2020-08-05
60Psychological Peculiarities of Anxiety Prophylaxis in Adolescence
Radchenko Sergij Valeriyovich
Annotation: Life activity both of adults and of children, happens in constant contacts with other people, subjects and events of the environment. Man expresses certain attitude to everything, that surrounds him and it founds it’s realization in one’s emotions. One of the kinds of such affections is anxiety.
Key Words: youth,anxiety, psychic tension, fear, adolescence.
Youth is a period of lifestyle selection. Adolescents build plans, which can either come true, or not. The realization of pointed aims, such as HEI’s study, occupational work begins.
Anxiety influences psychic processes. Especially it affects emotional sphere, cheerfulness disappears, constant feeling of annoyance and anger. Pessimistic position and diffidence develop in adolescent. The feeling of anxiety enforce diffidence, influences negatively persistence, cognitive need and gnostical activity. One of the common expression of anxiety in adolescent is apathy, atony, shiftlessness.
For that very reason prophylaxis of anxiety among adolescents before external independent testing is a very important aspect of psychoprophylactic therapy, because future life of adolescents depends on passing external independent testing.
Anxieties as constitutional phenomenon and personal qualities were investigated by such scientists: U.M. Antonyan, V.M. Astapov, L.I. Bozhovich, G.S. Gabdreyeva, J.M. Glozman, M.S. Korolchuk, B.I. Kochubey, M.D. Levitov, L.V. Marishuk, N.I. Nayenko, G.M. Prikhozhan, C.D. Spilberger, T.M. Titarenko. Anxieties as “reactive formations” mostly in the context of destructive effect on personal development were examined by: V.E. Kagan, R.V. Kislovska, G.M. Prikhozhan, L.P.Ponomarenko, T.M. Titarenko, A.V. Furman. The aspects of psychodiagnostic, psychocorrection and psychotherapy of anxiety were surveyed by: V.M. Astapov, O.I. Zakharov, N.V. Imedadze, I.I. Mamaychuk, A.S. Spivakovska, U.L. Khanin.
Life activity both of adults and of children, happens in constant contacts with other people, subjects and events of the environment. Man expresses certain attitude to everything, that surrounds him and it founds it’s realization in one’s emotions. One of the kinds of such affections is anxiety. Anxiety is referred to emotional diseases, which are the reasons of numerous mental difficulties, which prevent people from psychical comfort.
By Mesheryakov’s and Zinchenko’s definition, anxiety is an individual psychological peculiarity, that comes out in man’s tendency to frequent and intense feelings of anxiety, and in a low level of it’s occurrence. It is examined as personal peculiarity or as temperament feature, conditioned by weakness of neural processes [3].
Anxiety is a feeling of emotional discomfort, that is related to expectation of distress, a premonition of danger, unlike fear, as a reaction to specific, real danger. The concepts of anxiety and psychic tension have different meanings. If anxiety is an occasional sign of restlessness and embroilment, psychic tension is a stable state. Anxiety is not associated with any particular situation and occurs almost always. This condition accompanies human in any kind of activity.
In Soviet psychology anxiety is traditionally considered as a manifestation of distress caused by neuro-psychiatric and severe physical illness or a result of a previous trauma [24].
As anxiety in general, psychic tension the can be described as definitely bad or good. Sometimes anxiety is natural, adequate and useful. Everyone feels anxiety, agitation or tension in certain situations, especially if it has to do something unusual, or prepare for it. For example, there can be a performance in front of an audience with a speech or exam. This type of anxiety is normal and even useful as it encourages preparing a speech and learn the material before the test.
In other cases, anxiety is unnatural, abnormal, inappropriate, harmful. It becomes chronic, constant and begins to appear not only in stressful situations, but for no apparent reasons. Then anxiety not only brings no use for people, but conversely, it begins to disturb their daily activities [9].
Before examining anxiety, let’s emphasize the difference between anxiety and fear. At first glance, as it is pointed out by V. Astapov, the difference is simple: fear is a reaction to the existing concrete threat; anxiety is a state of bad premonition for no apparent reason. However, the scientific literature does not always keeps this division.
