Combatting Post Show Blues

You have a big audition. You really want it and you put a lot of work into its preparation. You’re nervous, you’re excited, your body is flooded with dopamine, cortisol and serotonin. Your heart-increases, you battle your way through the urge to flee, or vomit, and you do your absolute best, leaving on a high…
 
You spent three weeks rehearsing intensively, it’s a physical and mental challenge, but through your motivation and dedication, you’ve come to a phenomenal performance, perhaps the best of your life. Night after night, you undergo the shared stress and excitement of performance and the chemical cocktail that leaves you feeling high… 
 
You’ve been on your feet for 16 hours a day for the past 5 months. You’ve been required to make decision after decision, leading the film’s creative team and responsible for every choice. You’ve experienced highs and lows and the accompanying bio-chemical flushing. You get to the wrap party and you’re completely ecstatic, you’ve done it, the shooting is over, and the party starts on a high…
 
Then it all ends. The audition is over. The curtain comes down. Filming stops, it’s a wrap.

PPD
 
And that’s when most actors experience something called PPD, Post-Performance Depression - post-show blues. 
 
Some people just feel a little flat, others describe a ‘come down’, experts Bonnie E. Robson and Eleanore Gillies describe symptoms such as “sadness, crying bouts, anxiety and panic attacks… lethargy, lack of interest, fatigue… excessive sleep.”
 
For those experiencing PPD, it is a confusing, demoralising and often lonely time - often blaming themselves for the way they feel. This is not just an unpleasant feeling, it has an effect on how performers feel about the life of a performer and contributes to many people leaving the industry. 
 
Furthermore, veterans of the performing arts tend to develop unhealthy ways of dealing with PPD including alcohol, drug and sexual addiction. 

STRATEGIES 

There are however, some strategies for combatting Post Performance Depression: 
 
PLAN: Now you’re aware of it, you can acknowledge what’s making you feel like this and you can begin to plan to respond to this drop in mood. Developing a planned response will allow you to put it into action after the show/audition.  Make a plan that you can follow from the moment you finish what you’re doing til a few days after the event. If the symptoms persist, see a medical professional. 
 
FIGHTING FATIGUE: People preparing for auditions or performing are most likely fatigued. Both nerves and excitement effect our ability to eat well, rest well and exercise. The FIRST step in combatting PPD is helping our body to fight it, by nourishing it with good food, good sleep and movement. These often go completely out of the window for performers, as they exchange base priorities for performance-related ones. 
 
Eat, rest and move before the event, during (if its a film shoot or run of a show) and after. But careful for excessive eating, sleeping or exercising as a form of self-medication. 

If you take care of these essentials, you will have more energy to resist PPD. 
 
POSITIVE SELF TALK:  We’re unlikely to feel terrible immediately or for a long time, but our thoughts tend to reinforce our negative emotions. So we feed the PPD with negative self-talk like ‘why can’t I just be normal’, ‘I’m such a freak, it’s no big deal, why do I always get so emotional?’,’what’s wrong with me?’
 
This negative self talk will ramp up the negative emotions, giving them a great influence and maintaining them. 
 
One way to deal with this is to create a short positive self-talk tape on your phone and play it when you feel like this. It only needs to be a minute or so. You could say something like:
 
 “I acknowledge that having had a BIG HIGH, that I might feel a BIG LOW. It’s completely normal for that to happen. It happens to most people. While all those chemicals are leaving my body, I will find positive ways to occupy myself, and take care of myself. I will eat, sleep and exercise regularly, but never to excess. I choose to accept how I feel, I’m okay with it, it’s normal to feel like this.”
 
Although this feels a little odd - it works. It creates an alternative story to counter-balance your negative thinking and redresses the balance, reducing the fuel to the negative emotions that make the PPD last longer. 
 
SHARE: Performers experiencing PPD aren’t alone. We all feel it. Talk to each other. We often isolate ourselves away, instead, meet friends, see family, take part in an activity, don’t give the PPD the quiet, darkness it likes to breed in. 
 
REFRAMING:  Take care with how you talk to yourself. We can really make ourselves feel worse by believing what we tell ourselves. “I’ll never have a role like that” is quickly reframed as ’that was an amazing role, I’m so happy I had the chance to play it, I’m looking forwards to my next challenge. Reframe beliefs that can lead to negative emotion and feed PPD. 
 
DISTRACTION: This is a great strategy, give yourself something else to think about. People going into rehearsal for something else often miss the mood drop of PPD. However, we’re not always that fortunate. Plan an adventure, find particular music, an exciting book, an activity that you love or see family you haven’t seen for a while. You may not feel like it, but choosing to help yourself will lessen the impact of the PPD on you. Give yourself something to look forwards to, combatting the negative emotion with positive feelings. 
 
Finally, don’t expect to just be okay, don’t use that expectation to beat yourself with later. PPD is real and if you are willing to take these steps, you can reduce its impact on your life and career.  

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Acting Coach Scotland has an eBook called The 12 Obstacles, which outlines the 12 most common mental obstacles to performing at our best and how to deal with them effectively. Check out the Acting Advice Guides on our website to get your free copy.