EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL WELLBEING

The pressures for those who work in the performing arts are unique. No other business requires you to inhabit another world so completely. The hours we work, the dislocation from family and friends when on tour, the speed with which we need to create close, creative work relationships and then lose them for the next piece of work, is unique to the performing arts. It is at turns exhilarating and exhausting.

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We need to be robust and resilient to manage this and be ready for next audience or audition. We need to know ourselves well and feel secure in who we are to successfully move in and out of these other worlds, and to maintain the ability to be motivated to be creative.

Protective factors for good mental and emotional wellbeing include the ability to understand and process difficult, and uncomfortable, emotions and thoughts in a healthy way. 

A belief in one's self value and the ability to overcome challenges whilst maintaining creativity, is critical when working in an environment where so much is asked of the individual's emotional and mental flexibility; where work and financial stability is precarious, where work groups connect intimately for an intense period and then break away and where the inner critic's presence is matched only by the external critics.

It is essential that workers in the performing arts are robust and have reliable sources of support to ensure that they do not become a statistic or a headline. Creativity-sensitive counselling will do this by helping you to rework past and current experiences that lead to vulnerability and impede creativity. Counselling will support and nurture you to thrive in the psychologically challenging environment that is the performing arts sector.

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Counselling supports us to explore what isn't working, to learn how hold on to a more secure robust self and to stay resilient and creative whilst we make those changes.