How well do you know your own strength, how tough are you, do you push yourself and do you sacrifice yourself when supporting others?.
Have attached this reading specifically reaching out to dancers who may experience this, I found it an interesting source myself whilst studying at University. Got to love reading relatable sources.
Leaving home and going to University is not an easy adjustment especially if you see yourself as a home bird.
I have found it a whirlwind of a rollercoaster, fun but also full of chaos and ranges of opinions.
How easy is it to remain focused on yourself and your own journey. People, especially in a dancers environment can push those who are driven to breaking point. Throughout reflection as a dancer with autism, I want to target the feeling of anxiety and depression within dancers. Personally, I have always blamed myself in situations due to feeling like an outsider.
Anxiety is such a weird sensation of a feeling, it can be brought on by others, stressful / overwhelming situations, struggling to understand your surroundings etc.. It is basically when someone experiences an increase in fear, worry and restlessness. I think there needs to be more support in education environments for those who suffer with anxiety, lost their voice due to change and adjustment and not being able to make it through those scary classroom doors. Through those doors, we know it will not be peaceful. Overstimulation was a common classroom experience for me.
Anxiety can cause the feeling of unsettlement, sickness, rise or fall in temperature causing some to shiver and shake. This is a really good way to feel to feel like your body has had a workout!. Shaking compulsively is very exhausting. I have experienced many classes like this and not let it stop me. I just wish someone understood what was going on, my verbal communication is sometimes more articulate than other times and I would have liked to not go through the episodes alone. I would experience feeling hot, cold, clammy hands, faint (known as physical response to emotional triggers), change in my breathing, blood pressure drop, huge head pain like a pressure like something has fallen on my head and the body feeling numb with pins and needles.
Anxiety, in particular when experiencing dizziness and trembling, makes carrying out tasks much harder than needed. I hate the response of you will be fine and the expectation to continue as normal when clearly you are not in a good state. It is not hard to offer support to others to settle them. Avoidance of situations is a very easy option, this is hard to battle with when you want to overcome a fear. When experiencing a panic attack, being with a group of people can make the person feel much worse and not create a good environment for calming down in.
I think education systems should provide more spaces where pupils, students and staff can go to calm down or feel at ease that there is someone they can go to to help them rationalise whatever has caused the rise in anxiety. When I was going through anxiety attacks, all I wanted to do was carry on as I am a dedicated hard worker who never missed classes - despite experiencing the majority of the symptoms outlined above. I basically got very good at masking them on the whole and not really feeling able to be myself due to the worry of judgement. Previous experiences with having an autism diagnosis as well, does cause my anxiety levels to spike at times. Heightened stressful working environments can cause terrible health problems and body reactions, for example heart attacks, chronic pain, trouble looking after oneself (eating and drinking enough) and becoming poorly more often. It is like being in a depressive state, our bodies can only handle so much stress or take poor treatment from others so long until they hit breaking point - I call these outbursts. I refer to happy moments, when the happy endorphins which releases dopamine cause what I like to think of having starburst (full of colour and flavour) moments
. We want to feel more of these right!!. I experience very high levels of energy that needs releasing day to day to maintain at neutral / optimum or 'normal' levels of function.
My head space sometimes wanders into the clouds, feeling complete disassociation from society. How many of us can really discuss this?. No, because we are trained to fight on and keep pushing because that is what we feel we must do or we are a failure (fight or flight mode i.e. survival mode). No you are not a failure, this thinking is wrong. Above all, your health is priority. No one can take care of you or knows you better than yourself. Your loved ones do, but everyone has things they keep to themselves due to embarrassment of what will they think of me. The thing is not to care about this, as everyone is living their own lives and that is why it is important to know who you refer to as safe people (who are that support network) and what is it that you need. I have got much better since being at University in not letting people walk all over me. I won't stand for being treated like I am retarded, stupid or do not understand or the worst like I am not all there. This shows complete lack of understanding and compassion. Finding groups with similar experiences to yours can feel very reassuring in such a big diverse world.
Being stressed automatically causes disruption between those complicated things called emotions, I find using colours and gestures very helpful in communicating this. It also makes it so much harder to process any information, my brain often reaches full capacity and because it is not able to filter out unneeded information it causes body collapses instead. You cannot overcharge a battery and if you blow up a balloon too much well you guessed it POP!!. My brain needs several plasters, as too much information makes it sting, feeling out of control and cannot figure out what you are feeling. This really makes me frustrated and angry as I would not chose to experience this. If there was more understanding towards this, I would feel like it is okay but I have always felt like a problem. Do you ever try asking for things in so many different ways, that in the end you just give up....I have never been able to put my trust in anyone else, as I do not want to find myself in a situation I cannot get myself out of. I was filled with great fear when having to touch others in contact improvisation classes. I wanted to do it and it did not go without many tears, it helped me get through by working with the same person who really knew me and I could sense working efficiently.
With anxiety, some people may feel the constant need to avoid certain conversations or interactions as a form of self protection. Even if your environment is perfectly safe but you have experienced trauma, this can cause the mind to experience flashbacks and behave abnormally to feel comforted or stop the vision. These visions can make one analyse themselves in particular their faults, for example I am a bad horrible person, it's all my fault and I don't like the way I look etc....When we feel our control has been taken away in a situation, we have the control to take it out on others or our own bodies. Neither is advisable.
I think everyone in some respect, experiences different forms of anxiety and or been through a traumatic event. This I feel is a very important topic that can impact every aspect of one's life. How can we work to heal our minds, I use dance to help settle and heal my mind and nothing is ever straightforward or that word 'perfect' (which I do not like because nothing is or has to be).
Always think one foot in front of the other and think deal with one day at a time. How can more people be helped to live in the moment?. Ups and downs are part of life.