hi! i'm currently a freshman in college. i have anxiety surrounding cheating/academic dishonesty, and it's gotten to a point where i'm not sure how to move forward. for some backstory, i cheated once in elementary school on a social studies test, and the teacher caught me. however, after one talk about it, she never mentioned it again. when i was in high school, very early on in my freshman year, i impulsively cheated on a math test (it happened while we were passing up the tests and i panicked), and the teacher caught me. however, there were no further repurcussions, again, (my teacher had noticed some things with me --&gt; severely withdrawn in class, anxiety attacks, etc etc and noted it as exenuating circumstances?? that's what the dean at my hs said) and it did not affect my college admissions at all.

however, now i am terrified of the possibility that i will impulsively cheat in college, which would be extremely damaging, as i would lose my scholarship and my place in the honors college in my university, which my mother (single income w/ disabled father) cannot afford otherwise, even though incidents like this have never happened after those two times. it's gotten to the point where i've taken measures such as training myself to drop my writing utensil and putting my palm over it when a test ends, sitting in the front so the ta/teacher can see me, reading cheating horror stories etc etc, but i aam still so terrified of relapsing and ruining my future that it makes me physically ill and unable to sleep. i'm not sure how to get past this; my anxiety tends to manifest in spiraling over generally minute things and catastrophizing, but this is something that is starting to affect my physical health. any advice would be appreciated!