Improvisational theater can reduce anxiety in teens who struggle socially
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And yes, it definitely trains you that there is no "right" way to have a conversation.
I think the main difficulty is that normal conversational success can be different than improv success. In improv, you want funny. Funny can be good in normal conversations, but most people are after other things. Understanding, support, connection, reflection. New improv people can be fantastically annoying if they use it as just another way to hide and deflect.
The other possibility in this situation is that the person doing the managing has just cast an unnecessary zero-confidence vote because of their own perceived superiority or excessive ego. Trying to manage people opens you up to some seriously negative social repercussions, unless those people are your kids.
I think the better approach is to find a thing you both agree on and truly give a yes to that. E.g., if I disagree with somebody on the right way to solve a problem, I can at least say, "Yes, it's important we get this right."
From there, in improv terms, I'd probably abandon my first offer and find a new offer that is closer to acceptable. E.g., "So let's do a minimal test of both approaches and see what kind of data we get."
From there I'd again use the improv approach of not trying to control the flow, instead saying open to possibility. If the data goes my way, I can be gracious. If it hasn't, I have learned something, and can be generous with my praise. Either one heightens the chosen narrative direction of being on the same side.
Maybe it might be even better to find a thing you both agree on and truly give a yes to that. E.g., if I disagree with somebody on the right way to solve a problem, I can at least say, "Yes, it's important we get this right."
From there, in improv terms, I'd probably abandon my first offer and find a new offer that is closer to acceptable. E.g., "So let's do a minimal test of both approaches and see what kind of data we get."
From there I'd again use the improv approach of not trying to control the flow, instead saying open to possibility. If the data goes my way, I can be gracious. If it hasn't, I have learned something, and can be generous with my praise. Either one heightens the chosen narrative direction of being on the same side.
Generally I'm for getting along. But when someone acts in ways that are abusive or manipulative, I think it's important to be clear how corrosive that is.
Sounds like a fantastic philosophy.
I've never witnessed improv (live performances). I had ignorantly equated improv with standup comedy, which I mostly dislike, for being mean spirited and punching down.
Live and learn.
This is significant to me, as I suspect many of the people with anxiety that is significant enough to be diagnosable would not be willing to do it or would pretty much shut down if placed in the setting.
To delve into personal anecdotes:
I had a theater class in school that regularly included improv exercises like described. In 11 years of it (K-10 or so), I don't think it ever went well.
The actual manifestation of the problem with "no script" was drawing a complete blank as soon as I was asked, not having a bunch of ideas I was scared to respond with.
It's certainly possible that these people have a better method, but I had multiple theater teachers and I was socially fine in normal settings. All these activities tended to do was give me more anxiety issues because everyone else could come up with things and I'd just be stuck there no matter how people tried to help me get going.
Those are not really common situations in adult life, but I'm still bad with "icebreaker" games and other similar things that "put me on the spot" to come up with something outside of normal social interactions.
One thing that made this being anxiety based very clear was that one night I took phenibut for a party, and the following morning it was still in effect and I found myself thinking of way more jokes and doing little improv reactions to the people I was talking to. It's like my brain was completely filtering them out due to very low level anxiety. I got lucky and the effect partially persisted afterwards, because it taught me that saying these things was safe, so I didn't have anxiety about them afterwards.
1. Our ideas and memories are composed of connections between neurons.
2. “Creativity” is the expression of random, new connections between those neurons.
3. Creative expression requires focusing our attention on those new neural pathways, filling them in and adding detail.
4. Depression and anxiety caused me to focus my attention on the idea of failing to come up with something “on the spot” (and the many minor traumatic memories of failing in this way), instead of the infinite weak, undeveloped ideas that could be explored with a moment’s focused attention. It’s hard to be fun when you are having a small anxiety attack.
5. The antidepressant I’m taking has gotten me out of this rut. Whether it’s by turning off my anxiety, or helping my nascent creative neural pathways reach further by preventing the reuptake of some neurotransmitter, I don’t know.
> we suggest that stress shifts higher cognitive processing in a way that facilitates both engagement with and/or avoidance of the current stressor (i.e., fight or flight). By impairing executive control of cognition (i.e., working memory, cognitive inhibition, and cognitive flexibility), stress contributes to a reactive cognitive state that is fine-tuned to rapidly consider highly salient (i.e., stressor-related) information
> stress reallocates limited executive resources in adaptive ways [...] by impairing executive control over thoughts but improving executive control over motor actions [...] ideal for either fighting with or fleeing from a current stressor.
