It’s 11:40 on a Tuesday night. The bedroom light is still on. Four highlighters, a cold cup of tea, and a Year 12 who hasn’t eaten properly since lunch, re-reading the same page of chemistry notes for the third time because none of it is going in. You’ve said ‘go to bed’ twice. You’ve been told, twice, that you don’t understand.
The written exams start in the last week of October. If you’re reading this in Bayside in the second week of the month, you have about three weeks. That’s not a lot. It’s also more than enough to change how your child walks into the room, provided you stop doing the things that feel productive and aren’t.
Here’s what I’d tell you if you were sitting across the desk from me this week.
Why the content is there and won’t come out
The single most common thing I hear from Year 12 students in October is ‘I knew it, and then I sat down and it was gone.’ Parents hear that as an excuse. It isn’t.
When a nervous system has been in alarm for weeks, cortisol interferes with the hippocampus, the part of the brain that files and retrieves memory. The content hasn’t been lost. The retrieval pathway is being blocked by a threat response that thinks a SAC is a sabre-toothed tiger. Your child can know something cold at 9pm and find a blank where it should be at 9am, and the harder they push against the blank, the more alarm they generate, and the blanker it gets.
This matters now because it tells you where the last three weeks should go. Not into more content. Into getting the body out of alarm so the content it already has becomes available again.
Stop doing these, this week
I’ll say something that annoys tutors. For an anxious student, more hours at the desk after a certain point are not neutral. Every extra hour spent re-reading in a state of alarm teaches the brain that the material is dangerous, and makes it harder to retrieve. The student notices they’re retaining less, panics, studies longer, and the loop tightens. With three weeks to go, that loop is the enemy.
- Study after 9:30pm. The hour of sleep is worth more than the hour of revision, every time. I know that feels reckless. It’s the opposite.
- Quizzing them in the car, at dinner, in passing. Every unprompted question is a small alarm.
- Telling them it’ll be fine. Reassurance soothes for four minutes, then the question comes back bigger. You can’t out-reassure a nervous system.
- Letting your own anxiety leak. Teenagers read a parent’s stress with frightening accuracy and carry it into the room on your behalf. If you’re pacing the kitchen at 7am, they know.
The three weeks, honestly
This week: the body
Three physical things, and your job is logistics, not lectures. A consistent lights-out with screens out of the bedroom. Three real meals with protein at breakfast, because a brain running on toast and iced coffee is a brain running on adrenaline. And twenty minutes outside every day, non-negotiable. We’re lucky where we live. A walk along the cliff path at Ricketts Point or the length of Sandringham beach does more for a wound-up nervous system than anything you can buy. Suggest it and go with them. Say nothing about study.
If your child has had two or three of the signs below most days for a fortnight, this is also the week to call someone, because the runway is short.
- Broken sleep: can’t fall asleep, waking at 3 or 4am, or sleeping twelve hours and still exhausted
- Physical symptoms most days: nausea, headaches, stomach pain, racing heart
- Blanking in practice exams despite knowing the content
- Avoidance: the laptop stays shut, practice exams get ‘forgotten’, the room gets suddenly very tidy
- Catastrophic talk: ‘if I don’t get this score my life is over’
- Panic episodes: shaking, hyperventilating, a sense of doom that arrives in minutes
Any mention of self-harm goes to your GP first, today. I’ll work alongside whatever care your GP sets up.
Next week: rehearse the room, not the notes
Most students revise content and never rehearse the experience. Exam day becomes the first time their body meets the room, the clock, the silence, the invigilator’s footsteps, and it responds the way it would to anything unfamiliar and high-stakes. With alarm.
So rehearse the experience, twice this week. A timed practice paper, at the actual exam time, at a cleared table, phone in another room, timer running. Not to test the content. To teach the body that this exact situation is survivable. Afterwards, five minutes of slow breathing before they look at a single answer. The breathing matters more than the marking.
Exam week: taper and one ritual
The last few days before each exam should be lighter, not heavier. Short recall sessions, forty minutes with a real break between, and the day before mostly off. Anything crammed in a state of alarm is the first thing to vanish under pressure. A rested brain retrieves. An exhausted one doesn’t.
On the morning: protein, leave early so the drive isn’t the stressor, no quizzing in the car. And one short physical ritual they’ve practised: feet flat on the floor, one slow breath out that’s longer than the breath in, and a phrase that belongs to them. If they’ve worked with me, that phrase is the anchor we’ve built, and their body already knows what to do when they hear it.
Is three weeks enough for hypnotherapy?
Yes. I’d rather have had you in September, but this is the work I do every October and three weeks is a workable runway. For exam anxiety specifically, one or two sessions in the next fortnight is usually what I’d suggest, with the last one at least a few days before the first exam.
Let me be plain about what those sessions do and don’t do. I don’t teach chemistry and I can’t change the exam. What I can do is change how your child’s nervous system responds to it. We talk first, usually without you in the room after the opening minutes, because sixteen-year-olds say different things when their parents aren’t listening. Then I guide them into a deeply relaxed, focused state. It isn’t sleep and nobody clucks like a chicken; they’re aware the whole time. In that state we find where the alarm about exams started, which is often a specific SAC or a specific comment years ago, we rehearse the exam room in detail while the body stays calm so the association starts to rewire, and we build the anchor they’ll use at the desk.
Research on hypnosis for test anxiety in secondary and university students has reported reduced anxiety and, in several studies, better performance. The evidence base is smaller than I’d like and I don’t promise results to anyone. What I can tell you after twenty-five years of this is that a calm body retrieving what an alarmed body couldn’t is the pattern I watch every single October.
Sessions are in my Beaumaris clinic or online, which matters when your Year 12 has no spare hour in the week. Most teenagers come alone. Some want a parent in the room. Either is fine.
What I’ll say in the free chat
Sometimes I’ll tell you that you don’t need me. If it’s normal nerves and a decent routine, I’ll say so and send you back to the beach walks. If what you describe needs a psychologist or a GP, I’ll say that and tell you who to call. And if it sounds like an alarmed nervous system getting in the way of a capable kid, which is most of what I hear in October, I’ll tell you exactly what one or two sessions would look like and when we’d need to start. That takes fifteen minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Is it too late to start hypnotherapy three weeks before VCE exams?
No. One or two sessions in the fortnight before the first exam is a realistic plan for exam anxiety. Even a single session can take the edge off and give your child an anchor to use in the room.
Does my teenager have to want to come?
It helps a great deal. A sixteen-year-old dragged in against their will is harder to work with than one who’s curious, and most are curious once they understand it isn’t a stage show.
Can we do sessions online during exam period?
Yes. Online sessions via video work well with teenagers and remove travel time. The relaxation state is the same at home as in my clinic.
Is hypnotherapy a replacement for seeing a psychologist?
No. If your child is already seeing a psychologist, hypnotherapy can work alongside that. If I think your child needs care I don’t provide, I’ll say so in the first conversation.
What does it cost?
I go through fees with you in the free 15-minute chat, along with what a realistic plan looks like for your child. Many health funds offer a rebate for clinical hypnotherapy under extras cover.
Three weeks is enough, if you use them differently
The hardest conversations I have are in December, with parents whose child knew the content and couldn’t get it out. You’ve got three weeks. Spend this one on sleep, food and the beach. Spend the next one rehearsing the room. And if the body won’t come out of alarm on its own, that’s the point to call, and it’s better to call this week than next.
Request a free 15-minute chat with Olivia – fill in the contact form and tell me a little about what’s going on and when the first exam is. I’ll call you back. Beaumaris clinic and online. 0425 726 732.