Shownotes
Very excited about this ep! This week I am joined by Sabrina Banes, an improviser who has a condition called misophonia.
Sabrina Banes is an improviser and Tarot reader who lives in Brooklyn with her two cats, Shumai and Althea. She currently performs with her longform indie teams, Jace Spam and Dolly Lana, and with her Improv College narrative house team, Oops! We Fell In Love. Find Sabrina online: Instagram and Linktree.
In this episode we discuss what misophonia is like to experience, how it affects scene work and classes, and how to find your voice when you need to seek access needs and accommodate yourself. Sabrina has great advice to offer in this episode.
This podcast is hosted by me, Jen deHaan, of FlatImprov.com. You can submit your questions, comments, or even a voice note. Find the contact form for this podcast at FlatImprov.com/substack.
One plug: I have a class coming up in a week called Get Setup: Only Elf on a Shelf Scenes at WGIS. There is ONE spot left at the time of writing. Learn more at http://weeg.is/862!
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Transcripts
Welcome to the Neurodiversity and Improv Podcast from Flat Improv.
::I'm Jen deHaan, and these podcasts aren't for telling anyone what to do.
::I'm not going to do that.
::These podcasts are explanations to help encourage classes and teams and improv to be more inclusive.
::These are not excuses for how we're doing things in classes or how we're doing improv or anything like that.
::These are helping you to just do your scenes better.
::These episodes, they are not for diagnosing anyone else.
::They're not for diagnosing yourself either.
::But if you relate to a whole lot of things you hear in these episodes, maybe you want to go talk to somebody.
::This isn't therapy.
::We're just talking about how we do things in improv in a cognitive sense.
::We're basically great big improv nerds being nerds.
::And don't stop listening if you aren't neurodivergent because we're all around you as neurodivergent.
::So this is going to help you do better improv with the people that are on your teams, which are people like us.
::Anyways, let's get on to this week's episode.
::This week, I'm very happy to not be doing this podcast alone.
::I have a guest with me this week.
::My goodness, a guest.
::This is the first time I've ever edited a interview.
::And I'm just so happy to be doing it because I have Sabrina Banes with me this week who's here to talk about Misophonia.
::We'll learn all about the condition and also how it affects her improv practice.
::Sabrina Banes is an improviser and tarot reader who lives in Brooklyn with her two wonderfully named cats, Shumai and Althea.
::I hope I'm saying that right.
::She currently performs with her long form indie teams, J Spam and Dolly Lana.
::Morning, great names there.
::And with her Improv College Narrative House team, oops, we fell in love.
::Welcome, Sabrina.
::How are you doing today?
::Oh, I'm really excited to be here.
::Thank you for having me on.
::Oh, I'm so pleased that you came here to do a podcast with me.
::And I'm not lonely talking to myself.
::This is very lovely.
::Thank you for joining me in discussing Misophonia.
::So we're going to chat about that and sort of how it integrates with Improv.
::So I was just wondering if you could tell us just a little bit about yourself and Improv and what you do.
::Oh, sure.
::So I've been improvising for about five years now.
::I started out at UCB and then quickly got extremely addicted.
::So then when the pandemic hit, I just got into Zoom improv hardcore and never stopped.
::So I've studied at a bunch of places and performed a bunch of Internet places.
::Then during the pandemic, I also got involved with clowning and stand up, which I haven't pursued as fully as Improv, but it's one of my favorite things to do.
::One of my favorite things to do for sure.
::It's amazing how you get started and then it just hooks you in and you're like, well, this is my life now, isn't it?
::Yeah.
::It's always funny.
::I used to laugh when people said, oh, she got bitten by the bug, the acting bug, and I would always feel like, oh my God, that's so ridiculous.
::It's just, no.
::Then it happened to me and now I'm, have you ever seen Barry?
::Yes, I have.
::Yeah.
::When I started watching that, I was like, oh no, am I one of those acting students who thinks that it's the whole world and is actually a secret narcissist?
::Yeah.
::We find it's amazing how much we discover about ourselves going through this.
::For me, it's a constant analysis of, oh, is this who I am?
