1.1 Physical symptoms
When you’re faced with a difficult and stressful situation with maths you may respond in a number of different ways. You may experience symptoms such as increased heart rate, feeling flushed, headaches and many other physical symptoms.
Why do some people feel this way?
We experience various physical symptoms when under stress such because we have a long evolutionary history of needing to be able to escape from danger. Stressful situations can trigger the ‘fight-or-flight’ response. As part of this response, the brain triggers an increase in adrenaline levels, which results in the heart beating faster. As a consequence, there is increased blood flow to muscles enabling them to work harder and hence enabling the person to potentially flee from a dangerous situation. There are also other consequences of increased adrenaline levels such as more rapid breathing, sweating and other physical symptoms. This response is great to run away from a dangerous situation but it doesn’t help if you’re continually entering this state from maths anxiety.
Perhaps a less common thing we think of in relation to a stressful situation is the ‘freeze’ response. Cortisol and other hormones are released as part of the fight-or-flight response which can disrupt normal brain patterns. You may find your mind goes blank, you can’t remember information that you have practised, you feel numb. There is an even more extreme response where there is a physical freezing of the body. This is deeply hardwired into us to help keep us safe around predators – when we freeze and blend into the background a wild animal may not see us and keep walking by. [4] You may find that certain situations with maths trigger a freeze response. This response does not mean that you are stupid or that you are not suited to studying maths. It means that the situation for you has triggered a deep rooted reaction but there are strategies in Section 3 that we will look at to reduce the intensity of this response.