Don't laugh! Therapy helps in many ways, but you probably never thought it could help your voiceover business too! Gabby explains the different way therapy is extremely helpful and also talks about other techniques you can use to have a better understanding of the "acting" in voice acting.
How Therapy can make you a better Voice Actor - 5:44
Doctor: So tell me how you’re feeling.
Patient: I don't know, Doc. I'm not doing so great.
Doctor: Would you care to elaborate?
Patient: I just, I just, it’s work, you know. I just feel like I'm always pretending to be someone I'm not, and I'm always asked to be someone else, and I feel like most of the time I'm just talking to myself. Do you know what I mean?
Doctor: I think I know exactly how you feel.
Hey, it’s Gabby. Thanks for joining me. So why am I talking to myself? Well, because as a voice actor, I talk to myself all day, every day. That's kind of the nature of what we do. And sometimes people forget that it can be a very, very isolated job. It can almost drive you a little bit mad. It can make us all feel a little bit crazy. I mean, come on, we’re in a little padded room by ourselves most of the day. But more importantly as voice actors, we spent an awful lot of time in this isolation having to connect with other people, being expected to use our acting skills to communicate emotionally with others. This can be challenging, and sometimes we can feel like we’ve hit a wall, and it can feel like our acting abilities aren't progressing, and maybe you don't know why.
So I'm going to tell you what’s worked for me and what’s worked for a lot of other voice actors too. Therapy. Don't laugh. [laughs] I'm not joking when I say this. You see, there's a lot that voiceover and psychology have in common. Really the acting arts and psychology, because psychology is nothing more than the study of thoughts and emotions and feelings, and acting is using your skills as a communicator to communicate thoughts, the actions and feelings. So they’re very intrinsically tied. And it’s really, really important that actors do everything possible to not only be in touch with their own feelings, but to understand what makes other people tick and how their emotions affect them. So a couple of suggestions for you.
Number one, if you’ve never into a therapist, it’s actually really, really helpful. Therapy can in a lot of ways improve our abilities as an actor. So I highly recommend that. Number two, there is specific types of therapies that you can research on your own and look in to. One that’s very, very common is called CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. And CBT is all about learning how to understand and make sense of your own emotions based on your experiences and your individual viewpoints. And it’s very, very effective not only at helping you to work through some issues you might have but also to understand again where other people are coming from them and how to better connect with them. Therapy really, truly makes us better communicators. And even if you don't see a need to sit down with a therapist, definitely reading some psychology books and taking a course or two in psychology can make a really big difference.
The other thing that I recommend a lot for folks is things like vocabulary lists of feelings. In James Alburger's book The Art of Voice Acting, he has a really great page that is literally a summary of vocabulary of feelings and emotions, and those are critical for voice actors to understand, because it broadens our horizons and it broadens your spectrum of how to approach a role and how to go about creating a character. And lastly mindfulness. Mindfulness is a really, really great practice, and it’s a practice that business owners, again especially voice actors, can take advantage of. Mindfulness can help you to be less stressed, to be more organized, and to weather the ups and downs of your business a little bit easier and with a little bit more peace and mind, no pun intended.
If you want to know more about the types of practices that can help your voiceover career, you have the opportunity to work with me. I work with private students not only locally in Charlotte, North Carolina but all over the country via Skype and Zoom. And I'd love the chance to work with you, to get to know you, to get to understand maybe where your voiceover career might be stuck, where you might be struggling a little bit, and help you to overcome some of those problems and move forward, and be more productive, and ultimately more successful in your voiceover career. You can go to my website, GabrielleNistico.com, if you want details on that, and to reach out to me and communicate with me. And of course, you can also take a look at my most recent video here, and if you want more information similar to this, here’s another video for you to take a look at.
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
Gabrielle Nistico, Gabby Nistico, The Voiceover Vixen, The Business First VO Coach, #VoiceoverVixen #VoiceOnFire #BusinessFirstVOCoach Voiceover, Success, Entrepreneur, Voiceover Coaching, VO Coaching, Voiceover Coaches, Working Actors, Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, auditioning tips, audition help, voiceover tips, feelings, therapy, mental health, the art of voice acting, James Alburger, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness