Academic Shame, Mathematics Avoidance and Behavioural Withdrawal

Participant ID: A.M.

Student experiencing mathematics-related academic avoidance

The participant struggled with intense avoidance and emotional stress around mathematics.

Attempting maths homework or problem solving produced strong discomfort in both mind and body.

Opening the school Canvas portal and looking at grades triggered shame, disappointment and self-criticism.

The participant became emotionally attached to academic identity, where struggling with maths affected the way he viewed himself as a person.

Instead of engaging directly with work, the participant spent hours searching for alternative ways to feel productive, including watching motivational videos, researching study methods or focusing on easier foundation work.

How does academic shame influence behavioural withdrawal during mathematics engagement?

The BTB framework was implemented within an early-stage online pilot cohort involving approximately 6-8 participants.

Participants engaged with structured implementation sessions, behavioural reflection, behavioural tracking, community discussions and repeated application of the BTB framework.

This report documents one participant from that broader pilot implementation. Additional anonymised case reports are published separately in the Evidence Repository.

The early program focus was not forcing productivity, but helping the participant understand the relationship between internal discomfort, avoidance patterns, emotional attachment and behavioural withdrawal.

The source document also records an implementation observation: the participant realised he did not need to rebuild his entire foundation from scratch and instead focused on patching gaps necessary for current material.

• Over approximately three weeks, the participant reported stress around studying and mathematics reducing from approximately 7-8/10 to around 3/10.
• Procrastination patterns and mindset toward studying began improving.
• The participant started studying consistently without relying heavily on motivation.
• The participant stopped avoiding difficult maths problems and started facing them directly.
• Beyond academics, the participant began managing personal life more effectively, with improved structure and stability described in the source material.

Academic shame appeared to reinforce withdrawal before mathematics engagement. The behavioural shift involved reducing identity-level threat and engaging with the current task rather than escaping into preparation substitutes.

No direct participant quotation was available in the source material for this report.

Participant-reported stress around mathematics reduced from approximately 7-8/10 to around 3/10 over approximately three weeks.

The participant began directly facing difficult maths problems and studying more consistently.

This case contributes an observation about shame-linked academic avoidance.

The case suggests that emotional attachment to academic identity may be an important behavioural signal in mathematics avoidance.

This report presents one anonymised participant from a broader BTB pilot cohort.

The observations described relate specifically to this participant and are presented to document implementation in detail.

The report is intended to support behavioural observation, implementation documentation and hypothesis generation during framework development.

It is not intended to represent the experiences of the entire pilot cohort.

• How does academic shame influence avoidance before mathematics engagement?
• Can distinguishing current learning gaps from identity threat reduce withdrawal?
• What markers indicate that preparation behaviour has become avoidance?

This report documents observations collected during early pilot implementation of the BTB framework.

Participant reflections represent first-person experiences where available and should not be interpreted as clinical evidence or proof of effectiveness.

BTB remains an emerging behavioural framework undergoing evidence collection and future independent evaluation.

This case report is one of a series of observational reports documenting participants from the BTB pilot implementation.

The Evidence Repository will continue to expand as additional anonymised participant reports, behavioural observations and pilot findings become available.

The long-term objective is to build a transparent evidence base that supports future independent evaluation of the BTB framework.