Introduction: Test anxiety significantly affects early adolescents' academic performance and emotional well-being. Narrative therapy offers a strengths-based, collaborative approach to externalizing problems and co-constructing alternative narratives.


Purpose: This study aimed to help early adolescents develop coping strategies for test anxiety by using narrative therapy techniques to externalize anxiety, identify personal strengths, and construct a collective story emphasizing resilience and support.


Method: Participants were five early adolescents, including two girls and three boys, who were fifth- and sixth-grade students aged 12-13. They were referred by their private course teachers due to high levels of test anxiety and were recruited on a voluntary basis. They attended four 60-minute group sessions. Session 1 focused on building rapport and exploring experiences of anxiety; Session 2 involved externalizing anxiety through creative exercises (e.g., drawing and naming the "anxiety character"); Session 3 emphasized identifying personal strengths and developing coping strategies through shared experiences; Session 4 involved writing a collective story integrating coping strategies and strengths discovered throughout the sessions.


Results: Participants externalized anxiety by creating distinct characters (e.g., "The Cold Guest," "The Whispering Voice") and expressed physical and cognitive symptoms in detail. They identified personal strengths such as courage, emotional resilience, self-motivation, and peer support, linking these to concrete coping strategies (e.g., deep breathing, positive self-talk, mutual encouragement). The collective story, jointly titled 'The Emotion Balloon' by the participants, symbolized their shared experiences and the coping strategies they developed, serving as an alternative narrative for reframing their experiences with test anxiety.


Conclusions: The intervention enhanced participants' awareness of test anxiety, promoted emotional regulation, and empowered them to view anxiety as a temporary and manageable experience. Co-constructing narratives provided a creative and collaborative framework for participants to integrate coping strategies into meaningful personal stories, aligning with narrative therapy approach in clinical psychology.