P. Tillich finds that fear and anxiety are inseparable - they are closely related. He defines anxiety as fear of the unknown.
Thus, anxiety is a basic reaction, the general concept, and fear is an expression of the same quality but in an objective manner. That is why the alarm will be continuously considered in close connection with fear.
Nowadays, the attitude towards the phenomenon of anxiety changed significantly, and the opinion on these personal characteristics are less clear and categorical. The modern approach to the phenomenon of anxiety is based on the fact that it should not be reviewed as a negative personality trait from the very beginning. Each person is characterized by it’s optimal level of anxiety, the so-called useful anxiety, which is a prerequisite for the development of the personality.
Investigations of A.M. Prikhozhan showed that there are specific ways of it’s outlive, awareness, verbalization and overcome. The following variants of it’s outlive and overcoming can be pointed out among them:
1. Open anxiety is consciously outlived and manifested in the activities in a state of psychic tension. It can take many forms, for example: a sharp, unregulated or poorly regulated anxiety, that often disorganizes human activities; adjustable and compensating anxiety, which can be used as an incentive to perform the corresponding activities, which, however, is real mostly in the stable, familiar situations; cultivated anxiety is associated with finding "secondary benefits" of their own anxiety that requires some personal maturity (as this form of anxiety appears only in adolescence).
2. Latent anxiety turns either in excessive ease, insensitivity to real trouble and even denying it, or indirectly through specific forms of behavior (fashing one’s hair, going from side to side, tapping on the table): inadequate peace (reactions on a "I’m fine! ", which are associated with compensatory-protective attempt to maintain self-esteem, low self-esteem is not allowed into consciousness); resignation from situation.
Thus, anxiety is in confrontation with basic personal needs: the need for emotional well-being and a sense of confidence and security. Considerable difficulties are associated with this in dealing with anxious people: they, despite the expressed desire to get rid of anxiety, subconsciously resist attempts to help them do so. The reason for this resistance is not clear to themselves and treated by them generally inadequate.
A specific feature of anxiety as personal feature is that it has it’s own persuasive force. Appearance and fixing of anxiety is conditioned by dissatisfaction of the actual needs of people who become hypertrophied nature. Consolidation and strengthening of anxiety take place according to the mechanism of "vicious psychological circle" [8].
The problem of anxiety, was first outpointed and has undergone special consideration in the writings by Freud.
Freud’s interest towards anxiety appeared when he got the first results of the therapy conveyed by him. This interest conducted him at first to the supposition, that anxiety, outlived by his neurotic patients, is a result of inadequate release of libido energy. But, accumulating the experience, it turned out to be clear for Freud, that such interpretation of anxiety is false. Anxiety is a function of Ego and it’s aim is to alert a person about danger to meet or to avoid. Thus, anxiety gives an opportunity to react to threatening situation in an adaptive manner.
Freud accepted the necessity to divide fear and anxiety, considering, that fear is a reaction to a certain danger, while anxiety is a reaction to unknown and indefinite danger. Considering, that understanding of anxiety is of incredible importance for human’s psychic life explanation, Freud approached to this phenomenon very rigorous, he looked through and precised his conception repeatedly, mostly in the parts, concerning reasons and functions of anxiety. Content of anxiety is a feeling of uncertainty and helplessness.
Three main features are characteristic of anxiety: specific feeling of unpleasant, corresponding somatic reactions (first of all the increased palpitation), realization of this feeling.
In the beginning Freud supposed the existence of thoughtless anxiety, but afterwards he made a conclusion, that this state is outlived conscious, meaningly and is followed by improvement of skills of struggle for danger. As regards thoughtless anxiety, later it began to be examined on a psychological protect surveys. By Freud, anxiety is a repetition of situations in our imagination, connected with feeling of helplessness, outlived in previous experience. Prototype of such situations is a birth trauma.
Freud singled out three main types of anxiety: objective, caused by real outside danger; neurotic, caused by unknown and uncertain danger; moral, conditioned by him as “conscience anxiety”.
