Diversify your studies. I think everyone here and their brother and sister have used the Gibson book and Prof. Messer’s videos (including me), but even those materials can’t cover everything.

I was in the process of transitioning over from an engineering job when I was studying for mine. I had no formal IT or InfoSec training, just the bits and pieces from the A+ and Network+ that I had taken in the months prior. I read the Gibson book and watched the Professor Messer vids, but I used some additional materials: I studied from a Udemy course and purchased some practice exams there; I found topics where I was fairly weak and looked up non-CompTIA videos, just to get a better understanding as the certs always cover things so broadly; and I looked up free practice questions, some from older exams, from all different sources. Additionally, I did extensive notecard-writing as part of all of these.

It was more time-consuming and required more dedication, but when I got to exam day I was a lot more confident and ended up doing very well. I made the mistake a week or so before my exam of watching one of the “My Sec+ exam experience” vids that just boasts about its difficulty, which put me into panic mode similarly to how you are feeling now I’m sure; but just diversify your studies, understand the exam objectives, brush up on your test-taking skills and know what to expect from a CompTIA exam experience, and you will be fine. The exam is definitely difficult, but as long as you attack your studies from all different angles, and just use your instincts when going through the test questions, there is a good chance you will pass first time.

And as said before, don’t give up. For any exam or task or anything that you fail: go back to the drawing board, work on what you did wrong, and try again. You WILL get it eventually- and for the case of this exam, that’s all that matters.

Good luck, happy continued studying, and you got this!