Improv Helped Me Come Home To Myself w/ Jennifer Tyler
“I had subconsciously lived with fear and anxiety for so long in my life that I thought it was just who I was.”
As part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 – which runs from 10-16 May – we’ve
commissioned a mini series of blog posts from writers in our improv community, in the UK
and internationally, who are living with anxiety, on the ways improv has improved their
mental health.
**Jennifer is a London-based actor, musical/sketch comedian and teaching artist (pronouns: they/them). They trained as an actor at Guildford School of Acting and the University of East Anglia and have trained in improvisation primarily with The Free Association, as well as additional workshops with The Second City, The Groundlings and The Maydays.
FREEZE!!!
Who remembers this childhood drama game? It was my first window into the world of improvisation and I LOVED it. I remember crying with laughter as we took turns freezing the action of the scene, replacing one performer and then launching into a brand new scene inspired by the frozen picture. I have a vague recollection of getting my first big laugh in a scene involving a baby in a washing machine and I thought YES! I want to do more of this! (Improv, not putting babies in washing machines!) I had no idea back then how pivotal improv would become for my health and happiness as an adult.
More glimpses into improv emerged as I grew up through my acting training, my love of American TV comedy, which led to discovering the epic American improv comedy scene, and then through a chance meeting at the end of 2015 with Graham Dickson, founder of The Free Association – a comedy school teaching their spin on the American style of long-form improv HERE. IN. LONDON! THE DREAM!! Before I knew it, I had hopped, skipped and jumped into my first improv comedy class!
Now, if I finished there, this blog could read as incredibly short and incredibly positive, a bit like me! I’m actually quite tall but the positivity thing is right on the money. At least it was. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an optimistic bouncy ball a lot of the time, it’s just not the totality of me as I once presented it to be…back when my improv story took a very surprising turn…
I started training at the FA in the early months of 2016. I was having a lot of fun but as the weeks went on, I was also finding it much more challenging and scary than I had anticipated. I’d been performing all of my life and had always been told I had a natural flair for comedy, but something was different about this process that I hadn’t quite experienced before. I was being asked to bring MYSELF to the stage. MY life experience, MY words and ideas, my natural impulses as ME. When asked to start monologuing with strong personal opinions, I not only had a blank, I found myself panicking, cowering inwardly - always with that positive smile on the exterior…
As a performer, I had always hidden behind my characters, having so much confidence in them and much less assurance in myself underneath. Any self-confidence I had was deteriorating more as I got older and a wealth of anxiety was rising higher to the surface. At around the same time as beginning FA training in early 2016, I had found myself sobbing uncontrollably on the sofa, utterly exhausted again (turns out chronic anxiety is pretty darn tiring!), and had finally rung up the GP to ask for mental health support. After a wait, I entered into a 6 week course of CBT, after which, at that time, I believed I was cured! I was now free to live my life with no anxiety ever again! I was all better! Thanks therapy!...Turns out this is a common trait of mine, to intellectualise my pain away and pretend I’m OK when I’m not, and actually I was still far from OK…
Cut to 2017 and I’m back in an FA improv class, now midway through Level 3 (what was then known as 2B!)! I am also waiting for therapy again. My anxiety had spiralled into depression and into obsessive compulsive thoughts that were plaguing my life. And nowhere is the impact of this on my life more starkly revealed to me than halfway through this improv course. I am so excited to be there but I am completely locked inside my own head. I can barely hear what the teacher or my colleagues are saying. And as improv enthusiasts know, listening is the key ingredient to the success and joy of the art form. It was becoming distressingly evident to me that the more I lived in the ever-growing angst in my head (“oh no I messed that up! Don’t say that, that’s stupid, say this! Am I letting everyone down? Am I a burden, an obstruction? I can’t get out of my head and have no idea what was just said, and I feel so sad, so ashamed of myself, and so isolated and scared, why am I like this, I hate myself…”) the less I could express myself in class, the less I could bond with the group mind, and the more stress filled my body, heart and mind, clogging up my ability to feel free and excited to live in the present moment.
