You're deep into the ASWB exam when it hits you.
That stormy, sinking feeling in your stomach. The tightness in your chest. The thought that loops through your mind: I'm failing this. I'm not sure about these answers. I should know this material. What's wrong with me?
You've studied for months. You've done practice tests. You felt ready this morning. But now, sitting in this testing center with 100 questions still ahead of you, you're convinced you're bombing it.
Here's what you need to know right now, before we go any further: The feeling that you're failing does not mean you're actually failing.
This feeling is so common, so predictable, and so often wrong that we need to talk about it before you sit for your exam. Because the worst thing you can do when this feeling hits is let it derail the rest of your test. The best thing you can do is recognize it, manage it, and keep going.
Let's start with why this happens, because understanding the reason helps you not spiral when the feeling hits.
The exam includes pretest questions you're not supposed to know how to answer. Remember that 20 of the 170 questions on your exam are being pretested for future exams. They don't count toward your score. Some of these pretest questions are being tested specifically because they're difficult or ambiguous or need refinement. You might encounter several of these in a row, and they'll feel impossible because they are harder than the scored questions. But you have no way of knowing which questions are pretest questions, so when you hit a string of difficult items, your brain assumes you're failing when you might just be encountering questions that aren't even being counted.
You remember the questions you struggled with, not the ones you answered easily. This is how memory works under stress. The questions where you confidently selected an answer and moved on? Those don't create a strong memory trace. The questions where you agonized between two answers, flagged it, came back to it, and finally selected something while feeling uncertain? Those stick in your mind. So your subjective experience is that the test is full of impossible questions, when actually you might be getting most questions right and only struggling with a smaller percentage.
The exam tests you at the edge of your knowledge. A good licensing exam shouldn't be too easy or too hard—it should identify who has entry-level competence and who doesn't. That means the questions are calibrated to challenge you. They're designed to make you think, to apply knowledge rather than just recall it, to choose between multiple plausible answers. This is working exactly as intended, but it doesn't feel good. It feels like you don't know enough, when actually you're just being tested appropriately.
Your anxiety amplifies uncertainty. When you're nervous (and most people are nervous during high-stakes exams), your brain interprets ambiguity as danger. A question where you're 70% sure of the answer feels like failure because you wanted to be 100% sure. Under normal circumstances, 70% confidence might feel perfectly fine. During the exam, it feels like proof you're unprepared.
We've heard from hundreds of students who were convinced they failed, absolutely certain they didn't pass, only to receive passing scores days later. The correlation between how you feel during the exam and how you actually perform is surprisingly weak.
You can't think your way out of panic using just your thoughts. You need to start with your body, because your physical state directly affects your mental state.
Stop and breathe. Not because breathing magically solves everything, but because when you're anxious, you're probably breathing shallowly from your chest, which signals to your nervous system that something is wrong. This creates a feedback loop—shallow breathing increases anxiety, which causes more shallow breathing.
Here's what to do right now, while sitting at your testing station: Breathe in slowly through your nose for a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out slowly through your mouth for a count of six. The exhale being longer than the inhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body's calming system. Do this three times. It takes 30 seconds. Your testing clock is still running, but 30 seconds of oxygen to your brain is worth it.
Release the physical tension. Anxiety creates muscle tension, especially in your shoulders, jaw, and hands. You might not even notice you're clenching. Take a moment to deliberately relax your shoulders—drop them away from your ears. Unclench your jaw. Release your hands. Shake them out if you need to. This physical release sends signals to your brain that the threat level has decreased.
Use your break strategically. You have a scheduled 10-minute break after the first 85 questions. If you're feeling overwhelmed before that break, you can also raise your hand and take an unscheduled break—the clock will keep running, but sometimes you need to step away. Get up. Walk to the bathroom. Splash cold water on your face. Move your body. Look out a window if there is one. Get away from the screen and the questions for a few minutes. Your brain needs the reset more than it needs those extra few minutes of testing time.
Ground yourself in the physical present. This is a technique from anxiety management: notice five things you can see (the desk, the monitor, your hands, the wall, the door), four things you can physically feel (your feet on the floor, the chair supporting you, the temperature of the air, your clothing), three things you can hear (the ventilation system, other people typing, the sound of your own breath). This interrupts the spiral of "I'm failing" thoughts by bringing your attention back to the concrete moment. You're here. You're safe. This is just a test.
Once you've addressed the physical panic response, you can work with your thoughts.
Remind yourself: This feeling is data, not truth. You feel like you're failing. That's real—your feeling is real. But feelings aren't facts. Your emotional response to the test does not accurately predict your score. This is pattern you can observe: "I'm noticing I feel like I'm failing. That's an interesting feeling. I wonder if it's accurate." You're creating space between the feeling and your reaction to it.
