Even though all of us suffer from math anxiety to some degree – just as anyone feels at least a little nervous when speaking to an audience – for some of us, it is a serious problem, a burden that interferes with our lives, preventing us from achieving our goals.

The first step, and the one without which no further progress is possible, is to recognize that math anxiety is an emotional response. (In fact, severe math anxiety is a learned emotional response.) As with any strong emotional reaction, there are constructive and not constructive ways to manage math anxiety. Not constructive (and even damaging) ways include rationalization, suppression, and denial.

By “suppression” means having awareness of the anxiety – but trying very, very hard not to feel it. I have found that this is very commonly attempted by students, and it is usually accompanied by some pretty severe self-criticism. Students feel that they shouldn’t feel this anxiety, that it’s a weakness that they should overcome, by brute force if necessary. When this effort doesn’t succeed (as invariably it doesn’t) the self-criticism becomes ever harsher, leading to a deep sense of frustration and often a severe loss of self-esteem – particularly if the stakes for a student are high, as when his or her career or personal goals are riding on a successful outcome in a math class, or when parental disapproval is a factor. Consequently, suppression of math anxiety is not only not constructive, but can actually be damaging.

Finally, there is denial. People using this approach probably aren’t likely to see this essay, much less read it, for they carefully construct their lives so as to avoid all mathematics as much as possible. They choose college majors, and later careers, that don’t require any math and let the bank or their spouse balance the checkbook. This approach has the advantage that feelings of frustration and anxiety about math are mostly avoided. However, their lives are drastically constrained, for in our society fewer than 25% of all careers are, so to speak, “math-free,” and thus their choices of personal and professional goals are severely limited. (Most of these math-free jobs, incidentally, are low-status and low-pay.) People in denial about mathematics miss out on something else too, for the student of mathematics learns to see aspects of the structure and beauty of our world that can be seen in no other way, and to which the “innumerate” necessarily remain forever blind. It would be a lot like never hearing music, or never seeing colors. (I understand that some people have these disabilities – but they didn’t choose to have them.)