After finishing up your online college application, you might be uncertain about the life you will embark on in the coming semester. College is a challenging time. It involves a huge life transition, getting used to more formidable academic responsibilities and more responsibility, making and dealing with new social groups, and thinking about the future. Every student deals with these challenges differently, and it is common for some to develop problems with anxiety.
We often think of anxiety as a common feeling in our lives that comes and goes without explanation and doesn’t require a lot of extra thought beyond that. For many, though, anxiety is part of a mental health issue that can seriously disrupt their lives.
Generalized anxiety disorder is the overarching term for anxiety about multiple things that becomes too much to control and is bigger than necessary. Generalized anxiety disorder is a mental illness that is part of, or can lead to, other afflictions like panic disorder, major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder or even an eating disorder.
Larger mental health problems like these don’t happen to everyone, and every mental disorder can be treated. Sometimes anxiety can develop within young adults and be addressed before they start college. But Although, in many instances, the stress of entering or dealing with college can create or uncover a disorder like anxiety.
In any case, anxiety is one of the top challenges of mental health in college students, so finding mental health tips for college students on how to deal with anxiety and other problems is important to know should they become an issue. Read on to get some answers. First, let’s step back and try to find the roots of the problem.
What are the causes of anxiety in college students?
Most parents and guardians sending a nervous child off to college will give a version of the same speech they use before their kids’ first sleepover or trip to camp, and it always includes, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Anxiety essentially flips that script--anxious people often are afraid of the unknown. Not knowing what will happen can make the human mind fill in the gaps. Sometimes they’re manifested as hopes and dreams, and sometimes they end up as things to fear. College frequently causes overwhelming anxiety because it’s so new and different from any life experience before it, and students’ minds are overloaded.
Counseling psychologist Will Meek identifies five primary types of anxiety college students most often feel on Very Well Mind. They cover the whole timeline from the months before college starts and arriving on a college campus to the thick of exams:
- Anticipatory anxiety
- Separation anxiety
- Social anxiety
- Test anxiety
- Anxiety over peer pressure
Meek says, “College is a new and exciting milestone, so it's common to have anticipatory anxiety in the weeks before heading off to campus. But anticipatory anxiety can be much more serious … For some, it can be crippling, preventing you from preparing for school appropriately or even making you consider not going to school at all.”
Separation anxiety happens in many situations, and in the case of a college student, it could also be called homesickness. However, that term can be harmful because we think of it as something minor that a person should deal with until it passes. Being homesick after a night or a week away from home is one thing, but if a college student sees many years away in front of them, it can lead to overwhelming anxiety.
In an article for the JED Foundation, licensed clinical social worker Hilary Silver said that during college, “Students experience many firsts, including new lifestyle, friends, roommates, exposure to new cultures and alternate ways of thinking.”
Silver went on to say, “When students head off to college, the familiar people are no longer there to reinforce the identity these students have created for themselves.” As a result, college students may find themselves “disoriented and feel a loss of their sense of self.”
Separation anxiety can contribute to social anxiety disorder. Entering a new routine without the comfort of relationships that may have started in preschool is daunting. It’s possible that some students may have been in friendships so long they’ve forgotten how they made friends in the first place.
The problem is that making friends is an organic process--it just happens naturally for young children as they spend time together, and their minds aren’t developed enough to be self-conscious. At the ages of 18 to 22, though, college students tend to be much more aware and critical of themselves.
Even if they have no reason to be anxious and have never had trouble making friends before, students with social anxiety disorder can convince themselves that interactions with their peers won’t go well. They may present themselves awkwardly or even shy away from social contact altogether. Self-degradations like “I’m a loser” or “No one likes me” are never true, but an anxious mind can get stuck on those phrases, and it’s hard to stop those loops.
Test anxiety pretty much speaks for itself. Tests aren’t new to any college student, but the tests they take are still different from what they’re accustomed to. They’re more challenging and demanding, but that’s not really what spikes the anxious feelings. It’s everything that surrounds those tests.
College students may convince themselves they “can’t” take tests. Indeed, some minds are not suited to certain kinds of testing, but most anxious test-takers don’t have proof of a learning disorder or a diagnosed pattern of alternative thinking. They are just fixated on the idea that a test will not go well no matter what they do. That can lead to poor study habits or simply being too scared to study at all, and then their failure at exams turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
College students will hear rumors from others about how difficult a certain professor’s exams are. No teacher has ever written an exam hoping every student would fail it--unless they had a very specific lesson to teach about failure itself. But in the minds of emotional students, the challenges of a test can take on a life all their own.
Then there are the stakes. College students may worry unnecessarily about losing scholarships or flunking classes because of one test. If there’s ever a chance that one test is that critical, it’s only because of a long period of struggle that one test can’t fix. In those instances, a professor or advisor will likely spot the problem and address it with the student long before it reaches that point.
You can’t tell an anxious college student that, though, because their fears aren’t based on reality. Their anticipation and worry build up uncontrollably, like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Knowing they’re having trouble in a course and their financial aid depends on keeping their GPA up leads quickly to imagining a failed-test disaster.
Lastly, anxiety over peer pressure usually starts sooner than college for young adults. But, for many people, it ramps up when they are out of their family home and living independently for the first time. Simply put, no professor or resident assistant can watch every student all the time. College kids know this and get excited by the idea of seeing what they can get away with.
Underage drinking, illegal drug use, sexual contact, and even things like vandalism or petty theft are seen as normal parts of college life. College students often do these things specifically because they’re against the rules. The lie behind all of this is as old as college itself: “Everybody does it.” That’s what instigators believe, and it’s what they say or imply to get others to join them.
Anxious college students will see this activity, or get invited to join in, and feel an internal struggle. They know they don’t want to do anything illegal or uncomfortable, but they’re afraid of being an outcast if they don’t follow the crowd. Once that struggle starts, it rarely ends well. Students may give in to pressure and do things they don’t want to, or they may stay away from those who pressure them. While the latter is typically the right decision, it can make anxious students feel lonely and left out. Other students may make fun of those who don’t bow to peer pressure and worsen the situation out of their own personal anxieties.
