Most people who experience difficulty studying feel as though they have a unique or unusual problem.  The problem is actually very commonplace - both with young people, particularly at University or college, and with older people, who return to study in later life, only to discover to their horror that they seem to have forgotten how.

By the time the problem has become desperate enough to lead a person to seek help, the fight/flight response is usually a serious complicating factor. The sight of the lecture room, the textbooks, or the unfinished assignment - or even the thought of these - is enough to make the person begin to feel tense or worried.

Of course, the flight/flight response actually reduces the student's ability to think clearly and calmly, which further reduces the ability to study and so on . . . . .

Once stress levels are once more coming under control (usually the work of a few sessions only) it is usually a comparatively easy matter to teach methods of study which present the information to the mind in a way which is comparatively easily absorbed.  By learning new and more effective study methods, the student is able to address the difficulty that was at the beginning of the problem. 

This is just as true for older as for younger students - the ways the mind learns most efficiently changes with age, and the study methods which are appropriate to a teenager are very different from those which will be most useful to those in their thirties or beyond.  Age is no barrier, and the saying about old dogs and new tricks is only true if you decide it is!

As I write this, I am reminded of a client from some years ago.  Her husband and their sons all had University degrees, and professional careers.  She was in her late forties, and had left school at fifteen with no qualifications.  Trying to do a course at college to gain access to University, she found to her horror that she couldn't cope with the work - and yet she was certainly an intelligent woman. 

Having learned to control her own stress, she undertook a complete restructuring of her study routines.  Years later, she now has a bachelor's degree.