Today, we’re joined by Elizabeth Sullivan, a success coach and wellness mentor for pre-professional dancers. Full disclosure: Both of our kids have worked with Elizabeth over the years. While we might be biased, we think she brings a fresh voice in the ballet training world.
Winter and early Spring, better known as audition season, brings increased levels of stress and anxiety for students. These days, dancers are all waiting with bated breath to see if they got that coveted spot in a company, the next level of training or even a great role in the spring show. It’s a good time to remember to not only pay attention to your physical well-being but also your mental fitness.
So, let’s hear from Elizabeth!
As a dancer, you’ll never be able to say “Mental Fitness: Done!” and walk away from that work because the dance environment presents ongoing challenges that are hard to manage without regular care and attention.
For example, you spend between 5 and 9 hours a day looking at yourself critically in a mirror. Anyone, even the most confident dancer, would eventually have the experience of feeling they fall below expectations in some way. Pair that with the narrow aesthetic and technical requirements of ballet, and it’s a recipe for some difficult thoughts on the regular.
The dancers I work with are sometimes surprised by how much maintenance goes into keeping their mental fitness skills sharp. They say things like, “I can’t believe I am still working on this! I thought I’d be past the body stuff/self-critiques/comparisons by now!”
Even though they’ve gone long stretches where their mental fitness skills prop them up and keep them focused on what matters to them, they aren’t immune to hiccups; no one is in this field.
So, rather than framing mental fitness training as a been-there-done-that exercise, I encourage you to conceive of it as an ongoing “practice.”
Let’s take a look at just a few of the other challenges presented in the dance world that might test your mental fitness; maybe some of these will resonate with you.
Criticism
Dancers are subject to high levels of daily criticism from teachers, directors, choreographers, and themselves. Criticism is meant to guide and help you along the path of improvement, but how it’s delivered isn’t always constructively or positively; sometimes the most negative criticisms come from inside your own head!
As a result, dancers often feel attacked by criticism that leaves them a little bruised; the ego can only take so many of those bruisings before it goes into fight-or-flight mode.
Negative Feedback Sticks
It’s maddening that five compliments can be displaced by one criticism, but that’s the way your brain works.
Negative feedback sticks around too; performers can often recall a negative review years later, while all the positive ones have faded into the distant past.
Comparisons
Humans engage in social comparisons all the time and dancers are no exception. Unfortunately, rarely do you feel better when comparing yourself to someone else.
Many dancers cite comparisons as a weak link in their mental fitness: when they are least expecting it, they find themselves comparing their bodies and skills with their peers and find they fall short.
One of the big downsides of engaging in comparisons is that they can cause you to spiral, affecting your confidence in other areas.
Your Human Body
Despite years of training and discipline, you still live and dance in a human body, which is imperfect and fallible. The unpredictability of your body will challenge you every day, in and out of the studio, but mostly in it.
- Nailed those turns yesterday, but can’t find them today?
- Had perfect placement on Monday, but feel all over the place on Wednesday?
Welcome to your human body!
Having strategies for managing your feelings when your body doesn’t show up or shows up differently than before is crucial to keeping yourself calm and focused.
What does ongoing mental fitness maintenance look like?
When a dancer suffers from a crisis of confidence or any other incident that has disrupted their mindset, we start by talking about it.
If you are unused to talking out loud about your concerns, you would be amazed at how helpful it can be. Saying a thing out loud takes away some of its power; when you suffer in silence, concerns tend to grow to unmanageable proportions.
Sometimes, it helps to come up with a list of mental fitness “pitfalls” – areas where this dancer is most likely to experience a crisis. The pitfalls are usually connected to “triggers” that have set them off in the past.
For example, when an especially thin colleague gets cast in a role, that might trigger a sudden comparison spiral and a concern that you might have been cast if you were thinner. For dancers who have struggled with body dysmorphia or disordered eating, this can grow into problematic actions.
Along with the Pitfall List, we might create a check-in strategy, so the dancer can take thoughtful steps in managing the feelings that surface rather than spiraling into unhealthy thinking or behaviors.
For example, they might have the following items on their checklist:
- Consider other rational reasons why a colleague was cast.
- Reconnect to your values around your weight and health.
- Reflect on past low-weight times: what you gave up to be thin and what risks you took.
- Journal about your feelings and use self-compassion to accept them without engaging in dangerous behaviors.
- Talk to a trusted friend/coach/parent.
Your mental fitness maintenance program would depend on what your triggers, thoughts, and behaviors tend to be, but this gives you an example.
The Takeaway
The demanding environment of pre-professional and professional ballet is unlikely to change in any significant way any time soon.
If you find that it taxes your mental health, it’s best to admit it and commit to an ongoing mental fitness maintenance plan that allows you to manage your triggers and stay balanced.
Elizabeth Sullivan is a former professional ballerina with the Cleveland and Boston Ballet companies. Now a coach and mentor for pre-professional dancers, she has developed a unique approach that helps young dancers choose a positive path leading to success in their dancing and their life. Learn more at https://easullivan.com/
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