Today in Play: Hi Anxiety, meet my friend Improv

When anxiety and fear

Have a grip that feels severe

Add improv to the mix

For helpful skills and tricks

To make the present appear

?

Last week I wrapped up teaching a 5-week in-person workshop series called?Improv for Anxiety, offered at The Rozzie Square Theater in Boston. Playing at the intersection of performing arts and mental health, I’ve never felt more in my element as a facilitator. I’ve also never had so much curiosity-meets-confusion from others about how this class works!

After all, the very last place most people experiencing high anxiety want to be is an improv class. And that makes total sense: performing in front of others with no opportunity for preparation is describing hell for many anxious people. Why on earth would anyone put themselves in a situation where the likelihood of all those humiliation-laden 'what ifs'?actually coming true?feels so high?

And when it grows in the context of an improv class, it naturally grows in the context of your broader life, because our lives and relationships are also not scripted. Everything we do is essentially improvised, albeit not always with a physical stage and a suggestion of "banana." But we're often on informal stages, like when we're speaking up in a meeting or initiating a difficult conversation with someone we care about. So yes, without getting too dramatic, I'm saying that??Life is Improv?.

So what is it about improv specifically that helps catalyze this growth for the anxious mind? ?

You…

• Get reps in for making mistakes and living to tell the tale
• Practice releasing control over the outcome and seeing what new possibilities emerged from the group when that happened
• Outrun the overthinking & what ifs by defaulting to action
• Experience how multiple things can be true at once (e.g. fear and excitement) and use that to add nuance to what the unknown can mean.
• Learn to listen, observe, and build with such presence that it brings your focus out of the future or past and into the present.

And you do so in a full body, experiential way through structured games and activities that on the surface are quite simple.

What is less simple, though, is the "given the right conditions" part. A culture of psychological?safety needs to be created and sustained for people to feel willing to take the risk. As the facilitator and leader of this experience, that's my number one focus. Here are a few of the key ways I approached co-creating that culture with the group.

• Asking how people?actually?felt about activities, and validating their feelings. So if someone hated the activity or felt really stressed during it, affirming that response and welcoming reflection on why that was rather than stepping into my own anxious spiral about what I might have done wrong as a facilitator.
• Ritualizing the celebration and movement through mistakes during games. At The Rozzie Square Theater that's an enthusiastic, collective "Awooga!" while everyone kicks their legs into the circle.
• Actively looking for things to be grateful for and delighted by. At the end of each class we used the?GLAD framework?to guide that reflection. The framework has you name something you are Grateful for, Learned, Accomplished, and were Delighted by.
• Naming upfront and getting agreement on the process the group will use to address a non-inclusive situation or comment.

You may have gotten to this point and be thinking to yourself...wouldn't anyone benefit from this? Yes! Regardless of your experience with anxiety, both the growth that can be catalyzed through improv, and the benefits of an intentionally built culture apply. But by working with folks who experience high levels of anxiety, it helped me slow down and be even more thoughtful about how to make improv as approachable and accessible as possible. And I will absolutely be carrying those lessons into my future work with groups of all types.

Warmly,

Sarah

p.s. Science says improv is good for anxiety, too! Check out The Science of Happiness Podcast episode called 'How Improv Makes You More Confident and Less Anxious' to learn more.

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