Hi ,

I am 28 years old and have faced 'test anxiety' throughout my life . I'd enrolled , about 8 years back for an engineering degree in Computer Science , passed the first three years of the course but could not continue it as my anxiety with tests got better of me . I work in IT and my colleagues consider me to be an excellent programmer but my career growth has been severely dwarfed because of the lack of the degree . So , I started with the tests again ( which is in another 25 days ) and bam its deja vu . I myself do not feel anxious its only that I do not get any sleep whatsoever the moment I come to realize I have to write a test . I had previously gone 3- 4 months with daily sleep of like 2 hours and this starts the moment the schedule of the tests are announced . In the end its so tormenting I just quit and do not write the tests at all . I am supposed to complete the course by 2014 . I have been preparing for the exams and for the past two weeks had on an average 2-3 hours of sleep . This makes concentration hard and I feel very irritated and frustrated .
I'd tried sleeping pills ( which makes studying very difficult for me ) , been prescribed escitalopram which did not work at all . On my own and during my college days i tried everything in between Marijuana to exercise and from mindfulness to banging my head against the wall but nothing seems to work .
This is killing me and I feel defeated . Whats wrong with me ?