Dancers in Distress -- Dealing with your Demons

https://pixabay.com/vectors/ballet-dancer-silhouette-ballerina-4143184/

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art“.
— Carrie Fisher

For some people, dance is a passion, to love and cherish above all else. They adore dancing – they eat it, drink it and dream it, which is why they become dancers. But, as everyone knows, the things you love can sometimes hurt – a lot….

“I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance“.
— Suzanne Farrell

Late spring and the run-up to summer are typical burnout times for dancers. The season drags on through wet, endless weather, people struggle with flu or colds, there are emergency rehearsals every day, shows cobbled together somehow, a desperate sense of things unravelling. It’s cold outside, and bits of you hurt, and all you want is to be warm, safe, and far away from the daily nightmare.

“Someone once said that dancers work as hard as policemen, always alert, always tense. But see, policemen don’t have to be beautiful at the same time“.
— George Balanchine

It’s a stressful job. Much of the time you’re working full out just to keep up — you can easily become exhausted and discouraged. There’s competition, criticism, stress, pressure of time, fatigue, injury, trouble with your health, financial distress, family hassle, loneliness, relationship stuff, some diet thing, insomnia, career worries, disappointment, overwork or just a cumulative case of the blues. It’s all wrong, it’s too big for you, and you don’t know what to do. You get home, close your door and find you’re in a very dark place.

Dancers are great at beating up on themselves. They’re always trying their hardest, accepting criticism, taking corrections — they make everything their fault. You can become obsessed with what you see as your own failures or inadequacies. You catalogue them again and again, never finding any peace. Chewing over negative thoughts, constantly reaching the same guilty verdict on yourself is called rumination(1), (also the technical name for the action of a cow chewing its cud). It’s rough, but you can make it better. You can change it, and you can save yourself.

One technique is known as “parking”. You identify a thought which constantly stresses you, and find somewhere in your mind to park it, like shunting a goods train onto a siding. Shove it out of the way – you don’t need to go there, just push it to one side and concentrate on the rest of your life. When you decide the time is right, you’ll deal with it. If it comes back, park it again. You control it, it doesn’t control you. You can stay in charge by using a short, sharp shock, like clicking your fingers, or wearing a rubber band to snap on your wrist in moments of crisis; this breaks the spell and reminds you to push the negativity away and get it out of your face.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall“.
— Confucius

These are useful tricks, but in the longer term you need to sort this thing out, slowly and methodically, so it can stop bothering you. Here we borrow from a corporate management concept, known by the acronym S.M.A.R.T., which stands for Small, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-related, and helps you to answer ……..

https://pixabay.com/photos/elephant-africa-savannah-1860982/

……. the Elephant Question. What is the Elephant Question? It goes like this — Q: “How do you eat an elephant?” A: “One bite at a time.” The point is that any big job (getting out from under the elephant of your distress, for example) can be broken down into a series of smaller problems, with which you deal, one at a time. Get rid of the first one, move on to the next, and eventually you will have solved them all. Job done — elephant eaten.

Here’s how you do it, using S.M.A.R.T.
1) Choose one single aspect of the whole big problem. It can be something small (that’s the “S” part) but it does need to be useful and necessary.
2) Define the size of the task clearly beforehand, so you know exactly what has to be done (the “M” component).
3) Make it something you know is possible – sort out the receipts you need for your tax return, for example (“A” for “Achievable”).
4) Create a realistic method of doing it – separate envelopes for each month’s receipts, maybe (“R”).
5) Set yourself the job of getting it done within a time-frame; by the end of the week, perhaps (“T”).

Then get to it. You know it’s necessary, you know it’s possible, you know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and when to finish it. Afterwards, even if it was only a little thing, you’ll know you’ve solved part of the problem. And — you’ve done it yourself. You’re no longer powerless in the face of your difficulties, you’ve actually just fixed something. This feels good — keep it and use it again.

“My advice for life; dance and sing your song while the party’s still on“.
— Rasheed Ogonlaru

Another technique is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT. This works by identifying specific distortions of thought (you’re too shy and nervous to talk to people, for example) which coerce you into maladaptive ways of behaving (such as going to ridiculous lengths to avoid feeling exposed) and can actually precipitate or aggravate mental health disorders. The therapist works together with the subject to sort out techniques for recognising and coping with destructive thought patterns. They set goals for doing this and lay out strategies to achieve it; there are also follow-up protocols to maintain the healthier thought patterns achieved during therapy.

One of my favourites is mindfulness. Last September, I wrote a post, Dancers and Green Spaces, about the relaxing effects of quiet time among trees and plants. There’s real salvation in settings like this – forests, parks, rivers and lakes can all calm the racket of stress and anxiety. Concentrate on one specific, small, pleasing thing – light in a dewdrop, a filigree of branches, the self-absorption of a caterpillar climbing a twig, birdsong, cloud patterns, distant laughter of children in a sunny meadow, the breeze ruffling your hair. Just look, listen, breathe; let it wash over you. This is mindfulness, and it’s a good, meditative way to calm your troubled soul. It may not eradicate the problem, but it certainly changes the way you react to it, helping you to regain proportion and giving you back the power and the peace to cope.

Sometimes when you wake up in the morning and nothing makes sense, try starting the day with mindfulness. Where I live, our balcony looks straight onto a wooded valley; I’m out there every morning, sniffing the forest air, or watching the sky — this is where (especially if you’re religious) you find strength and peace to help you deal with the day.

Because of the transitory nature of their job, many dancers can’t have pets. If you’re lucky enough to live with a cat or a dog, you’ll find they often have sensible suggestions when you’re feeling troubled. True, the suggestions may have more to do with food or getting tickled behind the ears, but even so, the conversation helps reduce your stress levels, and it’s nice to know someone’s on your side (or, perhaps, your lap).

“You can dance in the storm. Don’t wait for the rain to be over before, because it might take too long. You can do it now. Wherever you are, right now, you can start, right now; this very moment“.
— Israelmore Ayirov

All these and other self-help techniques are useful, and they can help alleviate the distress, exorcise your demons and polish off your elephant. Please do remember, though, that serious psychological or physical problems require professional attention – if it’s bad, don’t waste time, get yourself to a qualified therapist without delay.

“I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, or will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the centre of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things, and the demon of isolation in his own ego. Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers. I praise the dance. O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you“.
— St. Augustine

References
1. Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2004). The Response Style Theory. In: Papageorgiou C, Wells A, editors. Depressive Rumination: Nature, Theory and Treatment. West Sussex, England: Wiley.

Dancers in Distress — Dealing with your Demons

1 Comment