Objective one is an emotional reaction to external danger, it is a synonym of fear and may weaken man’s ability to struggle for the source of danger effectively. Neurotic anxiety is caused by id pressure, it is a reaction to threat of id impulses to become realized and ego will lose it’s ability to control them. Anxiety in this case is caused by fear of doing something bad and having hard negative results. Moral anxiety is caused by super ego pressure; it is an emotional reaction to ego’s feeling of danger towards super ego. Moral anxiety always appears when id wants to express some weird thoughts and actions, and super ego reacts to it on feelings of guilt, shame and self-reproach.
At the same time, from the point of view of Freud, dividing objective and neurotic anxiety is very relative, because of neurotic anxiety tendency to be projected from outside (“to be attached to an object”), getting the appearance of a real fear, because it is easier to avoid external danger than inner one.
Despite of the fact, that nowadays the ideas of classical psychoanalysis are not as popular in psychological society as they were in the past, it is necessary to accept, that Freud’s concepts had defined the main ways of anxiety research for long years till nowadays.
According to Freud such concepts are the components of anxiety: “psychic tension”, “fear”, “discomposure”. Fear is an affective display of one’s particular threat to his life and well-being in man’s mind. Anxiety is an emotionally heightened sense of future threats. As opposed to fear anxiety is not always perceived negatively, as it can also exist in a form of joyful excitement, exciting expectation [10].
Unlike Freud, K. Horney did not think that anxiety is a necessary component in the human psyche. Instead, she argued that anxiety is the result of the absence of feeling of safety in interpersonal relationships.
K. Horney believed that being a child a person has two basic needs: the need to be satisfied and the need for safety. Satisfaction encompasses all biological needs: in food and in a sleep. Major need in child development is a need for safety, and then there is a need to be loved, cherished and protected. Satisfying this need is completely dependent on the child's parents, in case they satisfy it, a healthy person develops. If the demand is not satisfied by parents, basal hostility is formed in child’s mind. In this case, the child is in a difficult situation: it depends on the parents and at the same time feels insult towards them. The child will suppress negative feelings to it’s parents in order to survive.
K. Horney identified four basic ways to avoid the anxiety that exists in our culture [5]: rationalization, denial, anesthesia, avoidance.
Rationalization is the best way to justify their evasion of responsibility. It is to transform anxiety into a rational fear. Rationality will motivate latent anxiety with real causes.
The second way to avoid anxiety is in denying it’s existence, that is, removing it from consciousness.
K. Horney connects the third way of getting rid of anxiety with anesthesia. It can go consciously, what means taking alcohol or drugs per say. It can also be full immersion into social activities under the influence of fear of loneliness. Excessive immersion in work, exaggerated need for sleep, sexual activity is the forms of such anesthesia.
The fourth way to escape from anxiety is the most radical: it is to avoid all situations, thoughts and feelings that can awaken it. This may be a conscious process. A man, who is afraid to swim, does not come to sea, the one, who is afraid of mountains, is not engaged in mountaineering. However, it can also be very dimly to realize (or not to realize) the presence of anxiety and how to get rid of it.
Y.L. Hanin notes that anxiety as a state is a response to various stressors, characterized by different intensity, variability in time, the presence of unpleasant perceived stress feelings, concern, agitation and accompanied by expressed activation of the autonomic nervous system [6].
Thus, we can conclude that anxiety is a psychological phenomenon that has three forms: short-term emotional reaction of weakly expressed inadequate fear that affects judgments and decisions; similar mental state; feature of a person, which helps separate manifestations of reactions and states of anxiety.
Psychological causes of anxiety may exist in all spheres of human activity. Conventionally, they are divided into subjective and objective reasons. Subjective reasons are reasons of informational nature associated with misconceptions about completion of events and causes of psychological nature that increase the subjective importance of event's completion. Among the objective reasons are extreme conditions that put high demands on the human psyche and are connected with the uncertainty of completion of the situation, fatigue, worry about health, mental disorders, the effects of pharmacological agents and other drugs that may affect the mental state.
In social sphere anxiety affects the efficiency of communication, relationships with friends, creating conflicts. In the psychological sphere it causes changing the level of aspiration, decreased self-esteem, determination, self-confidence and motivation.
