You’ve an enormous audition. You really need it and you set plenty of work into its preparation. You’re nervous, you’re excited, your physique is flooded with dopamine, cortisol and serotonin. Your heart-increases, you battle your means via the urge to flee, or vomit, and also you do your best possible, leaving on a excessive…
You spent three weeks rehearsing intensively, it’s a bodily and psychological problem, however via your motivation and dedication, you’ve come to a phenomenal efficiency, maybe the very best of your life. Night time after night time, you bear the shared stress and pleasure of efficiency and the chemical cocktail that leaves you feeling excessive…
You’ve been in your ft for 16 hours a day for the previous 5 months. You’ve been required to make choice after choice, main the movie’s inventive workforce and accountable for each alternative. You’ve skilled highs and lows and the accompanying bio-chemical flushing. You get to the wrap social gathering and also you’re utterly ecstatic, you’ve completed it, the capturing is over, and the social gathering begins on a excessive…
Then all of it ends. The audition is over. The curtain comes down. Filming stops, it’s a wrap.
PPD
And that’s when most actors expertise one thing known as PPD, Submit-Efficiency Melancholy – post-show blues.
Some individuals simply really feel a little bit flat, others describe a ‘come down’, specialists Bonnie E. Robson and Eleanore Gillies describe signs such as “disappointment, crying bouts, nervousness and panic assaults… lethargy, lack of curiosity, fatigue… extreme sleep.”
For these experiencing PPD, it’s a complicated, demoralising and sometimes lonely time – usually blaming themselves for the way in which they really feel. This isn’t simply an disagreeable feeling, it has an impact on how performers really feel in regards to the lifetime of a performer and contributes to many individuals leaving the business.
Moreover, veterans of the performing arts are inclined to develop unhealthy methods of coping with PPD together with alcohol, drug and sexual dependancy.
STRATEGIES
There are nonetheless, some methods for combatting Submit Efficiency Melancholy:
PLAN: Now you’re conscious of it, you’ll be able to acknowledge what’s making you’re feeling like this and you’ll start to plan to answer this drop in temper. Creating a deliberate response will will let you put it into motion after the present/audition. Make a plan you can observe from the second you end what you’re doing til just a few days after the occasion. If the signs persist, see a medical skilled.
FIGHTING FATIGUE: Individuals getting ready for auditions or performing are most probably fatigued. Each nerves and pleasure impact our capacity to eat effectively, relaxation effectively and train. The FIRST step in combatting PPD helps our physique to struggle it, by nourishing it with good meals, good sleep and motion. These usually go utterly out of the window for performers, as they alternate base priorities for performance-related ones.
Eat, relaxation and transfer earlier than the occasion, throughout (if its a movie shoot or run of a present) and after. However cautious for extreme consuming, sleeping or exercising as a type of self-medication.
When you handle these necessities, you’ll have extra vitality to withstand PPD.
POSITIVE SELF TALK: We’re unlikely to really feel horrible instantly or for a very long time, however our ideas have a tendency to strengthen our destructive feelings. So we feed the PPD with destructive self-talk like ‘why can’t I simply be regular’, ‘I’m such a freak, it’s no huge deal, why do I all the time get so emotional?’,’what’s unsuitable with me?’
This destructive self discuss will ramp up the destructive feelings, giving them a fantastic affect and sustaining them.
One technique to cope with that is to create a brief optimistic self-talk tape on your cellphone and play it if you really feel like this. It solely must be a minute or so. You could possibly say one thing like:
“I acknowledge that having had a BIG HIGH, that I’d really feel a BIG LOW. It’s utterly regular for that to occur. It occurs to most individuals. Whereas all these chemical substances are leaving my physique, I’ll discover optimistic methods to occupy myself, and handle myself. I’ll eat, sleep and train commonly, however by no means to extra. I select to simply accept how I really feel, I’m okay with it, it’s regular to really feel like this.”
Though this feels a little odd – it really works. It creates an alternate story to counter-balance your destructive pondering and redresses the stability, lowering the gas to the destructive feelings that make the PPD final longer.
SHARE: Performers experiencing PPD aren’t alone. All of us really feel it. Speak to one another. We regularly isolate ourselves away, as an alternative, meet associates, see household, participate in an exercise, don’t give the PPD the quiet, darkness it likes to breed in.
REFRAMING: Take care with the way you discuss to your self. We will actually make ourselves really feel worse by believing what we inform ourselves. “I’ll by no means have a job like that” is rapidly reframed as ’that was a tremendous function, I’m so completely satisfied I had the prospect to play it, I’m wanting forwards to my subsequent problem. Reframe beliefs that may result in destructive emotion and feed PPD.
DISTRACTION: This is a good technique, give your self one thing else to consider. Individuals going into rehearsal for one thing else usually miss the temper drop of PPD. Nonetheless, we’re not all the time that lucky. Plan an journey, discover specific music, an thrilling ebook, an exercise that you simply love or see household you haven’t seen for some time. You could not really feel prefer it, however selecting to assist your self will reduce the affect of the PPD on you. Give your self one thing to look forwards to, combatting the destructive emotion with optimistic emotions.
Lastly, don’t count on to only be okay, don’t use that expectation to beat your self with later. PPD is actual and if you’re prepared to take these steps, you’ll be able to cut back its affect on your life and profession.
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Performing Coach Scotland has an eBook known as The 12 Obstacles, which outlines the 12 most typical psychological obstacles to acting at our greatest and find out how to cope with them successfully. Try the Performing Recommendation Guides on our web site to get your free copy.
