Student Blog: Burning Out Part 1: The Personal Journey of a Self-Doubting Actor

While I was on hiatus, I had several moments of self doubt. All of the breakdowns I was having, all of my self worth going out the window, and my depression spiraling all led back to one question:

Am I even good enough for the business?

This is one of the questions I'm sure every actor has at one point or another. Sometimes it's been planted in our heads by teachers, telling us that "someone else is always doing it better," and sometimes it's our own mind. Either way, this self doubt does not serve us, and it only gets in our way, preventing us from doing better and pushing past it. I got stuck with this self doubt for many months, until I started to change my mindset.

We need to reframe the question "am I even good enough?", because it simply does not help you get into a healthy mindset. You bring more than enough to the table. Instead, we should be asking, "who am I?"

When we show people who we are, they often want to get to know us, or they are intrigued by something we wear on our sleeve. Take every opportunity that you can as an actor to showcase who you are. Your website, your headshots, slates for self tapes, your presence in the room, your fashion. Anything is a template for you to show your personality, and that is really what we should be showing. We are real life people with dreams and aspirations, not just clay that other creatives get to mold into whatever they please. We are allowed to be fun, creative, spiritual, and whatever else we wish! Showing this is not a crime, and switching to a personality driven mindset has really changed the way I view the business.

I also realized that I need to look at my symptoms of burnout, depression, and other mental illnesses, and address them in the meantime. Going to weekly therapy has helped me with these feelings, and I always recommend therapy to actors.

I found that I wasn't submitting to many projects, and I began to ask myself: why? I wasn't submitting for two reasons: I was terrified that I wasn't good enough or ready enough to be submitting for projects, and I also thought it was a lot of work. To be clear, filming self tapes and preparing songs for auditions is a lot of work. I decided to make it easier for myself by dedicating space to my craft.

I have had a lot of struggles with my self image and my craft, but I have been able to get over it in a variety of ways. You may want to check out the companion blog to this one, where I talk about some tips and tricks to relieving burnout, avoiding a bad self image, and navigating the business with a personality driven mindset!