Maths Confidence: Tips for Overcoming Maths Anxiety

Lots of people will tell you that they hate maths. As a maths tutor, I hear this all the time, and to be fair, I’ve felt that way myself a few times! I’m sure anyone who studies a subject sometimes feels at odds with it. For a lot of people, they describe a feeling of panic, or their mind going blank when they are asked a maths question. They might feel the need to run away when they sit down in a maths test or when they’re doing their maths homework. This is usually because they have gone into a stress response. You’ve probably heard of the phrase ‘fight or flight’, or a variation of it such as ‘fight, flight, freeze’. This is how some stress responses are described. If you’re having this reaction when you do maths, it’s because your brain is perceiving the maths as a threat, similar to how it would respond to a tiger. Your brain wants to find a way to make sure you survive your encounter with this threat, whether that’s to fight it (you might get snappy with people who are close by, shout at the paper, bang your hands on the desk), flee from it (running away, dropping the course, find a way out to get out of the situation), or freeze (your mind goes blank and you may just sit there, unable to answer any questions). Whilst these responses may work really well to get you out of having to do any maths in that moment, in the long run you’ll feel some negative effects, like having to re-sit the exam, not being able to do the course you love, or feeling down about your abilities and losing confidence. When this anxiety is felt strongly in response to maths, it’s commonly referred to as Maths Anxiety.

Maths anxiety is a long lasting fear and worry about maths situations such as tests or classes with maths components. Most adults experience it during their lives, and it can be stronger for some people. Maths anxiety can come from a number of different places, such as seeing a parent or teacher with maths anxiety as a child, being asked to perform maths calculations under time pressure, or being punished for getting the answer wrong. A lot of people feel really anxious about things like peer marking maths tests, as they don’t want their classmates to make fun of them if they get something wrong. I know that, even though I love maths, my mind goes totally blank if someone asks me to do a calculation in my head. It can be really frustrating. You might’ve worked really hard to prepare for your test and then when you get in there, you can’t remember how to do anything. Maybe your mind jumps around from one idea to another and can’t settle on anything long enough for you to start working on it.
In order to get you back into a frame of mind where you can do the maths, you need some strategies to calm the anxiety, lower your anxious hormones, and give your brain a chance to breathe so it can focus again. Try out some of the following to see if they work for you:

• Breathe: apps like Headspace or Calm will have breathing meditations you can follow. There are lots of YouTube videos for mindful breathing that you can watch for free. If you want a quick fix, try something like taking a deep breath in, hold it for a couple of seconds, then let it out fully and slowly. You might also enjoy practising a lion’s breath – take a deep breath in, look up towards the ceiling or sky, then stick your tongue out and breathe out loudly.

• Move: if you start to feel panic building, move your body however you like to. Stand up and stretch, walk to the kitchen for a drink, roll your wrists- anything that feels good to get your panic dissipating. If you have more time or energy, you might want to try exercising. Things like yoga, tennis, martial arts and dancing are all activities that work to pair your breath with your movement, which helps to alleviate anxiety.

• Write it down: make a list of the things that are making you panic. Do you feel like you’re being judged? Maybe you’re worried about your grades? Do you feel like you don’t have enough time to finish? Write it down on your phone or a piece of paper. This takes it out of your head so you can stop thinking about things on a loop. I often find that the list ends up being shorter than it felt when it was in my head.

• Watch something funny: put on your favourite YouTube video, watch some tv, call a friend. Laughing helps to relieve stress and can soothe you if you are feeling particularly tense.

• Positive self talk: each time you think a negative thought about yourself or your work, try the ‘but’ technique. This is where you tack on a positive statement to the end of an unwanted negative thought, such as:

‘I’m never going to figure this out- but, I’m sure I’ll be able to do it if I ask for help. ’‘I hate maths – but, doing this calculation will help me with my project, which is important to me.’‘ Everyone else gets this and I don’t- but, that might not be true, and I’m really good at writing.’

• Positive self talk (again!): if you have a test coming up, and you’re feeling anxious, try thinking to yourself ‘last time I had a maths test, it went really well. I felt anxious before I went in, and then when I came out I wondered why I was ever worried!’ This doesn’t have to be true, just thinking it will help.

• Take care of yourself: if you know you have a maths class or test coming up, try to make sure you get some sleep the night before, and if you can, eat a good breakfast before you go in. Anxiety is hard whenever it hits you, but it’s a lot harder to calm yourself when you’re hungry, thirsty or tired.

• Ask for help: YSJ has a wellbeing team who will be happy to talk with you about your anxiety and work on some strategies to help relax you. You could call a friend and tell them how stressed you are. Blow off some steam by doing something fun, like playing a game or watching a film.

These strategies will be helpful in the moment when you are feeling anxious, but if you’d like to try to build up your maths confidence to hopefully lower the chances of getting that anxious in the first place, try some of these strategies:

• Find the problem: if you’re looking at the problem as a whole, it can seem really overwhelming, but maths is made up of lots of building blocks, and chances are you’ll be alright with at least one of them. Look through the steps of the calculation- which ones do you know how to do comfortably? Which ones are more confusing? Work on these skills individually for a while, so that you feel more able to do the calculation as a whole.

• Understand rather than memorise: when you are in a stress response, it is much harder to remember things you have studied. If you understand why you’re doing something, and how it helps you to get the answer you want, it makes it a lot easier to figure it out when you’re in your test.

• Try going through the method for answering a question. What does each step give you? Why have you done that calculation? If there is something in the method that you can’t justify to yourself, ask your tutor why it’s included.

• Prepare: before a lecture, see if you can get a copy of the slides or notes. Have a read through them, and see if you can understand the maths in it. Don’t worry if you can’t- that’s what the lectures are for! Having seen the material in advance might help to make you feel a bit calmer during the lecture, since you know which bits are going to be confusing. After the lecture, if there’s a recording, watch any bits you didn’t understand again.

• Practise: do as many practice papers and questions as you can manage. Go from easiest to hardest, and focus on the wins. Getting a question right once means you can do it again.

• Ask for help: your lecturer, tutors and teachers are there to help you. If you don’t understand something the way they’ve explained it, ask for a different explanation. Try going through an example together. Try booking in with Study Development– in my role as a tutor, I work through questions and examples with students. We go at your pace, and can go over things as many times and ways as you’d like. Ask your classmates if they understand it. You might find that you are all struggling with it, so you can feel more comfortable asking for help, or you might find that they get it and they can explain it to you. This helps them build their skills too, so it’s beneficial all round.

Remember that every time you have a positive experience with maths, it’ll make the next encounter just a bit easier. It can be really daunting to admit you don’t understand something, but it really will help you to make progress if you can ask for help.

By Scarlet Wood, Study Development Tutor at York St John