::I didn't think I would get hooked into acting or performing even, really.
::Yeah.
::I did a lot of plays and stuff when I was in junior high and high school.
::But I didn't think that this was my path.
::I was going to be a Republican US Senator, which I'm very glad I didn't go that way.
::Who are you really?
::Fascinating.
::My first job was working for a Republican political campaign, and then I came to my senses.
::Well, even with that, I'd imagine there'd be a lot of performing and acting involved.
::Yeah.
::You have to pretend to like the candidates.
::I mean, that's a lot of acting.
::That's-
::Yeah.
::Yeah.
::I find that's quite amazing of going through life, of realizing all of the instances where acting is involved, which I didn't realize until I actually got into doing characters.
::And then you kind of go back and you're like, oh, well, dog training involved to acting.
::One of the reasons I got hooked on improv is that I was-
::I'm a tarot reader for work.
::And I was discovering that the more I did improv, the better my readings got because I was able to interact more naturally with people and trust myself more to say the things that the cards were bringing to the surface.
::So improv really helped my work.
::Yeah.
::Could you tell us a little bit more about the readings and how you sort of integrate improv into that?
::Well, so I think of a tarot reading as kind of an act of collaborative storytelling.
::You're looking at a situation in your life from another perspective and seeing what issues or themes the cards raise.
::My process is talking with the querent or the client, the person who's getting the reading and mentioning the themes that are coming up in, let's say, one specific card, like the tower comes up and I say, what's something really difficult that you're, like a failure that you're dealing with right now?
::And then we kind of talk about that for a minute and look at the other cards.
::And it's almost a process of elimination, of going back and forth and saying, well, is this what's going on with you or is it this other meaning?
::And when I was first starting out, I would have a hard time trusting myself when I said something.
::So I would hesitate to ask questions.
::I would not ask questions about, did you just get fired from your job?
::Even though I'm looking at the cards and I'm seeing, did you just get fired from your job?
::But now I just come right out and say it, which is, it turns out a lot better weirdly.
::I can see the improv influence in that of, don't ask questions.
::Make statements.
::Yeah.
::But just be bold, be confident.
::And so that's been really exciting.
::My tarot work has, I have improv to think for how much it has grown over the last eight years.
::Some of the conversations in your readings, do they impact your improv?
::Absolutely.
::Because I'm getting to know different people, almost like different characters, right?
::So I'll have people who come in to see me, who are obsessed with an X, there's a character.
::People who come in to see me, who are transitioning careers from, actually isn't that, that's a UCB exercise from, I want to say, 101, where you're, you're someone who was a doctor, but it's your first day as a firefighter.
::So that's, that's another character.
::So, yeah, those, the, it helps me to improv, tarot, all of it helps me to understand people and their relationships and their perspectives.
::And that's, that's kind of why I like it so much.
::That's a lot of content to flash memory to.
::Yes.
::Unfortunately, I find I get a lot of that from TikTok.
::Oh, you know, I can't, I can't watch TikTok.
::It, it makes me, it skeezes me out because I, like I'll, I'll be scrolling TikTok and I don't understand how it knows.
::Right.
::What I'm, what I'm interested in.
::Did I, did I tell you about the, the very first time I started to get into TikTok?
::It was because there was this cat reading tarot.
::Really?
::Yeah.
::You did not tell me that.
::It's this cat that like spreads the cards out on, on the, on the floor or something.
::And I was like, you, you know exactly what I want.
::You know exactly what content is going to lure me in.
::The algorithm for the for you page mystifies me, intrigues me, and also does scare me a little because it horrifies me.
::It shifts so quickly.
::Yeah.
::And it's like, why are you showing me this now?
::What, what was I interested in?
::Because I believe you TikTok, but I'm not sure why yet.
::And but I do find the one thing I really like about it is you learn, I mean, perhaps untrue, but you learn something, some facts all the time.
::And I find that I'm flash memory into that thing, and it doesn't matter if it's correct or not, because it's improv.
::So I'm not worried about spreading misinformation.
::Oh, that's great.
::I mean, that does seem like a good use for TikTok.
