm having problems keeping myself together while studying... I worry so much I'm going to fail my GMAT exam for the 3rd time. I can't actually focus on studying... Can anyone help?

StudyingTree - Anxiety can throw even the most prepared test-takers off balance. GMAT experts always recommend that practice tests be taken in ideal testing conditions so that the test day experience can be replicated prior. Even after considering all those advice, you should always mentally prepare yourself for any kind of surprises on the test day. I personally recommend that you practice meditation or some kind of breathing exercises in the weeks following up to the test day. During the test, you should be calm and composed and not let your nerves get to you. Also, practice light exercises, anything that you are comfortable with, in the weeks following up to the test day. You must also make a simple adjustment to how you practice questions during your preparation: make all your practice timed.
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The main reason for the complexity of anxiety in people is that its determinants are often unconscious. As Brown and Helen's cases described below show, an individual experiencing extreme anxiety may deny the existence of any idea of it - not out of whim or inattention, but simply because of the strength of the anxiety itself. One can only protect oneself from the overwhelming effects of anxiety by convincing oneself that one is not afraid. This phenomenon is not at all confined to the walls of the counsellor's office; everyone knows that it has reached universal proportions. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is so little use in questionnaires when a subject consciously reports data about disturbing facts. Some experts argue that finding the "root of the anxiety problem" is an understandable illusion. In other words, what is required is a method that will make available subjective and unconscious forms of motivation as well as motivation in its conscious manifestations. Kierkegaard and Freud insisted that anxiety has an "inner locus", and until we understand this, the meaning of human anxiety will elude us.

There are two aspects to the problem at hand. The first is the question of whether an "individual in a life situation" can be taken as the unit of enquiry. I believe we can. Many sociologists and social psychologists today report studies in situations of "life crises", such as war, accidents, death
1. The second, more specific aspect, is to determine which methods should be applied within the dynamic field. Before the advent of psychoanalysis there was no technique for discovering the subjective meanings of experiences such as anxiety, apart from the insightful self-observation and intuitive understanding of others inherent in such gifted individuals as Pascal and Kierkegaard. But if the term 'clinical' is used when describing a method, then the interpretation of the term should be extended to include all methods that shed light on unconscious motivation
2. In my research, Rorschach's projective technique, which reveals what the subject is unwilling or unable to reveal, proved invaluable in providing clues to the individual's dynamics and latent behavioural patterns, the existence of which was then confirmed by a wealth of other data.