On Beating Yourself Up

I started tap lessons this week. It's fun, because I've always liked watching tap and it seemed like the perfect dance genre to start with when you're as out of shape as a pile of Play-Doh--which I am. I'm pretty good at rhythm too, and I liked the idea of my feet becoming little drummers. It's a useful skill in performance, and I need to gather as many of those as I can, so I figured: why not?

It had been awhile since I was in a dance class, and I had forgotten what made me so afraid of them until I stepped into the room: the giant mirror.

It's not like I'm normally afraid of mirrors, but there's something very different about staring into a mirror by yourself at home then there is when staring into one with a classroom full of people. At home, there's nothing to compare yourself to, and I know what I look like, I'm used to it. But in a room with other people, I inevitably start judging myself, not just about how I look but about how I dance. I feel awkward, sweaty, and fat, and that's pretty rough for a person who has a guilty compulsion to be the most talented person in the room.

Being in the room took me back to my first dance class in college: an hour-and-a-half long modern class with twenty runway models and me, the three-legged pig in the sweats. Now, in both of these classes, it's not like anyone was working to make me feel this way. Both of the instructors were exceedingly nice, patient, and encouraging. None of the other students were even paying attention to me, which was ideal. But again, my mind goes into overdrive because I'm uncomfortable, unbalanced, and desperately trying to keep up with only about a 30% success rate. And it wasn't the dancing, I know that, because when I focus on the dancing, I let go a little bit and I really enjoy myself, whether or not I'm getting the steps right.

But then I glance in the mirror, and my reflection does not reflect the way I think I look, or the way I feel.

It reminds me that even though, inside, I feel like I could be anything--an ingenue, a ringmaster, a wicked witch, an action-hero bad-ass--that's not how other people see me. Which is bullshit, not only because I don't actually know how other people see me, but because I allow myself to think and be affected by thoughts like that. As if these thoughts should have any control over the way I present myself.

But they do. I see my reflection, and then I get stuck in my head, and then I'm trying to think of a solution, and then I stop actually trying to dance, and then I beat myself up, and then I dance even worse, and on and on and on in a relentless circle until I find myself at home, crying about what I'll never be. Which is also bullshit, because not only do I not know that I'll never be a good dancer, or an ingenue, or a ringmaster, or a wicked witch, or an action-hero bad-ass, but it's not like telling myself, "I can't do these things," will actually make me feel, or do, any better.

So a word to the self-haters like me: stop beating yourself up.

This seems like a simple idea, and my friends who went to college with me will probably remember a particular professor who would say these words to someone at least once a week. It's not new information. It's not ground-breaking advice...unless you actually follow it, which is much, much easier said than done.

But it is the kind of advice you need to hear again, every so often. Because it never hurts to be reminded.