::And I have been called out in a class as well of like, oh, Jen, you're you and I are on the same side of TikTok.
::I see, even though I never said TikTok, but the fact was from that week.
::Oh, that's amazing.
::Yeah, I did get called out.
::Well, we could move on to Misophonia now.
::Maybe first just start out.
::I'll start out by telling folks what Misophonia is.
::Which it literally translates to hatred of sound.
::And I have both Misophonia and a little bit of Mesokinesia, which is hatred of movement.
::But what happens is, when it gets triggered, and it's usually for me, it's chewing noises, specifically open-mouthed chewing and crunching.
::And the fidgeting that I don't like is, it's repetitive motion.
::Like if someone is kicking their foot back and forth and back and forth, that'll drive me nuts.
::It causes panic attacks eventually.
::So it doesn't start at full panic.
::It starts with monitoring, which is when you're noticing something and you can't stop paying attention to it.
::You become hyper-focused on it.
::So let's say I'm in a room and someone is in the room with me and they're chewing gum with an open mouth.
::Suddenly, anything else that is happening in that room is gone.
::I can't see it.
::I can't hear it.
::I can't think about it.
::The only thing I hear and see is the gum chewer chewing.
::The first time I realized that there was something there.
::I was 14 and my high school was a little racy.
::We did Chicago as the fall musical.
::I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but I was an Orthodox Presbyterian minister's daughter.
::This was very racy for me.
::There's one character in that musical.
::Her name is Pop.
::That's the character's name and she shoots her husband, I think, with a rifle because he keeps popping his gum.
::I connected so strongly to that.
::I was the understudy.
::When I performed that monologue, I felt like, oh, I am speaking my truth for the first time.
::It's funny because the woman who was playing that, or the girl who was playing that character, had to drop out of the play and I said, well, I'm the understudy, so I get the role, and the director is like, no, that's too mature for you.
::And I was just so angry.
::So, so angry.
::Yeah.
::I was like, this is actually me.
::This is how I feel in life.
::This is the perfect role.
::Yeah.
::For a 14-year-old Presbyterian, but that's your standard.
::Yeah, absolutely.
::Because I also have Misophonia to a lesser extent.
::But what I was amazed by was that the hyperfocus, that that's the only thing.
::And it affects, of course, it affects everything.
::If you're improv scene work, I had a coworker who was way over and ate lunch for what felt like two hours.
::And it was the sound that affects me.
::Rage, nausea, like just extreme responses that don't make logical sense but exist and are real.
::And I couldn't work because it was the only thing I heard.
::So I could not do anything else when I heard that sound.
::As you go from monitoring, you go into another stage where you're starting to panic.
::Your system is emitting tons of cortisol and you're just, everything is gearing up to, it's like a fight or flight kind of thing, right?
::So for me, if I let it go long enough, which I did once last year in an improv class, I will start to sweat uncontrollably.
::And then I'll eventually start to shake and then I'll start to sob.
::It's not pretty.
::You don't want to see it.
::Yeah, and completely involuntary, I've found it.
::It just happens.
::Yeah, yeah.
::And it's interesting because there are some treatments that are kind of in the early stages, like there's those loops, ear, I want to call them earplugs, but they're sort of selective earplugs, right?
::Yeah.
::I haven't tried them.
::They limit sound.
::They, I think, limit parts of frequencies or something like that.
::Yeah, yeah.
::And then there's also beta blockers, which you would take, let's say, an hour before you know you're going to be in the room with someone who's doing something upsetting.
::Those are, those are the two main treatments that I'm aware of.
::But what's interesting is that exposure therapy works for most other kinds of conditions like this.
::But for, for mesophonia and mesokinesia, the, the body gets to a heightened place so quickly.
::The body and the brain get so agitated, so fast that exposure therapy doesn't really work because you just fly into a rage.
::It's not, it's not useful.
::I know I was exposed so much and I'm like, well, nothing seems to be changing.
::You have to start with extremely low levels of exposure and build up very, very slowly.
::I imagine that if you did it daily for a couple of years, you probably could get there, but it would be a very intense and painful experience to try to get there.
::Yeah.
::Yeah.
