To reduce and eventually overcome math anxiety, it is recommended that people, college-age students, and even instructors, learn:

• first to recognize when panic starts,

• then identify the static as precisely as possible
• Finally, to clear it up without ceasing to work on the mathematical problem.

How can they do all this at once?

The essence of math-anxiety therapy is self- monitoring.

We have learners practice while doing homework and even while in a class by using the divided-page exercise. They are taught to draw a line down the center of the page they are working on. On one side they record their feelings and thoughts, however random and seemingly disconnected they are. On the other side, they keep their notes, calculations, and problem-solving steps. Exclusive feelings and thoughts are not easy to capture, especially the first time students try. But, in time, they learn to observe the messages they give themselves under stress. This is the way they discover the obstacles they are creating when they work at math.

For example, if a person writes on the left side of the page, “This is just the kind of problem I can never solve,” we teach him or her, instead of quitting, to ask, “What is making this problem difficult for me, and what can I do to make it easier for myself?”