What to do if You’re Scared of Freestyling
Freestyling in pole dance can feel frightening and physically stressful, often driven by fear of failure and harsh self-criticism. This episode offers some practical strategies to cope with that. Drawing on sports psychology, we’ll talk about research (Ceccarelli et al., 2019) showing self-compassion predicts better stress recovery and fewer maladaptive thoughts after recalled sports failure, and use Neff’s (2003) framework of self-compassion: mindfulness (noticing thoughts without over-identifying), common humanity (remembering others struggle too), and self-kindness (treating yourself as you would a friend). We’ll also go through some specific strategies that you can use in the moment to help cultivate more self-compassion.
Citations:
Bluth, K., Gaylord, S. A., Campo, R. A., Mullarkey, M. C., and Hobbs, L. 2016. Making friends with yourself: a mixed methods pilot study of a mindful self-compassion program for adolescents. Mindfulness. 7:479–92. doi: 10.1007/s12671-015-0476-6
Ceccarelli, L. A., Giuliano, R. J., Glazebrook, C. M., & Strachan, S. M. (2019). Self-compassion and psycho-physiological recovery from recalled sport failure. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1564.
Neff, K. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and identity, 2(2), 85-101.
Chapters:
00:00 Freestyle Fear Is Real
00:57 Coach Disclaimer And Shoutouts
01:48 Why We Fear Failure
04:13 Research On Self Compassion
06:19 What is Self Compassion?
07:25 Mindfulness And Meditation
10:55 Common Humanity And Community
13:06 Self Kindness In Practice
14:51 Tools To Calm And Reset
17:53 Final Encouragement And Wrap Up
Transcript:
Freestyling can be scary. And I, I don't want to sugarcoat it. I know this is something that a lot of people experience. I know when I was first starting to freestyle, when it was gonna be my turn to get up and do things, I'd start sweating. I got really nervous. I'd feel like I was gonna throw up, and I just sort of, like, ugh, you know, screwed up my eyes and pushed through and did it anyways.
And since that point, I've learned, uh, a lot about freestyling, a lot about, my own body, what I like and what I don't like but also a lot about how to deal with the fear that kept me from freestyling and how to help other people through that as well,
Because I think it would be disingenuous to be like, "Oh, you just allow yourself to open up to the music. And for everyone it's this wonderful, organic experience. It just sort of happens, and there's no fear, and there's no struggle." That shit's hard. It's hard, and it's scary. But I'm gonna tell you today some really practical tips and tricks that can help you get over that fear.
And before we get into it, a little disclaimer, I am not a psychiatrist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. This is in no way mental health treatment. Uh, this is me providing strategies that might be helpful to you as a pole dancer in my capacity as a pole coach.
If you are really struggling with any of these things in a way that is negatively affecting your quality of life, I'd recommend reaching out to a mental health professional. With that said, before we get into some of the research, some of the studies, you know what time it is.
Gotta say shout out to my members, uh, in Science of Slink, all my pole nerds out there who are, are joining me every week for conditioning, for pole technique, for, of course, freestyle, because freestyle is really the heart of my studio.
Uh, it's really what everything that I'm doing in my curriculum is designed to help support. So, shout out to y'all. Y'all are the best. Uh, and if you want to join us I never close the doors. You're adults. You know when your schedule works and when it doesn't. Uh, the scienceofslink.com if you want more information.
But let's hop right in. So freestyling is scary, And from talking with a lot of people who are new to freestyle and are interested in freestyle over the years, a really common theme I've noticed in this this fear is fear of doing a bad job, right?
Fear of failure, fear of being like, "Okay, I'm gonna try and freestyle. I'm gonna be very vulnerable, and I'm going to show my own movement that I'm coming up with. What if people don't like it? Uh, what if I'm rejected? What if I do something and it's bad," right?
So there's this really strong through line of fear of failure that's keeping folks from trying freestyle or that, you know, once they've done a freestyle, you know, the little like nimmy dimmity dip dip, those sort of brain gremlins are like, "Oh, you did a bad job. You didn't do as many tricks as we wanted," right? "Oh, you, there was a trick we tried to do, and you didn't do a good job of it," blah, blah, blah. That sort of, um, internal self-monologue that's really negative, that's really picking things apart.
Uh, fortunately, we don't have to live like this.
Uh, and again, if this is something that you do really struggle with day to day and it's negatively affecting your life, talk to a mental health professional. But specifically for athletes, uh, there is some research that strongly suggests that one of the things that is most strongly correlated with being able to have failures...
Because let's be honest, we're all gonna try a trick that's not gonna work out in a freestyle, right? We're all gonna pick a song and then freestyle to it and be like, "Oh, actually, I thought this was gonna feel good, and it felt bad, and I didn't like that," right? If you keep doing it, if you keep pushing the envelope, there are just going to be times where you try to do it, and it does not feel the way that you expected it to, and there's gonna be disappointment around that.
