Anyone else with comprehensive/prelim/qual exam anxiety?

So I've said it.
Yes, it's all supposed to be a casual formality. Something you do in your 3rd year as a PhD student, get over with, so that you can move on to your dissertation research.
Yeah right.
Again, here's another stage of your doctoral program where you are completely on your own, with seldom any specific guidelines, and with almost no colleague to share experiences with.
In the end, it all comes down to managing your own fears, anxieties, and questioning in isolation.
While some university departments seem to have a clear rationale behind these examinations, such as forcing PhD students to get a head start on their research topic by providing a full literature review for their dissertation topic, many departments make you do something that is -- to put it mildly -- this mixture between an end of coursework test and a literature review of unrelated topics. The result: anxiety-ridden students who question why they got involved in a doctoral program in the first place.
During a web search for some supportive material about comprehensive exams, I stumbled across this article in Degree in Sight Volume 2, number 2 on the website of the GradPsych magazine called: Preparing for your comprehensive exams.
Here is an excerpt:

Like many graduate students, Meghan Duff faced her comprehensive exam—a hurdle doctoral students must jump before embarking on their dissertation projects—with trepidation. As a third-year applied psychology student at Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire, Duff needed to pass a two-part exam consisting of an essay question and an oral presentation of a clinical case.

To quell her anxiety, Duff picked up some study habits that may have puzzled her pets.

"I walked around my kitchen and kept on talking about this case," she says. "No one was there, but I talked and talked and talked until I was nearly hoarse."

The essay question, which students get a week to write, worried Duff a little less.

"At Antioch, the idea is that as long as you have kept up with your class reading, you can pass the exam without much extra studying," she notes. "But you will have to review your notes and formulate your ideas."

However, no two universities have exactly identical comprehensive exams, says Dolores Albarracin, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Florida. Still, one thing most do have in common is the nightmares they can provoke in graduate students.

For example, Albarracin's students take a seven-question exam in a computer lab, where they have eight hours to write essays with no outside resources. Other universities, such as Yale University, give students an entire semester to work on large literature review papers. And most universities, says Albarracin, allow students to retake the exam if they do not pass the first time around.

But regardless of the exam format, she notes, students who prepare rarely fail.

So I guess, this quote ends on a nice note, doesn't it?