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Mental Blocks
Takuan
Veteran
I've had them ever since I was a child. Over the years, I learned to deal with them, but recently they've started to bother me again. You see, I've been studying Japanese for almost a semester and a half. My first semester of Japanese went extremely well, and the concepts really didn't bother me too much. I'm now in the middle of my second semester, and things are not going that well at all. The strange thing is that I understand all the questions on the tests, but formulating answers has proven to be very difficult. I know how the answers should be formulated and what it should look like, but nothing "comes out". To combat this, I've taken to sitting in an extra Japanese class, which comes up to about 2.5 hours of class everyday, and 1.5 hours of tutoring every other day. Despite doing all of this and increasing my study hours, I still perform miserably on tests. It's the same issue I had as a child reasserting itself. I'm not quite sure what triggers it, but it's starting to make my academic life quite difficult. It's especially sad when the answer is just floating there, almost on the tip of your tongue, but just sits there.
How do you deal with mental blocks?
If I can't get this figured out, I might as well kiss my graduate school aspirations goodbye.
How do you deal with mental blocks?
If I can't get this figured out, I might as well kiss my graduate school aspirations goodbye.
0
Comments
It can be a side effect of being stressed - Are there periods you can point to where there isn't this mental block and if so, what is different between then and the periods where there is a mental block.
I should point out that I am not a medical practitioner.
When I'm at home doing the homework assignments for class, the blocks generally do not manifest. It's only in class when they suddenly appear. The blocks were pretty much nonexistent last semester (even during tests), but they've suddenly appeared during this one. The strange thing is the difficulty of the material is about the same as it was last semester.
I recommend practice problems for this reason. They should be the same types that will be on the exam. I am a kinesthetic learner who learns by doing and this is the only way that worked out well for me.
Also diagnose your problem. Is it vocabulary? Is it conjugation?
People do all sorts of things, like recording their notes and listening to it on a loop while they sleep... But personally, I've always found it the most helpful to write things over and over again repetitively. I do this until the answer becomes second nature and I no longer have to pause very long to think of it.
Vocabulary isn't a real problem when I have enough time to think. Conjugation has proven most difficult, so I've been working on it the most. I've improved a great deal during tutoring, but the actual class is a different story.
Tutor: "That! Why can't you do that in class?"
Me: "I don't know..."
Can you get the oral half done in class test setting and the written half scheduled seperately in a room to yourself? Can you get extra credit assignments that you can do and turn in to tutor to grade?
Work AROUND the anxiety, not forcibly against it.... Please. Learn how to unblock by using what you are unblocked about to release the block.... Does that make sense???
I am taking online courses, some, to learn to code websites, and practicing on my own. They are not for credit, but I am USING the knowledge. Can you take the oral part, if that is what is blocking you, in a conversational test with a student testing you and instructor listening in but not present? Via a recording perhaps submitted and a proctor recording the oral testing?
Some ideas to explore! HTH!
Now, I'm no longer in school so I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but that anxiety has always felt similar to the anxiety I experience from stage fright. I've always loved to sing, but stage fright has always been a huge issue for me. When it would affect me like that, my vocal chords would literally constrict and I would get in that same panic loop. Over the years, I've learned that my meditation practice has helped me more than anything. When I start to feel the anxiety creep in, I just bring my focus to my breath. Sometimes I have to center myself multiple times during a song. Maybe this is something you can work on with your meditation practice.
:wave:
Review the material to be tested, the night before the test, before you go to bed. Review it again first thing in the morning. This helps fix it in your memory. Perhaps with the additional confidence review like this can bring, you can overcome anxiety and blocks. You can also discuss this with your doctor. I think there's a medication that helps overcome this problem.