My anecdote: theater/drama classes in middle and early high school don't count. You're mixed in with a bunch of teenagers who are only taking the class because either a) it's a mandatory class for all students; or b) more than half the class elected to take the class because it's "easy credit". When many/most of the students in a class aren't there because they actually want to explore the art, it ruins the entire dynamic. The same loudmouth bullies who cause trouble elsewhere in the school have an open season on the shy students; every step a socially awkward student tries to take to "open up" simply provides the bullies with more information they need to target the vulnerable.
Every participant must be present because they have a genuine interest to work with their teammates. Acceptance and cooperation are necessary in order to peel back social fear, and that means finding a group of like-minded people who show up to explore themselves and others around them.
One high-level exec at IBM had a habit during the Q&A at analyst meetings of writing down questions on index cards before answering. He partly did this as a process of making sure he understood the question. I'm sure it was also his way of taking a bit of time to collect his thoughts.
Preparation is hugely important of course. And sometimes the correct answer to a question is "We'll get back to you on that." But it's also incredibly useful to be able to deal with curveballs whether it's an unexpected question, an A/V meltdown, or a demo failure.
How do you overcome fear? practice and progression.
What's improv? Practice and progression.
maybe a bit simplistic... but some answers are just that simple.
I will definitely make sure to tailor it 100% to be approachable by even the most awkward introverted IT’ers among us; I’ve been in the business for long enough to know how. No pressure, guaranteed. Sitting and watching for the entire workshop is also fine.
No charge beyond a few quid pp to cover a room. beyond that we just need an evening and some snacks.
My contact is in my profile; reply here or drop me a line—would be a lot of fun to make some magic happen!
It was super low pressure and very supportive and I would rate it in the top 5 of life transforming experiences for me. Others are travelling without preparation, joining Toastmasters and picking up martial arts.
From a basic trust in the scientific process (but also noting the limits of scientific psychology) I figure that social anxiety and the like are serious mental illnesses. But I immigrated as a three-year old and didn't know the language/make any friends for a while, so my social skills always lagged. Theater lessons (some of which was improv, but we wrote our own sketches for a capstone play for our own families) sort of helped me balance that. If there was any anxiety it was secondary/symptomatic of some underdeveloped stuff, much like people develop math anxiety.
In retrospect, I attribute it to the "growth mindset" phenomenon: beginners make fools of themselves onstage whether they are awkward or easygoing, so you realize that being-comfortable-in-your-skin is something you can learn rather than something you were born without. Maybe this is what people are going to "hackathons" for - in a pressured time-boxed situation people are less likely to look down on the less math/programming-literate and help them instead.
Not surprising. This is how I conquered my deep fear of flying. I took some flying lessons and even had the instructor do stalls and other scary stuff and I was 95% better afterward.
It’s so much easier to take a drug or blame biochemistry than to face your fears. I think it’s underrated in today’s world where there’s a handy diagnosis for everything.
Note: not casting aspersions on people with serious issues. But when 20% of the US population is supposed to have anxiety disorders, something doesn’t make sense.
That's what happens when a culture undermines the virtues of independence, competence, stolidity, and maturity while venerating childishness. It's what happens when a culture overvalues safety and the avoidance of suffering and undervalues character. Coddled children turn into adults who lack the skills and experience to deal with hardship.
Exposure therapy is hard work. It requires calmly distancing yourself from your fears and anxieties, believing that they can be overcome in the first place, strategizing about how to overcome them, and carrying out actions that are genuinely terrifying to you. It requires valuing freedom from your own emotional limitations over freedom from discomfort. It requires preferring being capable over being comfortable. And that's a hard mindset to cultivate if you were raised in a society where parents sometimes get into legal trouble for letting their kids walk to school or sit outside in the car while they're grocery shopping.
20% of the US population does have anxiety disorders, because the US is suffering from a psychiatric epidemic.
And if it all goes terribly wrong there’s still powerful drugs for that too. So what is there to lose I say.
I think coming to the point where you're ready to "face your fears" may be the real difficulty, and not just because people are lazy, stupid, or "coddled". On the contrary, we as humans are really smart. The mind has developed complex strategies exactly for avoiding dealing with your fears.
Kind of an exposure therapy, but where the exposure isn't directly the situation they're anxious about.
You don’t heal from anxiety by hiding from anything scary. You get better by doing things you feel anxious about (and then not dying). And as for presence - if you’re getting stuck in your head while on stage, it becomes much harder to listen and be present to your scene partner and the needs of the scene. In my experience there’s a limit to how good your scenes can be if you’re in your head about them.