Also the feedback of anxiety with such features as a social activity, integrity, conscientiousness, desire for leadership, determination, independence, emotional stability, confidence and efficiency is observed.
F.B. Berezin said that anxiety is an emotional states that naturally follow each other as they grow, and identified six levels of anxiety.
1. The first level is the lowest intensity of anxiety. It is expressed in feelings of tension, suspicion, discomfort. This feeling does not bear signs of threat, and is a sign of rapid onset of more severe manifestations of anxiety. This level of anxiety is of the most adaptive value.
2. At the second level, a sense of inner tension is changed by hyperesthetic reactions, because they are attached to it. Previously neutral stimuli become relevant, and while strengthening they get negative emotional coloring.
3. The third level is the actual psychic tension. It is manifested in the feelinf of an uncertain threat or a sense of unknown danger.
4. Fourth level is a fear. It occurs because of increase of anxiety and manifests itself in objectification, specification of the uncertain danger. In this case, the object, which is related with fear, does not necessarily reflects a real cause of psychic tension and a real threat.
5. The fifth level is a sense of inevitability of disaster that is the result of a gradual increase of anxiety and is expressed in a sense of horror. At the same time this experience is related not to the content of feeling, but only with the increase of anxiety. Such experiences can be caused by uncertain, but very strong psychic tension.
6. The highest level is a disturbingly timid accentuation, which is expressed in the need of motive discharge, panic seeking. Disorganization of behavior and activity, caused by anxiety, reaches its maximum in such case. Anxiety has a negative impact on personal development; presence of anxiety points to his ill-being. The insensivity to the real trouble, due to the influence of defense mechanisms such as repression, also gives the same effect, and is by nature of a lack of anxiety, even in potentially dangerous situations. Anxiety is one of a major component of post-traumatic syndrome, i.e. a complex of feelings caused by mental or physical injury. Such mental disorders as phobias, hypochondria, hysteria and obsessive-compulsive disorder are also associated with anxiety. Anxiety is usually caused by the expectation of failure in social interaction and by the inability to identify the source of danger. It can manifest itself as helplessness; diffidence; feeling of powerlessness to external factors due to exaggeration of their power and threatening nature [3].
Thus, anxiety mediates human behavior in a wide range of situations. Although psychologists do not doubt as regards the existence of the phenomenon of anxiety, it’s manifestations in behavior are difficult to trace. This is due to the fact that anxiety is often masked by behavioral properties of other problems, such as aggression, addiction and a tendency to submission, mendacity, laziness as a result of "learned helplessness", false hyperactivity, and withdrawal to the disease.
Features of manifestation of anxiety in adolescence
According to periodization by D.B. Elkonin, early adolescence is age from 15 to 17 years. Adolescence is the period of life between adolescence and maturity. In the scheme age periodization of ontogeny adopted by specialists in the problems of the age morphology, physiology and biochemistry, adolescence is defined as 17-21 year for boys and 16-20 years for girls. In a national science adolescence is defined within 14-18 years and is regarded as a separate period of man's development, his personality and individuality. Age of 15-17 years is called early adolescent or of early adolescence. In adolescence the physical development of the body is basically completed, puberty completes, the cardio-vascular system comes to accordance, the rate of growth of the body slows, muscle strength and efficiency increase significantly, the formation and development of tissues and organs completes.
There are following main tasks of the development in early adolescence: acquiring a sense of personal identities and integrity (identity); acquisition of psychological identity - understanding and self-awareness oneself as a worthy representative of a particular sex; professional self-esteem - self-contained and independent determination of life goals and choice of future profession; development of readiness for life self-determination, that suggests an adequate level of development of value concepts, volitional sphere, self-reliance and responsibility.
Anxiety in adolescence has very different manifestations, ranging from complete apathy to demonstrative brutality. One of the most frequent manifestations of anxiety in adolescence is apathy flabbiness, lack of initiative. The conflict between contradictory desires is solved by eliminating any aspirations. Ignoring the interests of the student leads to discontent of basic needs and to reducing of intensity of those needs. Apathy is often the consequence of the failure of other mechanisms to overcome anxiety when neither fantasy nor rituals, nor even a common form of adaptation as aggression, does not help to overcome anxiety. The mask of apathy is even more deceptive than the mask of aggression. Demonstrative inactivity, lack of living emotional reactions interfere recognizing anxiety, inner conflict, which led to the development of this state.
