Happy Wednesday. This past week has seen my energy levels return to pretty much normal (although less than I am hoping for, in the coming weeks) and I feel 100% myself again-yippee. I'm still struggling with my usual walking-speed but am confident that I can rebuild it.
Energy levels are something that we don't spend lots of time thinking about but maybe we should. If we are feeling tired, let's not accept it as normal, let's find some energy.
I'll not write any more than that because I wrote about Olive last time, but I have come to realise that tiredness can be trying to show us something.
2 weeks ago, I had planned to write about Exam-stress and got side-tracked with other thoughts. Last week I had planned to again write about it and got sidetracked with life.
So here it is and this week brings us another week closer to the school/uni exams and one week closer to lots of young people feeling totally overwhelmed and anxious about what may or may not happen with the exams which may or may not affect their futures.
Nowadays it feels like there is such emphasis put on kids doing well academically that it must be hard for them to believe that everything will be okay, whether they pass or fail Maths.
Michael J Fox laughed as he quite rightly said "what's new about 2+2 = 4?" and then told us that there was nothing fun in the fact that 2+2 would always equal 4. It's been done already and so why would you want to learn it?
I think that a good basic knowledge of Arithmetic and English is all that we can ask our kids to have, for them to have a good place to start when they go out into the world. With a bit of luck, most of that learning should be completed at primary school and the junior high-school years.
But, what I think is not what's happening and my girls are still going through a system where they are learning a whole bunch of stuff that they are not interested in, will never remember after their exams are done or be likely to tap into for the work that they will do in adult life.
I am not an education specialist and so my thoughts are unlikely to sway those who are deemed expert. All I can offer my kids is some emotional support to help them to have some enjoyment of their lives, during their high-school years (and beyond, if required)
The new curriculum for excellence looks like it may be trying to make school fit the kids better and my kids are lucky that their school is led by a great management team who are committed to trying to make the transition years, into CFO, as painless as possible for staff, pupils and parents alike. Other kids may not be so lucky and the goverment seriously needs to think carefully about it's education cutbacks because our children are the future of this country and they need to have the best educations we can provide for them.
Okay-sidetracked again. Exam stress and how Bach Remedies can help. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who's going through exam stress-please forward the link to this. Bach remedies are such an easy way to help someone cope with any pressures and are ideal to help with the stresses of studying for and the sitting of exams.
Elm is a major player in the group of remedies that can help. It's help comes in the shape of helping you to not feel overwhelmed with everything that must be studied. It helps the mountain become climbable by helping you to prioritise and see that it doesn't all need done at once and some of it won't need done at all. When you feel overwhelmed, your confidence can dip and your decision making gets shaky. By taking Elm, you find that you begin to accomplish things step by step, increasing your confidence and decision making as you go. If you are someone who has found yourself in an exam room unable to do anything but stare at the questions, Elm may help you to prevent that feeling of being overwhelmed in the face of the actual exam.
Larch is the remedy for self-confidence and it is very helpful for students who doubt their ability to pass the exam. It helps them to realise that if they do their best, there is no real failure. It helps to change "I can't" into "I can" and to risk failure rather than not sitting the exam at all.
Aspen is the remedy for anxiety-those butterflies in your stomach before the exam because you just don't know how it is all going to go. You may also need Mimulus if you are scared of the exam situation or Rock Rose, if you feel terrified. But from experience, I have found that Aspen is incredibly helpful for exam panic. If you wake up from having nightmares, this remedy may be helpful for preventing that.
White Chestnut is another very important remedy as the worrying thoughts going round and round in your head may be preventing sleep causing you to be exhausted causing you to be more worried causing you.....you get the picture. This remedy helps to calm the mind by switching off the repeating thoughts and allows you to relax. If you have found that you are exhausted, Olive is the remedy which will help you to complete all that needs done without feeling exhausted at the end of the day.
Rock Water is the remedy for those who force themselves to study because they think that they should and they give up all kinds of things to make sure that they meet their own very high ideas of how to study. This remedy will help them to be gentler with themselves and to cut themselves some slack rather than losing themselves in their need for perfection.
Clematis is the remedy for the daydreamer who doesn't have the focus to study and it will help them to bring themselves into the present and to feel grounded. I use this remedy when I spend loads of time thinking about all that I'm going to do and then find that I don't actually do any of it. I just think about doing it.
Hornbeam is the remedy for procrastination and for feeling tired at the thought of doing something. It helps with boredom and humdrum and also deja-vu. This remedy puts the spark back in the mundane and helps you to get started on what you've been avoiding. Note that those who need Elm often avoid getting started because they don't know where to start. Hornbeam is used when you're tired at the thought of starting.
Wild Oat is the remedy for those who don't know which path to take and this is a late addition to my exam stress list. My son left school last year but identified needing this remedy a few months back and asked why I hadn't told him about it when he was at school. I had always used Clematis and White Chestnut with him but the elements of Wild Oat that he identified with were that he didn't have a clue what he wanted to do and so he found that he wasn't really interested in anything. Therfore he had no inclination to study for exams of things that didn't interest him. I suppose that this remedy would be much more beneficial for students who were trying to decide on their interests for courses in the first place.
Pine is the remedy for those who feel guilty and beat themselves up if they think that they are not studying enough. These kids are never good enough for themselves and always think that they could have done better. Pine helps them to lower their bar for themselves and to know that their best is good enough.
Gentian is a great remedy for encouragement, if there's been a setback or if you are someone who is feeling depressed about the whole exam/studying lark. It helps to give you faith that everything will work out and to keep going.
Walnut is the remedy which helps you adapt to changes in scheduling of exams but it also a protector. It will help you to deal with studying the way that you feel is right for you rather than allowing yourself to be persuaded to study in a way that you know doesn't suit you. This remedy will also help your energy to be protected from that of others during the actual exams-ie, you'll not be affected be fear, negativity of others.
So that's more than a dozen but there's plenty more which can help-so have a look. Don't struggle. You don't even need to see a practitioner as you can go buy the remedies which have instructions on them. However, if it's only exam-stress that gets to you and you're otherwise very balanced, a mixture made by a practitioner with several remedies may be the most cost effective way to go, in the short term.
If nothing else, get yourself some rescue remedy which will help with any feelings of fear, impatience, being unfocused, losing control and shocks to your system.
And on that note I'll close and send out lots of love to everyone who is approaching exam season and wish you all Good Luck.
Lxxxx
Posted on Wed, April 6, 2011
by Linsey Denham