And this is when it really hit me properly. I had subconsciously lived with fear and anxiety for so long in my life that I thought it was just who I was. I didn’t see the full extent of how much I was suffering until I was asked to really reveal myself in such a free and spontaneous way. I had no idea how much mental control I was exerting over the rest of my day-to-day life and I had never seen before the true extent of my chronically low self-esteem. Performing had always been a place of emotional freedom for me and an escape from the realities of life. A safe space to live freely - a made-up scripted world where you can express big emotions and experience high stake situations through another character without unpredictable consequences. But even that area of freedom in my life was starting to get distressingly restricted. And it was the first time, halfway through this improv course, that I took seriously the idea that I was very unwell, and needed help.
I have been in and out of therapy ever since - listening within for cries for help and trying to address them honestly and with compassion. This year, I went on antidepressants for the first time and they have helped a great deal alongside talking therapy. And even though I’ve taken breaks, I have always come back to improv.
Improv is the absolute antithesis to my anxiety. When anxiety tells me to overthink everything and paralyses me in fear, improv reminds me to trust my instincts, try things out and be constantly learning and growing. When anxiety tells me to doubt myself and judge myself, improv reminds me to celebrate and accept myself, just as I am in this moment. When I am locked in my head with doubt, improv reminds me that releasing myself into the present moment is just that – my release. The world of improv shows me that a brighter world is possible in my own life. It provides a microcosm of safety and support where participants have each other’s back, cheering each other on whilst we delve into the unknown together and creatively build worlds as a team. We grow each other’s ideas and assert our own ideas, all of our individual flairs valued and coming together to build something out of nothing – “mistakes” becoming growth opportunities rather than something to fear. Uncertainty is met with communal joy and curiosity rather than dread and we cultivate trust in ourselves and each other that no matter what, we will get through it all together and have as much fun as we can in the process!
I have met the most wonderful people through improv, from all different walks of life. I ended up doing one FA level a year, apart from 2017 when I did two levels back-to-back, and the benefit of this was that, not only could I take the time to grow and nurture myself as a human being between classes, but I could also meet and play with a whole new group of people each time I returned. I have learnt so much from every single person I’ve met and have such fond memories of us all becoming braver together through each course, with so much laughter along the way. In my final Level 5 course in 2019, my classmates and I formed a team, Dirty Picnic, and we have been practising and performing ever since, with deep friendships formed over pub laughs and chats (another great part of the improv journey!) I haven’t been very open with my teachers or colleagues about how mentally difficult and personally upheaving this improv journey has been for me. I guess this is the start! Whether they were aware or not, everyone has been continuously kind, supportive and encouraging, and that has helped me become braver, more grounded and more able to bring my authentic self to the room.
This journey has fed into creating my own art too. I wrote my first comedy song on the way to one of those Level 3 improv classes, when I was so frustrated at my anxiety that I tried to battle it with my two favourite things, music and comedy – and it helped! Two years later and I am taking my first musical comedy solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe 2019. Cut to 2020 and I’m making a comedy song called “Sitting With My Feelings”, filmed in lockdown and showcased through the Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival. Following my creative impulses in a vulnerable, truthful way has been enormously improved by taking improv classes. Improv has improved my work as an actor hugely too, which now has a base in a much more self-assured and self-aware self.
But most importantly, improv helped me “come home to myself”. It inspired me to look within and nurture my inner world with love, interest and compassion, allowing me to respond to the world around me with more freedom, joy and authenticity. Important disclaimer: Improv is NOT therapy! Like many, I hope for and continue to advocate for more widely available mental health support, and also for more open dialogue throughout society so we can know we are not alone. This blog also isn’t me saying “I’m now completely fine! Woohoo! Thank you improv!” as I sing the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend classic “We’ll Never Have Problems Again!”, dancing off into the distance! I now know life is a long meandering journey of very small steps of growth, from an evolving place of self-love and self-acceptance, and I will continue to walk (and dance!) the journey with play and fun as my sidekicks, embracing the beautiful messiness of life with the amazing, diverse, endlessly evolving improv community I feel honoured to have by my side. In the improv community, we all have each other’s backs and now, each day, I strive to have my own back too.
If you are struggling with your mental health, you are not alone. You can find help and support at MIND – their confidential infoline is 0300 123 3393, CALM or you can visit this NHS Page for a list of other mental health charities, organisations and support groups for urgent help.
If you want to hear more about our improv classes - click here for info on our next term! We offer diversity scholarships for every level, so money is no object.
If you have an interesting story on how improv has helped or is helping you in the real world, please complete the form at www.thefreeassociation.co.uk/improv-in-real-life