Eric Berne came to the conclusion that there are some anxious children who come to simple conclusions - that have nothing to fear, you need to make other afraid of me. Therefore aggressive behavior is often a form of concealment of personal anxiety. Anxiety is sometimes difficult to discern under aggressiveness. Assertive, aggressive ones at every opportunity humiliate others, while anxiety is not displayed. And yet, often in the depths of the soul of these children anxiety is hidden. And the behavior and the appearance are only the ways of getting rid of the feeling of insecurity [8].
All researchers of psychology of adolescence (Charles Spielberger, Freud, Y.L. Hanin, A.M. Prikhozhan, A.V. Miklyayeva) determine the importance of communication between youth and peers. Communication with friends takes one of the most important places in the life of a young man in many ways defining all other aspects of his behavior and activities. The basis of success reduction, behavior change, the emergence of emotional stress is a violation of the young man's relationships with peers, parents, and teachers. The reason for the violation of social relations with adults and peers often serves boy's anxiety.
Communication of anxious student becomes selective, emotionally uneven and is usually limited to a narrow range of attachments. It becomes more difficult to contact with strangers, it's hard to start a conversation, confusion and retardation appear easily at the sudden braking questions. This is especially noticeable in the young man asking the questions and he is not able to answer immediately, gather his thoughts and say the most important thing. Thus, feeling of anxiety, depending on the psychic structure of the youth's individual, his life experience, relationships with others can acquire the meaning of fear. The student in a state of unconscious indefinite anxiety, feels psychic tension and the student, afraid of certain objects or ideas, feels fear. For any age there is a universal feature of the manifestation of anxiety - the deterioration of physical health.
Among the somatic manifestations of anxiety the following ones are distinguished:
• cardiovascular: palpitations, tachycardia, discomfort or pain in the chest, fluctuations in blood pressure, before fainting, cold or hot flushes, sweating, cold and wet hands;
• breathing: a feeling of lack of air, shortness of breath, uneven breathing, breath dissatisfaction;
• neurological: dizziness, headache, before fainting, tremors, muscle twitching, jerking, paresthesia, tension and muscle pain, sleep disturbance;
• gastrointestinal: nausea, dry mouth.
Behavioral manifestations of anxiety can vary from complete apathy and lack of initiative to demonstrative brutality.
Excessive carefulness when performing tasks can also be indirect evidence of student's anxiety. The desire to do everything "as needed" and "to be the best" may indicate a conflict of self-esteem.
Irritability and aggressive acts of student can also act as symptoms of anxiety. Anxious children can "mask" the emotional discomfort by snapping in response to the comments; they exhibit excessive vulnerability in relationships with peers.
Inattention or reductions of concentration, only «physical» presence in the lesson are characteristic of the young men, who thus try to avoid worry of the school environment. As a result, they either displace anxious elements of the field of consciousness, or are in their own world of thoughts and ideas that do not cause anxiety, so this condition is most comfortable for them [9].
Thus, anxiety affects interpersonal interaction of youths, behavior, and, consequently, studies. Students who have high levels of anxiety cannot become leaders because they are diffident, closed, shy, and unsociable. As a rule such children are alone. Increased level of anxiety may indicate a lack of emotional adaptation to the situation in which the young man is.
Features of psychological development in early adolescence are largely related to the specific social situation of development, the essence of which today is that society confronts the young man urgent and vitally important task to carry out a professional identity. Moreover, this choice is made twice: once in the 9th grade when the student chooses the form of completion of secondary education (profile at school, where he studied, gymnasium, and college) the second is in the 11th grade when ways to obtain higher education or direct inclusion in the workplace are planned.
LI Bozhovic wrote: "Self-determination, both personal and professional is a characteristic of youth." As an adolescent, a young man has a problem of choice of values. Youth tends to form an internal position regarding itself, in relation to other people, as well as to moral values.