That is totally normal. Nobody's freestyle feels good all the time. Uh, and if they tell you it does either they are, you know, psychologically a, an extreme outlier, or they are not being entirely truthful with you. Probably one of those two. But it's gonna happen, right? How do we prepare ourselves for it to happen so that we can keep going, so we can find those freestyles that do feel really amazing, that we do really enjoy, that we are trying to reach for?
And when we're thinking back on, on what we've done, we can be really gentle with ourselves and not, you know, send ourselves spiraling and have like a big buildup of really negative feelings. and the answer is self-compassion. So I'll talk a little bit more about what self-compassion is. Uh, but first let's talk about w- how it relates to handling the stress of, of failure, of doing a bad job.
So the first study I wanna talk about today is from 2019 Ceccarelli et al. Self-Compassion and Psychophysiological Recovery from Recalled Sports Failure. So basically what they did was they had people hooked up, and they were looking at a bunch of different measures of stress, including heart rate variability, which is a measure that can change quite rapidly in, uh, in reaction to stressful stimuli.
Uh, and what they did was they had people think about a time when they were doing their sport, and they biffed it. They failed. And then they looked at how stressed they were, they looked at how easily they recovered from stress, um, and then they looked at sort of like how much it affected them and they also did a bunch of psychological batteries and testing of different qualities, and in particularly looking at self-compassion.
And what they found was that an athlete's level of self-compassion predicted their, uh, heart rate variability reactivity to the stress induction.
So the less self-compassion an athlete had, the more stressful it was for them to think about their behaviors, their failures. And not only that higher self-cr- compassion also predicted, uh, adapted behavioral reactions, so being able to change things in the moment and change the behavior and outcome.
And also was negatively, uh, correlated with maladaptive thoughts and negative affect. So basically the athletes that had lower self-compassion also had more thoughts that just really weren't helpful for them, really weren't helping them in the situation. Uh, and also they felt worse, right?
Affect is like emotion, right? Positive affect is like joy, delight. Negative affect is like sadness, anger, things that aren't necessarily, uh, as good to feel. And these were pretty strong correlations. So what can this tell us as pole dancers? Like I mentioned, if we're trying stuff, if we're pushing our limits, we are gonna fail.
How can we help react a little bit better in the moment when we're like, "Oh, no, I'm too slippery, it's not happening," right? And then also afterwards, thinking back on it and being like, "Oh, man, that one dance, I was really slippery." Uh, helping to cultivate greater self-compassion could help with that, both in the moment, you know, when we're sort of thinking back on it later, and then as we're preparing to dance again.
So what is self-compassion? How do we get more of it? That sounds great. I'd like a slice of that pie. Me too. And this is something that I myself am also actively working on. so a really commonly used framework for self-compassion is by Neff 2003, Self and Identity: uh, Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Towards Oneself, and it's made up of three main components.
Uh, so the first is, and I think this is probably when people are just sort of talking about self-compassion, this is what they mean. Uh, but self-kindness, being kind and understanding towards oneself in instances of pain or failure, rather than being harshly self-critical.
Common humanity, right? You're not the only person who's ever been slippery. You're not the only person who's ever tried to do a trick in a freestyle and failed. You're not the only one person who's picked a song and been like, "Oh, it actually wasn't as good as I thought it was gonna be." Right? That sort of thing. Uh, perceiving one's experiences as part of a larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating.
And then finally, mindfulness. And I'm sure you've heard this word before, uh, but specifically in this context, holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them. So really three facets here, and we're gonna talk about them in reverse order, starting with mindfulness.
I know everyone's talking about mindfulness all the time, but really it's the skill of being able to, take a step back and notice your thoughts, right? So if you've heard about, uh, metacognition, right? Or thinking about thinking, noticing what is happening in your brain and that it is happening in your brain, right?
So I'm somebody who has a very busy brain, like a lot of us, right? I'm constantly thinking things. I have, uh, a pretty rich inner monologue. I'm also one of those people whose inner monologue is linguistic for the most part. Like I, you know, I am talking to myself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in my head all the time.
Uh, and mindfulness means noticing that that's happening and noticing what those thoughts are, and being like, "Oh, okay, that's a thought that's happening in my head. It's not necessarily a thing that is true in the real world," right? So a great example of this is, uh, you know, I'm like everybody. My capacity changes, my flexibility changes, my strength changes, right?