::And also structuring it, I guess, would be difficult too in a lot of those.
::I've tried it with my therapist and it's, we'll make a baby step and it'll be successful for like 15 seconds, 15 seconds is just not as not getting there.
::Yeah.
::What are some of the things that you've tried with improv classes or around improv?
::With improv, when I sign up for a class, I try to contact either the administrator or the instructor in advance and let them know about this condition and simply ask.
::I don't ask that they disclose that it's me.
::Although personally, at this point in my life, I'm not too concerned about people finding out, obviously because I'm coming on your podcast.
::Yeah, thank you.
::But I say if you could just let students know and ask them to refrain from making chewing noises or eating or chewing gum in class.
::Unfortunately, with Improv, most people don't eat or chew gum, but sometimes they do.
::The hard part is, especially with Zoom, I start monitoring the minute I see someone chewing.
::So even if I'm not hearing the sound, my nervous system is already gearing up.
::So that's why I say if you could refrain from doing it at all, that would be really helpful just because if someone on a Zoom call is doing it and I see it, I'm just going to hyper-focus on them.
::It's not intentional.
::It's not because I'm picking on them or something.
::It's just, oh, I can't take my eyes off of that.
::That's the thing that's going to get me.
::Exactly.
::Usually, instructors are really good about it and they'll just say something at the start of class and it doesn't turn into a thing.
::I've had two truly negative incidents.
::Then I would say a couple that were borderline negative.
::But for the most part, I just put it out there at the beginning.
::People are really understanding and really helpful, for the most part.
::Then if it turns into an issue during a class, and I am triggered and I can't calm down, I excuse myself.
::I just say, I got to go.
::It's nothing personal.
::I'm not angry at an instructor or a school or even at the student who's popping their freaking gum.
::Yeah, it's not about that.
::It's just about getting out of the situation so that I can use my coping skills and calm myself.
::Yeah.
::Just a matter of fact thing of like, hey, I need to do this for myself.
::Yeah.
::It's like if you suddenly had gastrointestinal trouble while you were in a class, you would excuse yourself.
::I mean, maybe not always.
::I mean, only if you're comfortable, you don't have to, but just if you have a high level overview or any details that you're able to share about some of the negative experiences and what may have helped make those experiences better.
::I'll start with the hardest experience that I had, which was when I believe the instructor had said something to the class, but in the second class, a student came in and intentionally and, what's the word I'm looking for, ostentatiously started chewing gum in a way that was meant to be distracting.
::I was sitting on the far side of the room, as far away from the door as I could possibly be, and I started to feel my heart racing and my head was getting fuzzy, and my palms were sweating, and I was thinking to myself, can I tolerate this?
::Can I sit it out?
::Can I at least sit it out until I get to a place where I can say something, where it's in between scenes, but I just couldn't do it.
::So I got up and told the instructor that I was triggered and had to leave.
::But by the time I got up, I mean, this was no more than a minute later, I was already pouring sweat.
::If you would see me, I looked like I had just walked out of a shower.
::Yeah.
::I was so embarrassed.
::I was so embarrassed in fact that I wrote to the administration and I said, I think that I need to drop this class because I feel like I caused a distraction.
::It took me more than an hour to calm down after that happened.
::I had to be taken into a private room and someone very kindly talked me through it was very soothing with me.
::It's funny because it was a studio owner and she said, what you have done today, don't be embarrassed.
::I'm sorry if you're hearing sirens.
::She said, what you've done today is you've given your classmates a gift.
::You don't know it now, but they see that this is an experience that people have.
::So they know one, that this is what could happen if they're inconsiderate.
::But two, they know that if something bad happens to them, they can also excuse themselves.
::It gives them permission.
::It gives them permission to speak up.
::On the one hand, I was very embarrassed.
::I had thought about never going back to that school in that moment.
::That's how terrified I was.
::So I wrote to the administration and the theater founder and the theater owner set up a meeting with me and we all talked and they said they were just as supportive as they could possibly be.
::They said, we don't want you to drop the class.
::Is there anything that we can do to make you more comfortable?
::We take the steps on our end to make sure that we're making these accommodations, but we can't control how the students will respond.
