Excessive anxiety among students may lead to both psychological and physical symptoms, including significant emotional fluctuations, lack of concentration in memory, withdrawn personality, social difficulties, decreased sleep quality, decreased appetite, wild thoughts, numbness in limbs, restlessness in sitting and standing, etc.

To study the impact of optimizing the teaching system of geotechnical engineering majors in vocational colleges on students’ psychological anxiety from the perspective of educational psychology, an experiment was conducted on 50 students majoring in geotechnical engineering with psychological anxiety. The students were randomly divided into two groups, with 25 in the control group and 25 in the experimental group. The control group students received routine psychological counseling treatment, while the experimental group students received education system optimization treatment on this basis, with a treatment period of 3 months. Before and after treatment, the Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) was used for testing.

There was no significant difference in the SAS scores before treatment between the control group and the experimental group, indicating homogeneity between the two groups of students. After treatment, the SAS scores of the control group students decreased by 11 points, while the SAS scores of the experimental group students decreased by 20 points, significantly higher than the control group.

The anxiety relief effect of students with psychological anxiety varies under different treatment methods, while the effect of conventional treatment is relatively average. From the perspective of educational psychology, optimizing the teaching system of geotechnical engineering in vocational colleges can further reduce the psychological anxiety of students in this major.