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Phobia- Help please

NAS71657

I am a student and desperately struggling with writing phobia. It is very specific and only concerns lengthy pieces of work not blog posts. My approach is fine but I become very afraid, my thinking becomes muddled and I cannot decide how to start, and doubt myself when I do. I even struggle in deciding whether to write on paper or with a pencil rather than a pen and how to set out my notes. I have already withdrawn from my studies and have re-registered to start this September. I am afraid that i will have to withdraw for good. I cannot afford a psychologist again. The last one said that I had performance anxiety but couldn't help me. I am feeling very, very low and would be very grateful for any suggestions.

  • I work in a university and we offer writing support to all students as well as general study skills so it might be worth asking your university if they have something similar?

    The University might also have specialist study development support workers as well that you could be referred to through the disability/wellbeing team?

  • in reply to Meeples

    Apologies for the delay in replying. Yes, I have accommodations from the university but they do not fully appreciate my difficulties. I have found a few other university websites that offer suggestions for writing problems and I am trying to work through these.

  • On a practical note, I start in an A4 notebook. I write down all the things that I want to cover randomly on the page, as they occur to me. Writing one thing down often suggests more things. Then I draw lines connecting the points so they become ordered. I then set down an overall scheme such as introduction, various sections in the main body and finally a conclusion/discussion. Then I fit all the points I wish to make into the scheme in the order I wish to make them. With this plan in place I then type the text on a computer, where it is easier to make corrections. This method gives you a graded immersion into the work required, it prevents the paralysis of looking at a blank piece of paper or blank screen and feeling overwhelmed at the size of the task.

  • When you say its only for longer pieces of work, do you mean only academic work/essays? You also mention paper and pencil/pen? Does this happen when you work on computer too?

    Without knowing all the details I'm not sure these suggestions would be helpful, but you could try considering essays in terms of answering several short questions. By which I mean you take your essay question and you work out the questions that you need to address within that, then you answer each of those before finessing the pieces into a larger piece. If you spaced it over days it might only feel like you were writing shorter pieces and perhaps wouldn't trigger the anxiety.

    If its the actual physical act of writing that's causing you problems, then you could try using a sound recorder (phone app, dictaphone, etc) to speak your notes into. Alternatively, perhaps using something more graphical like spider diagrams or bullet pointed lists could help. You could even, though this might involve some financial outlay, use dictation software and be able to create your essays by speaking them into a computer rather than manually writing them. I know authors who write books like this, though I believe you need to very carefully format and proof the work afterwards as no dictation software is perfect.

    Also, have you spoken to your college/university/course provider about this? You could find that they might be able to suggest accommodations that could help you return to study.