Improv for me has helped my mental health in lots of tiny ways - I’ve gotten better at visibly failing. I’ve gotten better at expressing negative emotion and I’ve gotten a lot more present. I feel like improv theatre is a microcosm of normal struggles; a lot of the long term issues that we face come up in improv too. And on stage you get the chance to face those demons in a safe, supportive environment surrounded by friends.
Being in your head is exactly this sort of developmental challenge. Your improv will (long term) get better if you get out of your head with it and instead be more present and intuitive. And that’s really important in regular life too. For people who struggle with that, what a perfect place to practice.
Personally I highly recommend doing some improv classes to anyone smart and creative who wants to push themselves and grow. It’s hard in the best way.
I for one do not have an anxiety problem in my day to day life. But having to take an improvisation class would cause anxiety and exacerbate it.
If anything, I think team sports or video games does a far better job of reducing anxieties in teens than anything. Though it can also cause anxiety. There isn't a silver bullet for any human condition since humans are a diverse group.
I mean, that’s a normal train ride for me, and it’s not like you even have to talk to other people on the train.
It’s also why practice works. The point isn’t to stop being nervous, it’s to stop being terrified. I’m not sure improv is really better than focus groups designed specifically for people with with anxiety, but I can certainly see it being useful.
As you might’ve guessed I have anxiety. In my teens I literally couldn’t talk to people I didn’t know. I’d get red in the face and panic myself into being unable of speaking. Thanks to practice I’m now capable of doing stuff like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lk-4AFOw0tI without feeling fear.
I’m still working on my anxiety though, and part of my therapy is actually being part of a toastmaster group, because the only way to shred the fear,is to experience social situations. Especially ones that give you feedback on your performance, because it shows you, that you really have no clue what other people are thinking, and that what they think about you is mostly positive.
I remember being such a shy child that in school I couldn't even get myself to stand in line to the sink in which all the others were washing their hands before lunch.
My mother sent me to acting classes when I was eight or so and this experience changed me forever.
It's the sheer adrenaline of being at the center of attention with your group that does this - just about any social situation becomes manageable after that.
Don't even get me started on the level of privilege needed to pay through enough class levels to let one of the theaters audition you for their non-paying staff performer spots.
I doubt there is an improv cartel propping up prices.
There's nothing stopping people from starting up a community improv troupe without formal training from a teacher, just as you don't need someone with an MFA in Performance to start a community theater group. There are enough books out there on the art form that a dedicated group could learn the necessary techniques on their own.
And high-level youth soccer can be way more expensive than even UCB-level improv classes.
Do dancers not need to eat? Do musicians not study as long to become competent teachers? Why is acting priced so different from every other art?
Movie stars get paid orders of magnitude more than top martial artists/musicians/dancers, so more people try to be actors, so there's a larger market, meaning instructors can charge more.
Also depends where you're looking. The professional acting scenes in LA/NYC tend to choke out the hobbyist scenes (why see a community theater show in Manhattan when you can get sub-$50 tickets to a Broadway show from TDF?), so if you're looking for acting classes in those areas, they're directed at and priced for professionals.
> I'd love to see it offered in more high schools, or as a free-or-cheap activity akin to soccer or community theatre.
It is community theatre. Those are the same thing.
Here is the abstract:
Adolescents who have Social Anxiety Disorder do not receive the support they need. Improvisational theater involves regular exposure to social performance situations, and is recognized as a potential psycho-social support to enhance well-being and symptom reduction. The current study examines whether participating in a school-based improvisational theater program predicts reductions in symptoms of social anxiety. A total of 268 middle and high school students who participated in a ten-week school-based improvisational theater program completed surveys in a single group pre/post design. Adolescents who screened positive for social phobia at the beginning of class reported reduced symptoms of social anxiety at post-test. This change predicts increases in social skills, hope, creative self-efficacy, comfort performing for others, and willingness to make mistakes, along with marginal decreases in symptoms of depression. Given that no prior study has examined school-based improvisational theater training and its relationship to social anxiety, this work offers an important early contribution to the empirical literature on improvisation and mental health. School-based improvisational theater training offers an accessible, non-clinical alternative for addressing social anxiety problems among adolescents.
If you have someone who is really being off the rails and is JUST expressing themselves and not really listening/collaborating... It's essentially the same as a `no` to everyone else's idea.
I have a hard time reconciling these things. Where it "should" be safe for "everyone" but not if you're too crazy!
I think some people really get off on the expressive/generative part of improv and not so much on the listening/collaborating.