::The only thing that came out of it that felt negative was afterwards, I wasn't sure if my, and this is just me, wasn't sure if my reputation with that community suffered as a result of what happened.
::I wasn't sure what they thought of me afterwards or if they thought that I had a maturity issue or something along those lines.
::Yeah, that's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
::I have to say if that's the worst thing that's happened in an improv class that I had to leave and I sweated through my clothes and it was, everybody on the train saw me and I looked funny.
::I had wet hair and it was so gross.
::If that's the worst thing, then I can live with that.
::It's having those fight, flight, fright, the sweating and that involuntary reaction.
::I mean, it's so stressful.
::But I think, like you say, helping other people learn that this is an involuntary response.
::It isn't a matter of maturity.
::It isn't a matter of being sensitive or apart from, it is technically a sound sensitivity, but it's an involuntary response and having the permission, like you mentioned, take care of yourself and react in a way that supports yourself.
::Normalizing that is very important.
::Exactly.
::And that's something that you help do.
::It's funny because I never told anyone other than my therapist, psychiatrist, and close family and friends about this until I started Improv.
::At which point I knew I was going to have to because you can't go into a room with 15 people in it and not speak up if something like this is happening to you.
::I, this is something I don't talk about publicly very often, but I was a shut-in for many years and a huge part of that was the Misophonia and the Misokinesia because I didn't want to put myself in a position where I was in public on the subway, let's say, and someone is popping their gum and I shut down.
::Improv and speaking up and putting myself out there, putting myself into places where I might come in contact with these things, but I could have adaptive responses.
::That's part of what has helped me get back out into the world.
::Have you incorporated some of these responses into scene work when you need to?
::It's funny.
::There was a workshop that I attended a couple months back.
::There was a guy who came off the back line with me and he initiated a scene with big, loud, open-mouthed chewing noises.
::This is a guy I had known not super well, but we've been in a bunch of classes together before, and I was pretty sure he wasn't aware of my issue.
::And I just stopped the scene and I said, listen, I'm sorry, this isn't personal.
::I'm not mad at you, but I do have a misophonia issue, so I'm going to have to excuse myself for about five minutes.
::I'll be right back.
::And I went out into the hallway and found a chair and sat down, did some breathing exercises, calmed myself, and went back into the class, which I would never have been able to do five years ago.
::So that was really nice to know that I've grown so much, partly due to taking the action to speak up about it when necessary, and allowing myself, again, allowing myself to excuse myself when I have to.
::It's a difficult but necessary skill to learn to speak up for ourselves and these needs.
::Do you have any advice or recommendations on how you felt you got there over the five years?
::Sort of steps that you took to sort of empower yourself to speak up?
::Well, the first step I took was just informing the instructor in advance.
::And so that's a one on one thing.
::It's not like you're getting up in front of an entire room full of people and saying, excuse me, this is what's weird about me.
::This is how I'm a freak.
::So you don't have to make yourself that vulnerable.
::It's just a little bit of vulnerability.
::So that first part is the hardest because when it's one on one, you have no idea how the instructor is going to react.
::And I will be honest and say that a couple of times I've gotten some funny looks.
::I did have one instructor who said, I've never heard of anything like that before.
::Thank you, thanks, that's great, that feels good.
::Well, let me educate you, I would love to info dump a little bit on you right now.
::That part is hard, but once you do it, I don't know, 10 times and you find that no one says, well, you're fired, you can't come to improv anymore.
::It's like it gives you more courage, the courage builds.
::My advice would just be start small, have you seen that movie from, I'm sure it's so bad now.
::I would not recommend that anyone watch this movie now, but do you remember the movie What About Bob?
::Yes, I do.
::I probably haven't seen it since close to when it came out though.
::Twenty some years.
::This was a Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss movie.
::Bill Murray was, I think he was a shut in too.
::I think so.
::He had a goldfish, didn't he?
::Yeah, he had a goldfish and he took a bus to Cape Cod or something.
::His whole line was baby steps, baby steps, do it in baby steps.
::That's what I would tell other people who are afraid to divulge either misophonia or some similar condition.