Leading activity in adolescence is training and professional. Motives related to future, begin to encourage educational activity. High selectivity to the subjects is manifested. The main motive of cognitive activity is the desire to acquire a profession [10]. Let's note another very important problem for the first time clearly emerging in 11th form. It is a problem of external independent testing. All students take exams, results of which affects which institution they will enter. Sometimes students, who are not well trained, and sometimes "A" students have to enter specialized secondary schools to avoid external independent testing. They leave school with poor progress and low self-esteem. They care little about their life prospects, in making important decisions about their educational plans they rest primarily upon the opinion of their friends, and not on their own interests and needs.
Psychological personality characteristics that affect the success external independent testing evaluation are demonstrative and anxious timid character accentuation, elevated levels of trait anxiety, low focus on knowledge at low and medium focus on assessment, low aspirations, high inadequate level of aspiration and low level of self-esteem. These features are some of the key in determining the success of the student in the learning process and during exams.
The most common exam worries of young people are associated with disbelief in themselves, resulting in lowered self-esteem. In adolescence self-esteem is unstable and ranges from extremely high to extremely low levels.
Currently two types of stable sources of anxiety are mainly allocated: prolonged external stressful situation that has arisen as a result of frequent feelings of anxiety; internal psychological and physiological reasons.
According to V. Polishchuk the most typical occurrence of anxiety among young people is noticed under the influence of psychosocial factors and factors of educational programs:
• educational load: psychologists' studies show that after 6 weeks of active studies the level of efficiency is sharply reduced and the level of anxiety increases among children;
• inability of student to cope with the school curriculum: the choice of curriculum, which is not of appropriate level of mental functions, the health of the child, current knowledge, abilities, skills increases anxiety;
• inadequate expectations of parents: the more parents focus on the child to reach high academic results, the more expressed is anxiety of the student;
• adverse relationships with teachers: the highest level of anxiety was demonstrated by classes, where teaching style has high level of authoritarianism, high standards, intolerance of misconduct, a tendency to move from discussing specific mistakes to the estimation of the student's personality;
• changes in the school community or collective rejection: anxious students more likely than their emotionally affluent peers, evaluate the peer group as unreliable, dominant. Basic feelings of anxiety among young people are associated with communication with their peers. Therefore the situation of establishing of new relationships can serve them a powerful stress factor, reinforcing anxiety, and, consequently, reduces their effectiveness (both academic, and in terms of communication, behavior) [11].
So typical determinants of anxiety among students of adolescence are: uncertainty of future life prospects; feelings of responsibility of choice, supported with the "message" of parents and teachers; collision with the situation of final examinations; chronic or episodic failure; failure in interaction with teachers or classmates; sharp complication of school curriculum; change of control and testing systems, the need to adapt to the new (or modified) class groups; sharp increase in training load associated with the preparation for entering the university.
So there are many determinants that can cause psychic tension, and in future a sense of anxiety. They can be quite varied, a relationship with peers, parents, failure in school, worries because of exams. But we must remember that the constant anxiety can lead to various complications that would interfere with the young man to live a full life. Anxiety will prevent young man at school, when testing knowledge when writing external independent testing. Older students can even get poor results on exams, not because they have insufficient knowledge, but because of the high level of anxiety. And it will make the life of young people much worse because their further future depends on the results of independent external testing.
Adolescence is an important period in the development of personality that is complicated by unstable socio-economic situation, insecurity, high demands of the society to the youth. This causes a high level of anxiety, particularly in the high school age students, serving a negative factor in their educational activities. Formation of anxiety as personality feature, has negative impact on other components of the structure of personality, including self-esteem, level of aspiration and motivation, causes negative changes in their development. That is why an important task of the school psychologist and each teacher is prevention, precaution and correction (if necessary) of anxiety among the students in adolescence [12].
There are different systems of techniques and exercises to reduce the level of anxiety. Some issues of manifestation and correction of students' anxiety were considered by S.V. Vaskivska, I.V. Dubrovin, R.V. Ovcharova, A.M. Prikhozhan, S.A. Stavitska. So, M.I. Buyanov indicates the use of game therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy and bibliotherapy in overcoming of person's anxiety. V.S. Lobzin, M.N. Reshetnikov, A.A. Korotaev and others applied to the music therapy. However, analysis of the psychological and educational literature has shown that there are only a few works, which stipulate the conditions for prevention and reducing anxiety among youths, particularly in terms of increasing their level of aspiration in training activities.