And I might have one day where I'm working on a trick that, you know, last week I could kinda do, and this week I just can't do. Uh, and I might start to spiral and be like, "Oh man, I'm actually bad at pole tricks. What am I doing teaching these? I'm a failure. Oh, no," right? I think we've all had that sort of like, you know, you have a bad class, and you sort of spiral about it afterwards. And if you don't, you probably don't need this. You probably can stop listening now, 'cause you've already got the skills that we're gonna be talking about. Uh, but it's really helpful to me and be, be like, "Ah, these are the thoughts that I'm having in my head," right? These are a secondary layer of reactions, uh, and cognition that I'm having about the world.
This is not necessarily an inalienable truth of the world itself, right? If I have one bad pole class, that doesn't make me not a pole dancer somehow, right? It doesn't make me inherently a failure if I fail to do something. I am decoupling, right, the sense of identity from whatever it is that I happen to be thinking at the moment, right? I am not my thoughts.
And this is one of those things where I hate to say it, everyone who's like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, meditation." Meditation, it helps. It helps. Uh, and meditation is just the process of sitting and observing your own thoughts, right? Working on the skill of metacognition, working on the skill of being like, "Oh yeah, I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I'm thinking that." And I would highly recommend guided meditation especially for anyone who has any sort of PTSD, CPST. If you've had any sort of stressful, traumatic events in your past, and I know that's true for a lot of us unguided meditation can trigger flashbacks. I did not know this, and, uh, for years, I thought that meditation was horrific. I didn't know why anyone would just, like, sit down, have waking nightmares for 15 minutes, and then stand up and go about their day. And like, every so often I'd try it, 'cause people would be like, "Oh, it really helps," and I'd be like, "This doesn't help." "This is awful. Why would anyone do this?"
Guided meditation, very, very helpful. So there's actually a, a free app out of Australia called Smiling Mind that I like to use. There's a lot of different options, lots of people who guide things.
Um, I've talked to you about previously the best possible world or best possible self-guided meditations that can help you, uh, develop more optimism and more, you know, positive affect when thinking about the future, so that might be an option. Guided breathing exercises, all of that can help.
But basically what you're training yourself to do is notice that you are thinking and what you are thinking to build the skill of mindfulness, which is one part of this, this self-compassion bubble.
And the other, another part of the self-compassion bubble, like I mentioned, is common humanity, right? I think, uh, especially for those of us who are training at home alone, uh, right, we're not necessarily in the room with someone else, we may not be doing classes live.
I like to do classes live personally, but you may be working on a recording, uh, and it can be really easy to feel isolated and alone and be like, "Oh, I'm the only person who's ever had to go through this," right? And you're not, right? It can be so, so helpful and so, so nurturing to remember like, oh yeah, other people have had this exact same experience, right?
Other people have experienced, you know, the fear of freestyling in the exact same way, like me, I certainly have. Uh, and if no one's ever told you that before I'm telling you now, right? Uh, I, I didn't sort of float into the doors of the pole studio and immediately know how to freestyle and never have any bad thoughts or feelings about it.
I had both bad thoughts and feelings, but I kept showing up, uh, because every so often I'd have, like, a dance and I was like, "Oh, that was really fun. I actually want more of that." Uh, and also I'm just a very pig-headed, bloody-minded person. I'm just very stubborn, so I kept showing up even though I didn't always have the best time.
And, uh, I think if I had been better at placing my experiences within the sort of realm of the experiences of other people around me, it would have been really helpful. There are very, very few things that we've done in life that we are the only ones who have ever done, right? That we are the only ones who have ever experienced.
I mean, hell, I'm not the only pole dancer with a PhD from Virginia who started a virtual pole studio, right? Like, I... No unique experiences, right? So placing your own experiences inside this idea of like, "Oh, yeah, other people struggle with this same shit," right?
Like I am not the special unique sufferer, and, and my bad time is uniquely bad and uniquely worse than everybody else's bad time. Other people are struggling too. Uh, and it can be really helpful to find community with those folks and, you know, share experiences and be like, "Yeah, are you struggling with this? I'm struggling with this. Yeah? Yeah." So seeking out community, finding people especially on Instagram. Remember those are folks' highlight reels. Those are, like, the best 10 seconds of their training that week. It doesn't mean there wasn't struggle. It doesn't mean it wasn't hard. Um, it just means that that's what they're choosing to share, right?
Uh, and then finally we get to self-kindness, which I think can be really challenging for a lot of folks. And again being kind and understanding towards yourself. And something that, that was really helpful for me here is to compare the way that I was treating myself and the way that I was treating other people, right?
Uh, because I would certainly say things to myself in the quiet of my head that I would never, ever say to another human being on Earth, right? I was being actively unkind to myself. Uh, if a teacher talked to a student the way that I was talking to myself we'd have words. We'd have words. So for me taking a moment, stepping back, and being like, "Hold up, you are not treating yourself as nicely as you would treat other people" was really helpful at helping me be like, "Oh yeah, maybe I should be a little nicer to myself," right? Uh, helping to, to sort of shift that, that mindset a little bit.