You only need to pass, not ace it. You don't get extra points for passing by a wide margin. A passing score by one point and a passing score by fifty points result in the same outcome—you're licensed. Right now, you don't need to answer every question correctly. You don't need to feel confident about every answer. You just need to get enough questions right to reach the passing threshold. That's it. Lower the stakes in your mind from "I must ace this" to "I need to get enough right."
Focus on the question in front of you, not the 170-question mountain. When panic sets in, students often start thinking about the whole exam at once. "I've gotten so many wrong already, and there are still 100 questions left, and I'm running out of time, and I don't remember anything..." This is overwhelming because it's too big. You can't answer 170 questions at once. You can only answer one question at a time. Narrow your focus to just this one question on your screen right now. What is this specific question asking? What do I know that's relevant? What's the best answer I can give right now? Then move to the next one.
Give yourself permission to guess strategically. You will encounter questions where you genuinely don't know the answer. That's normal. That's expected. The exam is calibrated so that even people who pass don't know everything. When you hit a question where you're stuck, use your test-taking strategies—eliminate obviously wrong answers, make an educated guess from what remains, flag it if you want to come back to it, and keep moving. Spending five minutes agonizing over one question doesn't help—it just eats time and increases anxiety. Make your best guess and move forward.
Pause here. If you're reading this before your exam, imagine yourself in that testing room, feeling overwhelmed. What physical strategy would you try first? What mental reframe would help you most? Think about this now, so these tools feel familiar when you need them.
There will probably be a question—maybe several—that you just can't figure out. You read it multiple times. The scenario makes no sense. All the answer choices seem equally plausible or equally wrong. You spend three minutes on it, flag it, come back to it later, and still can't decide. Finally, you pick something and submit it with a sick feeling in your stomach.
That question feels enormous in the moment. It feels like proof you're failing.
Here's the reality: It's one question. Even if you get it wrong (and you might not—your guess might be correct), it's one question out of 150 scored questions. One question is 0.67% of your score. You could miss that question and twenty others like it and still pass comfortably.
But here's what happens: students let that one terrible question contaminate their experience of the next ten questions. They're still thinking about question 63 while they're trying to answer question 73. They're distracted, anxious, not fully present. And that's how one difficult question starts affecting your performance on questions you would have gotten right if you'd been focused.
When you encounter the question that breaks you, acknowledge it and move on. "Okay, that was a terrible question. I did my best. Moving on." Literally say this to yourself if it helps. You're giving yourself permission to let go of what's behind you and refocus on what's ahead. You can't change your answer to question 63. You can still answer question 73 correctly if you're present for it.
Students tell us this one constantly: "The practice tests felt manageable. This test feels impossible. Something must be wrong."
Here's what's actually happening. During practice tests, you probably weren't experiencing the same anxiety level. You were in a comfortable environment, you could pause if needed, the stakes were lower. On test day, everything feels magnified. The same level of difficulty that felt challenging-but-okay during practice now feels overwhelming because your nervous system is activated.
Also, during practice tests, you were learning. Even when you got questions wrong, you reviewed the explanations, understood your mistakes, and integrated that learning. During the actual exam, you don't get that feedback loop. You answer a question, you move on, and you have no idea if you got it right. That uncertainty is uncomfortable, and your brain tends to assume the worst.
The test itself hasn't changed—your emotional context has. The questions on the actual exam aren't dramatically different from good practice questions. But you're experiencing them through a lens of high anxiety, high stakes, and no feedback. Of course it feels harder.
This is why you practiced with full-length exams under timed conditions. Not to memorize questions, but to build your tolerance for sustained focus and decision-making under pressure. You've done this before. You finished practice exams even when they were hard. You can do it again now.
There will be a moment—maybe around question 80, maybe around question 140—where you think about giving up. Not officially quitting, but mentally checking out. Going through the motions. Clicking answers without really trying because you're convinced it doesn't matter anyway.
This is the moment that determines whether you pass.
Students who keep engaging with each question, who keep trying to reason through answers even when they feel defeated, often pass. Students who mentally give up partway through often don't. Your effort in the second half of the exam matters just as much as your effort in the first half.
Here's what helps: Break the remaining questions into smaller chunks. Don't think about the 70 questions you have left. Think about the next 10. Can you stay focused for 10 questions? Yes. Probably yes. When you finish those 10, celebrate that small win internally. Then commit to the next 10. You're not trying to finish the whole marathon right now—you're just running to the next mile marker.