If the person doesn't do well at passing the ball in a conversation, often times they can fix that pretty easily by having it explained to them, and given what would normally seem way overly direct/aggressive advice usually works well for those people.
The ability to stand in front of a big room and not be anxious was both liberating to me and profoundly useful. I cannot even imagine the opportunity that I would have missed had I not had that confidence.
As a side benefit, it’s alot of fun, I wish I had kept it up!
The performance arts can crack an awful lot of inhibitions.
vs
schnookered https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schnookered
I hope you weren't drunk in high school. Would a drama club allow alochol?
Depending on your personality, I'd either look for a structured program (e.g., Improv Olympic in Chicago has 6 levels that are 8 weeks each) or a place that has drop-in classes that are open to beginners. The former is nicely structured, and an intro class will be full of people who are novices like yourself. The latter will be more freeform, but it lets you try it out without commitment and see what more experienced performers are like.
You should also think a little about where you want to go with it. Some improv is more in the direction of creating longer narratives. Some is very focused on skit creation. Some of it is very game-like. [1] If one of those resonates with you, it may be worth seeking out. If not, I'd say just take a class and see what you think.
Kind of a bad trend IMHO...
The problem is that highly technical and focused conversation seems nothing like aimless conversation in social situations.
At least in the Bay Area, Drama Club seems to be a safe place for socially awkward teens.
5-7 well adjusted folks who are looking to act for attention (nothing wrong with that, to be clear), 25-30 folks who feel weird in their own skin and see drama club as a way to bond with people like them.
Picking up a few joke books was really helpful to me, so I suspect that taking a class might be even better.
I only bring this up since improv helped me think about social situations in a very different lens. It's like taking up a recreational sport - you'll think you're fit until actually pushed into a challenging environment.
Memories for life and public speaking skills to go with it.
[1] Which isn't me saying I'm a badass or anything; I just don't especially fear public speaking in particular.
Almost like you're playing catch, but you tossed the ball to a place that makes it too hard for your friend to catch. Another example would be writing a comment (even this one) and consciously making sure it's easy to reply to, rather than just expressing myself.
I suppose it's like having a binary tree, and trying to pick a node that's not too far down the tree.
I find myself having to take a step back and consider what I'm going to say and if it makes sense (in general) for someone else to continue off of rather than just talking.
"yes, and" helps with the communication protocol. You're more constructive and work harder to clearly communicate your points.
"you don't have to say anything clever" takes you off the spot and reduces the pressure. If you're less comedically included, you can still heighten the stakes by interpreting what's going on and going along with it. The audience just wants to see human drama, and the most truthful thing is how you feel about what's happening. Just to do it -- it's that easy. There are no expectations.
Improv teaches a meta language. Your intent, what you're going to do with the scenario, how you feel about each other and the world around you -- none of this has to be spoken. You're having a dialog with your scene partner(s) and communicating to them in realtime outside of the actual words that you're speaking. This is especially important, because so much of real life communication is non-verbal. Improv opens you up to that whole world.
There are no wrong choices. Yes, there are more optimal choices, but there are no bad ones as long as you follow the simple rules of improv. You don't even need to worry about that until you become serious about improv as a hobby.
You'll find analogs to all of these points in your own communication with friends, peers, superiors, et al.
Improv is one of the best courses on human communication. It's also cheap, fun, and highly effective.
Thanks for articulating that insight. I've looked into improv off-and-on for years but have not found the clinching argument on its value-add in my situation. I'm fortunate enough to not be prone to social anxiety (I'm a people-connector type and am actually drawn to strangers), and public speaking doesn't faze me, so I haven't really been able to see how improv would fit into my life. But improving non-verbal communication is a meta skill that I could get behind.
I'm still not sure how "yes and" would apply in improving daily conversation though. Do you have any positive experiences to share?
I don't know how I can alter a class so it's Zoom-ready, but maybe this research will help me convince some Guinea Pigs at my company.
Improv can take a lot of forms -- there's one style that's basically "make up a movie, complete with narrated camera moves". There's another that's "a series of unconnected scenes". My team is doing one now that is basically an improvised podcast or radio play.
Simply "standing on stage and talking" is bad form, because it's not especially interesting. How many tv shows are just people talking? None; people are doing _something_. Sometimes those people are very active, like if they're riding a dragon into combat. Sometimes those people are less active, like if they're a radio host talking to callers. But never are people just standing: they're adjusting the radio microphone, or flipping a page to read off of.
So, role playing games?
There's definitely overlap!