Encouragement for Dancers with Anxiety Disorders
Trigger Warning: Anxiety, Mental Health
By Hannah Emory, DWC Blog Contributor
Photo from Shutterstock
My story with anxiety.
One of the most common misconceptions about anxiety is that all people experience it in the same way. For those who do not have an anxiety disorder or do not believe anxiety disorders are legitimate health concerns, the assumption reigns that anxiety is a temporary and fixable cluster of symptoms brought on by isolated circumstances.
I’m a dancer who copes with a chronically disordered form of anxiety called Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. It means that I have anxiety at all times and can experience severe symptoms, even without an immediately evident or conventionally logical cause. I am grateful that I was diagnosed about five years ago and continue to learn about how my anxiety affects my everyday life.
My symptoms can vary from being deeply emotional to viscerally physical - from a background sense of coming doom or imminent failure to shaking, shortness of breath, digestive troubles, and mental fog. The severity and frequency of my anxiety symptoms can be reduced by self-care and the input of my support network, but the disorder itself never completely goes away.
Having an anxious body as a dancer provides an interesting challenge when it comes to performance time. There is this feeling of excited anticipation that works up once you’ve committed your blood, sweat, and tears to a creative endeavor and you’re about to present it to the world. Yet, an anxious body sometimes can’t tell the difference between joyful energy and anxiety-inducing stimuli, and the two can become muddled together or transform into each other.
When I was a child and teenager, I would experience these muddied waters all the time at performances. The number of people around me, rigorous schedules, interrupted self-care, and the anticipation of putting my heart and soul in front of audience members created an environment where I could thrive off the intensity, but sometimes struggled to stay grounded. That could put a damper on the joy of performing because I didn’t know how to deal with the stressors I was encountering effectively.
Throughout my university dance career, I’ve had many opportunities to learn about what helps me be successful amid my anxiety. Below are the top three things that have proven essential for me on a holistic level - these tips are important for any person, but can be easily forgotten in an athletic field like dancing. We need to intentionally make space in our lives for the internal and personal. As dancers, we use our minds, bodies, and hearts, and all three parts of ourselves require care so we can bring the best of ourselves to the studio and the stage.
Even in the off-season, have a routine.
After experiencing a year-long off-season in 2020, I realized that having a routine is key to avoiding anxiety flare-ups in the day-to-day as well as during performances. As an artistic person, routines can seem like the anchor weighing me down, but they can ultimately make or break navigating mental health struggles and a dancing career. I know that if I don’t stick to a routine, I quickly feel unmoored in my everyday life and have a greater sense of unpreparedness for performances.
Routines are best when they are individualized, realistic, holistic, and consistent. Your routine is the framework for having joy and maintaining movement forward in life - from nutrition to mundane tasks, from what barre exercises you need to do to what makes you feel ready for a performance night. Establishing a meaningful and effective routine will take troubleshooting and will shift over time as your needs change, but it’s a process that will be invaluable to your growth as a dancer.
A few warnings from my personal experience: don’t overload your off-days and don’t feel the need to run your life the way others do. Anxiety disorders can come with a robust perfectionism streak, but this is no competition and you are doing this for yourself and your craft. Your routine is about setting yourself up for success so that you are consistently improving as a dancer and avoiding anxiety spirals. Productivity and perfection are not the goals, consistency and stability are.
Find your own mindfulness practice.
Living life with GAD for me means that I don’t enjoy traditional silent meditation. I think many folks believe that to have a “real” mindfulness practice you must be skilled at silent meditation or try to be. I was in that boat and went on a journey to find a mindfulness practice that works for me consistently. I would say that if you are an anxious-bodied dancer, a mindfulness practice can be helpful, especially to ward off performance stress.
My mindfulness routine includes…
Using a set of meditation beads I made to center my mind on a power phrase or two
Journaling consistently to process my emotions and visualize my future
Improv dancing to a playlist of empowering tunes so I can connect my body, mind, and heart
Taking a walk outside where there is some green space and I can hear the birds singing
I like having a list of different activities that I know will center me and focus my attention, so that no matter where I am, I will be able to do some form of self-soothing when I’m having a flare-up or when the pressure is on. Some other forms of mindfulness and self-relaxation can include guided whole-body relaxation, scripted bodily tension-and-release exercises, utilizing your barre warm-up as meditation, and listening to some ASMR. While there is some trial and error to this suggestion, the time invested in being able to routinely quiet your mind and center your energy will pay back dividends your whole life long.
Seek out community.
Even though anxiety is a deeply personal experience, it does not mean that we have to go through it alone. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, about 20% of adults in the United States are affected by anxiety disorders. Sadly, most of those suffering do not receive the support they need, either from professional resources or from interpersonal support systems.
From my personal experience, anxiety results in a vicious cycle of convincing myself that I have to do it all on my own. I fear appearing annoying and needy and that if I reach out for help, others won’t understand how much GAD affects my life.
Yet, we are coming into a time where mental health is being destigmatized. Though there is still a lot of work to be done in normalizing and integrating mental health struggles into our societal conversations, there are a lot more doors open than there used to be. More people acknowledge mental health struggles as legitimate compared to a few decades ago. So the fear I feel is assuaged by the fact that people are struggling around me and would also like to have space held for them. Reaching out is easier when I remember that I am not the only one.
Lastly, some encouragement.
Ironically, it is anxiety-inducing to think of being vulnerable with others and doing the challenging personal work to grow when anxiety can feel like a constant uphill climb. As dancers, our bread and butter is using our whole selves to tell honest, moving, and human stories. There is little that’s more honest, life-changing, and human than learning how to live with intention in our mental health realities. There is a place to carve out in the dance world for telling the truth about mental health, demystifying it, and loving each other in the midst of it.
Ultimately, you have permission to start breaking the vicious cycles of loneliness and perfectionism that can come with having an anxiety disorder. I hope you know it is a sign of your power and strength to reach out to a mutually supportive community. I hope you know that you can move mountains with baby steps; that you are not alone. I hope you know your strength is shown through your struggle; your heart and your art are always worth the time of being loved, acknowledged, and cared for.
Much love to you, dear dancer.
