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You'll get a lot of advice to try different techniques, and I would look at everything, pick a few that click for you, try them, see if they work, and try more things until something works. I'll give you three suggestions. My first suggestion is to think, "I might fail at this, but I'll be better off if I fail at it today than tomorrow, and I'll be better off if I fail this morning than this afternoon." A failure right now is just a start. You will have time to fix it. My second suggestion is to remind yourself that the fear is excessive and unhelpful. Don't think, "I deserve to feel this way, because I'm screwing up, and I should feel this way until I get my act together." There's only one reason to value fear: if it pushes you to take the right actions to address your fear. If it doesn't work that way, then the dose is too high to be effective, and you can let go of it without guilt. Related to this, my third suggestion is to work on the overall level of stress and anxiety in your life. Think about the worst case and remind yourself that you'll cope. If you fail the lab, you'll survive. Lots of successful people failed a lab in school. Whatever else is hard in your life, remind yourself that it's not a disaster: for example, if you don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend and this causes you distress, remind yourself that lots of people your age are hopeless at romance and are happily married ten years later. If you're worried about disappointing your parents, remind yourself that many happy people disappointed their parents when they were young. Use these thoughts to reduce the overall level of stress in your life. Most tips for dealing with fear and procrastination boil down to finding helpful ways of thinking about a situation and repeating them until they become habit. A systematic way to approach this is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, CBT. It's ideal if you can do this with a professional therapist, but unlike most forms of therapy, if you can't afford a professional to coach you, you can still practice it on your own. |