The Power of Healing Through Acting

The Power of Healing Through Acting

When I was a young actor, I distinctly remember feeling a burning desire for expression in my belly. I yearned to share my soul with anyone willing to receive it. My sense of curiosity and excitement about joining the long line of actors in Hollywood made it easy for me to buy into the idea that acting was “enough,” and that I was doing something important.

As time went on and I continued to build a robust acting resume, the wonder of it all began to fade. I distinctly remember waiting in an audition room, looking over my lines for yet another spin-off of NCIS, and asking myself, “What am I doing?” The lines felt formulaic, and my body sensed it. How could I perform this piece knowing it wasn’t true to my soul? This wasn’t a real, living human I was portraying. I understood my task was to bring it to life, but after a while, your mind becomes adept at distinguishing between artificial exposition and genuinely meaningful work.

However, I also experienced moments of magic as an actor that I will never forget. Most of this magic occurred while working on independent films where the director was less stressed about finishing on time and more excited about telling the story. These stories were usually close to someone's heart. They wanted to tell them, even if it meant they wouldn’t make a single penny or that the film might never be seen by an audience.

It was on the set of a film called?Savage Youth?that I had a sort of spiritual experience with acting. My director helped bring the film to life and allowed the actors to explore different parts of ourselves to deepen our acting work. I was working with another actor, and, at one point in the scene, the character—who was supposed to be strung out on drugs and emotionally distraught—looked into my eyes, and I saw a person seeking healing. Not a character or an actor, but a soul yearning for connection. In that moment, I wasn’t acting anymore; I was healing with them. We were just two souls connecting and healing. All my instincts fired, and I was no longer controlled by vanity, ego, or an insecure desire to be seen. I was seen, and I was loved. I didn’t need anything at that moment.

After transitioning from a career in acting to becoming a therapist, I didn't initially consider the possibility of acting being a vehicle for healing. Even though I had experienced several incredible, life-changing moments, I also had many experiences where acting destroyed my well-being and self-esteem, and I saw others spiral into mental madness. It wasn’t until I started working at an addiction center that my supervisor, knowing I was a former actor, asked if I wanted to run a psychodrama group. I was unfamiliar with psychodrama, though I had heard about acting used in therapy. What exactly was psychodrama? Like most trainees, I agreed immediately and began figuring out how to facilitate a group I knew nothing about.

I spent a few weeks researching and reading everything I could about this therapy style. Developed by Jacob L. Moreno, psychodrama is an action-based method where participants can relive experiences and emotionally correct them. Essentially, you can become an actor and change the emotional effects of your past. It sounded mysterious and strange. At the same time, I noticed that same fire in my belly that I had felt when I first pursued acting. It was exciting again, without any sense of disillusionment or bitterness.

During my first group session, I still had no idea what I was doing. I felt like a fraud. All I could think about was one of the things I had read while researching psychodrama: “Psychodrama should only be facilitated by experienced professionals.” I was a trainee, still in grad school, working with dual-diagnosis addicts who had, and continued to have, incredible amounts of trauma. What was I thinking? Yet, another part of me knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be—a sensitive soul attuned to the needs of others when listening and in a flow state. That first session was magical. It was as if I became a medium for my group members, and the "ego I" faded away.

Psychodrama taught me something incredible about myself. Acting is powerful and healing. The only things that get in the way of this healing are the ego and the pressures of an industry based around money and fame. If we remove money from the equation, acting becomes a vehicle for transformation. I have seen people process their trauma in deep and profound ways that they were unable to achieve through talk therapy alone. I have witnessed group members come together and heal each other simply by living in the present moment and honoring each other’s hearts. Acting, creativity, imagination, and spontaneity heal—we just have to let go of all the other stuff