And I will say all of these things, you know, mindfulness, becoming more aware of my own thoughts, uh, sense of common humanity, building an understanding that other people were struggling with the exact same things that I was struggling with, self-kindness, being nice to myself it's an ongoing process.
They're all things that I'm still actively currently working on. But as I've gotten better at them, I've also gotten better and better at handling it when I do something that doesn't turn out the way that I want it to turn out, right? When I make mistakes, because I have developed these skills and I have more self-compassion than I did, I don't spiral about them for a week, right?
Uh, I'm like, "Okay. Yeah, that happened. Couple of wheel aggress. I'm not stressed about it, but I'm less stressed about it," and then I can go on with my day. So that can be really helpful.
So some other specific things that you might try out, so these are from Bluth 2016.
Flipping the thing that I was talking about earlier where I'm like, "Oh, I would never say this to somebody else." What would you say to someone else who was struggling in the way that you're struggling right now, right?
Uh, writing down, "Hey, I'm so sorry, you picked a song and you didn't actually enjoy dancing to it. That sucks. Uh, you know, there's other songs. Next time you're gonna kill it. Think about all the times that you picked great songs. People enjoy your dance anyway." All the things that you'd say to a friend to help support them going through this imagining that person, writing them down, and then reading them back to yourself can be really helpful.
Self-touch, gentle self-touch can be really nice. Uh, I know this is something that, uh, I actually just tend to do as part of my dance is, you know, do some gentle, compassionate self-touch. Eh, sometimes compassion is not the word that I would use, but enjoyable, let's put it that way. Uh, self-touch can be a, a really nice way to connect with your body, to connect with your physical self.
You can work on having, you know, little catchphrases, little things that you say to yourself. Uh, so especially when I'm about to try something really hard, I have like a little... I give myself a little pep talk and I'm like, "All right, you've got this. You're strong, you're powerful, you're courageous," Having something like that to like help yourself get hyped up and then also like, you know, if it doesn't go the way that you like it, to help yourself be like, "Hey, you showed up, you tried your best, and that's really what matters," right?
Whatever it is that's gonna help you be like, "Hey, other people also struggle. I'm being kind to myself, uh, and you know, any negative thoughts that I'm thinking are just that, negative thoughts that you're thinking, and they will eventually pass."
Also, uh, and this is a classic meditation technique, paying attention to your breath.
Uh, something that I will do a lot is I will count my inhales and my exhales, uh, and I will have five full breaths, five inhales, five exhales count to 10, start again. So really just focusing on noticing your breath, slowing down, bringing your attention to it. Um, I've mentioned in class sometimes this almost feels like pulling a balloon in by a string and like getting all my, my loose thoughts and trying to like shove them back into my head and bring them back into my body, so that can be very helpful.
Also body scans, so thinking about all the different places on your body. Um, we'll do this sometimes in my Feel Good Flex classes, particularly at the end when we're cooling down. I like to go toes up. Some people like to go head down. I don't think it matters particularly, but like noticing every part of your body and being like, "Yeah, okay, I got a body. It's a good body. All bodies are good bodies, uh, and this, this is where my bits are today," can be very helpful.
Uh, and you know, if you are, you know, really freaking out take a break, right? If you're in a physical pole space, maybe you step out of the room. If you're in a virtual class, maybe you turn off the camera, uh, you know, take a drink of water, take some deep breaths, try a body scan, some self-touch, you know, saying your, your self-compassion phrases for yourself.
Give yourself a moment to get out of the stressful situation, reconnect with yourself, and then, you know, when you're ready, get back into it.
I know it's hard. I know we all have to deal with negative feelings, uh, as part of trying new things, right? That's just how being human works. Doing new shit's scary. But hopefully I've given you some tips and tricks today, some things that you can think about, some tools you can have in your tool bag, uh, and the next time you're like, "Oh, I'm kind of freaking out. What did Rosy say?" Other people have freaked out before. Whatever you're worried about, you're not alone, right? You should be nice to yourself. Treat yourself like a good friend. Um, and then, oh, these are just thoughts. The thoughts will pass. Uh, feel free to use me as your, you know, shoulder angel/helpful ghost if that is helpful for you.
Uh, that's all I got for you today, uh, some little, little sports psychology tips to think about. Again, if you're really, really struggling with this, talk with a, a mental health provider. They're gonna be able to help you out more. This is just, like, a nice little mental health, uh, bag to stick in your pole bag along with your, you know, your shoes and your grip and whatever, uh, and I hope they're helpful to you.
So thanks so much for joining me today. All the citations are down there in the comments. You can check 'em out if you wanna read more. Uh, it's a really interesting area of research that you can definitely spend some more time digging into if this is something that interests you. Uh, and I look forward to talking with you in a couple weeks.
Bye.
