The Improv for Anxiety program is designed to help people with mild to moderate anxiety build awareness and skills which help to manage their symptoms in work, home, and social situations. The class is co-led by an improv teacher and a therapist. The program was developed by Unscripted improvisers and teachers in partnership with licensed therapists to practice improv through a therapeutic lens. This class is not therapy and should not replace therapy, but provides an interactive and joyful opportunity to practice applying skills for anxiety management and awareness.
No improv experience or clinical diagnosis for anxiety required to participate. Each class will focus on a theme relevant to managing anxiety through improv principles and play. Class size is limited to 15 participants. Participants must be 18 and over. Registration is non-refundable. Financial assistance is available.
Learn more, and sign up for the next Improv for Anxiety class below
More about the class from Stevie Houtschilt, MD:
“I started taking improv a few years ago just for fun. I was going through a hard time and thought something lighthearted and fun would be helpful. Even though I considered myself a fun and playful person, the usual anxious thoughts would run through my mind during each class – what if I do a bad job? What if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing? What if I do or say something embarrassing or shameful?
These thoughts were not isolated to inside the improv class. Similar thoughts have lived in my head throughout my life as someone with anxiety. As the improv classes went on, I started getting less afraid, less embarrassed, and less concerned with those thoughts – sometimes I was having too much fun to even notice them. Improv became my thee hours a week of special time where I could just have fun and forget about the intense environment at grad school.
But something really cool started to happen – I started noticing I was less bothered by those thoughts when I was outside of the improv class, too. The self-concerned thoughts didn’t disappear, but they became less powerful. At the same time, I noticed myself being more playful in my day to day life, even when it can feel like a cog in the wheel taking orders as a medical student. I found myself paying more attention to details of a conversation, of a person’s mannerism, of the environment and situation around me.
I’m definitely not the first person to notice the benefits of practicing improv outside of the theater. There’s actually some peer-reviewed research on the subject if you want to check out Google Scholar. There is a big overlap between improv curriculum topics and therapeutic principles for anxiety and other mental health conditions. For example, take the foundational concept of improv “Yes, and” – agreeing to the truth of the scene created by you and your scene partners, then adding something to it. “Yes, and” parallels the therapeutic concepts of mindful acceptance and behavioral activation – acknowledging and accepting the truth of how you feel, the thoughts racing in your head, and the facts of a situation, and learning that you can still make a choice and take action. If you have anxiety, overwhelming feelings and thoughts telling you that you can’t or shouldn’t do something may feel paralyzing, so you may think that those feelings must be absent in order to proceed. But in Improv For Anxiety, we intentionally provide a safe space to practice feeling this way and still doing the hard thing anyway.
For a lot of us with anxiety, that’s getting up in front of strangers and saying something that isn’t rehearsed. The fear of judgement, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of doing something embarrassing are all common experiences with people for anxiety. That’s the beauty of having improv games like Top 5 things, where everyone will loudly clap and cheer for you no matter what unplanned thing you say is. In Improv for Anxiety, you get to work on doing the things that scare you, knowing that you’ll be met with acceptance and enthusiasm every step of the way. In addition to an experienced improv teacher, the class also has a trained therapist or facilitator who leads the group in dialogues about anxiety outside and inside of the class, shares helpful anxiety management techniques, and leads reflections about how the exercises each week relate to a theme related to anxiety.
I think that it’s a special thing to hear insights like “I’m learning to trust myself more even when I feel anxious” and - “THERE’s A STRANGE MAN IN MY HOUSE!” in the same classroom. People with anxiety, or any mental health struggle, need spaces where they can feel supported when sharing their experiences and doing the work they need to grow. They also need spaces where they can have fun, meet people, play, and have a good time, without having to worry as much about what others may think of them, since we’re all coming from a similar experience. The cool thing about improv for anxiety is that it is both of those things at the same time
It is quite surreal to be writing this now that I’m in the class again, but this time as one of the teachers. We just wrapped up our July-September session. Each week has a theme that unified a therapeutic concept with improv: “Yes, and”; Mistakes are Gifts; Listening; Play; and Trust. My favorite was Mistakes as Gifts – the lessons resonate with me as a recovering perfectionist, and I think the games are some of the most fun improv exercises I’ve played.
As cheesy as it sounds, I feel so happy and proud thinking about how much our students open up, how they share the ways they feel more capable of facing challenges outside of class, and how they have become more playful in class and in daily life. And even though I’m in a teacher role, I’m still being challenged each class to think about the ways I can apply these concepts in my life.
One of my favorite parts of the class is our ending ritual, which starts with sharing an aha moment from the class and ends with putting our hands in the middle and saying a word or phrase from the class that stood out to us. So I’ll leave you with the following:
There’s a strange man in my house.”