Treat the second section like a new test. When you complete the first 85 questions and take your break (or skip your break—your choice), you're starting fresh. The second section is a new test. Whatever happened in the first section is done. You can't change it. What you can do is show up fully for the next 85 questions. You have two hours for this section. That's a lot of time. You can do this.
Give yourself small motivations to keep going. "I'll stay focused until I get to question 100, then I'll take 30 seconds to stretch." "I'll concentrate fully on the next flagged question I come back to." "I'll treat these last 20 questions like I'm starting fresh." Whatever gets you through.
You'll click through the final survey questions. You'll see your score on the screen—pass or fail. If you pass, you'll feel overwhelming relief (and possibly not believe it at first). If you fail, you'll feel crushing disappointment.
But here's what we want you to know before you get there: Most students who feel like they failed actually pass. We've seen this pattern over and over. Students walk out of the testing center certain they failed, absolutely convinced, telling their family and friends "I don't think I passed." Then they get their score report and they passed, sometimes by a comfortable margin.
The feeling of failing is such an unreliable predictor that you should treat it as irrelevant. Whether you feel good or feel terrible walking out of that testing center tells you almost nothing about your actual performance.
If you do fail—and some students do, that's the reality of a licensing exam—you can retake it. It's disappointing, but it's not the end of your career. You'll get diagnostic information about which content areas were weak. You'll adjust your studying. You'll try again. Many successful social workers didn't pass on their first attempt.
But right now, before you even take the exam, prepare yourself mentally for the possibility that you'll feel terrible during it and still pass. Expect the feeling of failure to show up. When it does, you'll recognize it: "Oh, there's that feeling everyone warned me about. This doesn't mean I'm actually failing."
The time to prepare for test-day panic is before test day. You can't develop coping strategies in the moment when you're already in crisis mode. You need to practice them beforehand.
When you take practice tests, deliberately notice how you respond to difficult questions. Do you catastrophize? Do you start rushing? Do you get stuck? Practice catching yourself in those moments and implementing a strategy—take three deep breaths, refocus on just this question, eliminate answers and make your best guess, flag it and move on. Build these skills now so they're automatic during the real exam.
Take at least one full-length practice test in a setting that simulates test-day conditions as much as possible. Set a timer. Sit in an uncomfortable chair. Eliminate distractions. Don't pause for breaks unless you're taking your scheduled 10-minute break. See how you handle sustained focus and decision-making for four hours. Notice when your attention starts to waver, when anxiety creeps in, when you want to give up. These are valuable data points. You're learning about your own patterns so you can plan for them.
Practice self-compassion during your practice tests. When you miss a question, when you struggle, when you feel frustrated—notice how you talk to yourself. Are you harsh? Critical? Do you say things to yourself you'd never say to a friend? Start practicing a different internal voice now: "That was a hard question. I did my best. Moving on." This isn't toxic positivity—it's functional self-talk that keeps you regulated and focused.
In SWTP's practice tests, we've designed the experience to mirror what you'll face on test day—not just in content, but in how it feels. You'll encounter questions where you're uncertain. You'll need to manage your time. You'll practice making decisions even when you're not completely confident. The detailed explanations help you understand not just what you got wrong, but why you might have selected that wrong answer. This is practice for both your knowledge and your test-taking resilience.
Here's something most people don't tell you: You don't need to feel confident to pass. You don't need to feel good during the exam to pass. You don't need to know the answer to every question to pass. You just need to answer enough questions correctly. That's the only criterion.
The students who pass aren't the ones who felt great during the exam. They're the ones who kept going when they felt terrible. They're the ones who managed their anxiety well enough to stay focused. They're the ones who answered each question to the best of their ability, even when they weren't sure, even when they were convinced they were failing.
You've studied. You've prepared. You've learned this material. On test day, your job isn't to feel confident. Your job is to show up, manage your nervous system, read each question carefully, select the best answer you can, and keep going until you're done.
The feeling of failing might show up. When it does, you'll recognize it for what it is—an uncomfortable feeling that doesn't predict your outcome. You'll use your physical strategies to regulate your body. You'll use your mental strategies to refocus your mind. You'll answer the next question. And the next one. And the one after that.
And when you walk out of that testing center, regardless of how you feel, you'll have done what you came to do. You finished. You gave it your full effort. That matters more than how confident you felt while doing it.
Start a full-length simulation this weekend. Practice taking a complete exam under realistic conditions. Notice how you respond to difficulty and uncertainty. Build your resilience and your coping strategies now, before you're in the actual testing center. The experience of working through a full exam—including the hard parts, the confusing parts, the parts where you want to give up—is what prepares you for test day.
You've got this. Not because it will feel easy, but because you know how to keep going even when it feels hard.
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