Prevention of anxiety among students in adolescence involves the following tasks: education of self-confidence, reducing emotional stress; help to overcome negative emotions; help in the removal of fear, aggression; reducing anxiety level.
Work to prevent anxiety among students is performed on three interrelated levels:
1. Developing constructive modes of behavior in difficult for the student situations as well as mastery of techniques that let cope with excessive excitement and increased anxiety.
2. Expanding the functional and operational capabilities of students, development of necessary knowledge, skills and abilities that allow increasing the effectiveness of activities, creating a stock of emotional balance and stability.
3. The development of certain properties of personality of student, first of all, his motivation, development and consolidation of self-confidence, self-development, the formation of an adequate level of aspiration and so on.
Drawing on works of such authors as R.V. Ovcharova, A.M. Prikhozhan E.I. Rogov, we have chosen a system of preventive psychological exercises aimed at reducing the level of anxiety among students in adolescence.
1. "Reinterpretation" of anxiety symptoms. Most people feel anxiety and it allows them to perform certain activities better. Training helps students to take their agitation just like this and use it to mobilize their knowledge, strength, capabilities.
2. "Configuring for a certain emotional state." Student is invited to associate mentally an exciting, anxious emotional state with a certain melody, color, landscape, gesture; calm relaxed state with another music and mental images; state of confidence, focus on winning - with others.
3. "Pleasant memories". Student is offered to imagine a situation in which he felt calm, relaxed, and to remember as the brightest all the feelings that are associated with this situation.
4. "Use of a role." In the difficult situation the student is offered to imagine bright and to choose a role model, to get into a character and act as if it were himself.
5. "Control of voice and gestures." Students are told how the voice and gestures can determine the emotional state and that confident voice and calm gestures can have the opposite effect that is to calm and provide reassurance as well. To master this control, the training in the mirror and the "audience" is necessary. For example, it may be the situation with imaginary response in the classroom or imaginary communication.
6. "Smile". Training focused management of facial muscles. The student is given a number of standard exercises to relax the muscles of the face and explained the meaning of a smile for the removal of neuromuscular tension.
7. "Breathing". It is a talk about the value of rhythmic breathing for stress relief.
8. "Ideate training". The alarming situation is imagined in advance in every detail, complex factors that caused it's emergence; the pupil's behavior is thoroughly thought through and performed.
9. "Rehearsal". Situations that cause anxiety are performed with the students. The student is answering as if at the blackboard, writes the control, where we perform the role of "strict teacher" or "sarcastic classmate", "reproving his father". The behavior of the student is explored in details.
10. "The proof of the absurd". In a conversation with a psychologist or other quiet situations the student is invited to play a strong anxiety, fear and to do it intentionally.
11. "Paraphrasing task". It is known that one of the issues that prevent effective activity of anxious children is that they focus not only on it's performance but on how they look from sidewise. Therefore, we teach children to formulate purposes of activity and ways to achieve it completely apart from the external and internal non-essential features, we teach anxious children to reduce the significance of the situation, to understand the relative importance of "victory" or "defeat".
12. "Inversion of anxiety". Students write down episodes that disturb them in a short story in the present tense first person. They should seek to recall clearly the events, recreate dialogue, fixing, while their feelings. Then they re-write story as if they wanted it to happen in reality.
Thus, it can be noted that one of the priorities for the school psychologist and every teacher in working with young men is prevention, precaution and correction (if necessary) of anxiety level, because there is a very high number of causes that can affect the level of anxiety, and students do not always know how to deal with it. High levels anxiety can affect all the important aspects of youth's life.
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Radchenko Sergiy Valeriyovch
3 rd year student, Department of Applied Psychology. 350 Group of Research Institute of Social, Teacher Training and Artistic Education of Melitopol State Teacher Training University n.a. Bogdan Khmelnitsky
26/72, Mira St. Synelnykovo, Dnepropetrovsk region, Ukraine
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