::Because I find that a lot of anxiety type conditions are things that we're very anxious to talk about.
::We don't want to talk about it because it scares us.
::Yeah, and the stigma that's still there about all things, mental health.
::But it's getting better if you think about it.
::Think about how much...
::People didn't even know what the word trigger meant a couple of years ago.
::So the fact that it's okay to talk about these things now.
::And one thing that I will say to improvisers is, the improvisers might be the nicest, most sensitive, most genuine, caring, compassionate people in the world.
::We genuinely want to take care of each other.
::We want to make each other happy and we want to make each other laugh.
::We do not want to make each other cry or sweat uncontrollably.
::When you make yourself vulnerable to another improviser, just think of it as emotional honesty.
::It's another part of acting in a way.
::It's allowing yourself to access that part of your personality.
::Yeah, and it's what makes all of our scenes better too when we start incorporating honesty in there because it's very telling, even if it is through the eyes of a character or something.
::Oh, you know, I've never played, have you ever played a character who has misophonia?
::I haven't done it partly because I feel like part of what would happen in the scene is someone would keep pressing the button, someone would keep trying to trigger it.
::It would be a risky scene to do, I think.
::Yeah, because of the whole make it worse element.
::I'm not sure I would want to make it worse for two to three minutes.
::There's one thing I would like to mention while we're here, is that when I'm watching the things that have those triggers in them, if I'm watching something on television or in a movie, and I brought a couple of examples.
::The movie Julie and Julia, the Nora Ephraim movie, I have to watch most of that on mute.
::Killing Eve, there's a character in that movie, or that TV show, who likes to eat crunchy things, and she chews with her mouth open, and I have to watch all of her scenes on mute.
::Then have you seen the Christopher Guest movie Mascots?
::There is a character in that movie whose whole character, her shtick, is that she chews gum with her mouth open.
::She smacks her gum.
::I had to watch all of her scenes on mute, and it was hard to watch them.
::There were points where I would just have to look away, because I'm sitting there seeing the trigger in front of me, and I'm freaking out.
::So if there is a way to avoid doing things in your scene work, that you know might have this effect on other people, I think it's a really good idea to do it.
::You can mime eating without making disgusting sounds.
::Yeah, and that's an excellent reminder.
::It's like a challenge, too.
::It's something that maybe, when people are more aware of it, they'll incorporate it more into their way of handling things.
::I think that Hollywood, for example, has just not gotten this memo yet.
::And I think they will eventually.
::I really do.
::I think it's something that they're going to have to figure out.
::Because I know that you and I are not the only people in the world who have this issue.
::In fact, I know several other improvisers who experience misophonia on various levels.
::It is something that people don't readily speak up about.
::And so, when they hear it, they sometimes join, Oh yeah, me too.
::I had spoken up about it in a class where I had some classmates who chew gum right before shows because it helps their nerves.
::And I felt terrible because it's like, well, it's either your nerves or mine.
::But I spoke up about it.
::And as a result, one of my classmates said, hey, I have the same thing.
::I understand.
::So that's really nice because I had never met anyone else in my life with Misophonia before I started Improv, or at least not anyone else who confessed to it.
::I went a long time before I even knew it was a thing.
::I just knew my reaction probably wasn't normal because it was so extreme.
::And I thought, wow, this can't be everyone.
::Can I ask what your reaction is?
::If you feel like talking about it.
::It's just rage and nausea for the most part.
::Yeah, fun, isn't it?
::But it's, yeah, for very, and it has, well, no, I guess it doesn't have to be very loud.
::Yeah.
::So I limited a lot of eating out, you know, to situations that were handleable.
::There's just some places I could not go because the custom is to eat very loud in those restaurants.
::A ramen restaurant?
::Absolutely not.
::A lot of soup restaurants.
::Oh, no, why would you go to a lot of soup?
::But no, I'm just going to eat it by myself in a silent room at home.
::I will take it home.
::And then when my own eating sounds annoying me, I'm like, oh boy.
::Oh, what do I do?
::I'm eating popcorn and I go, oh no.
::I hate my own sound.
::What am I going to do now?
::It's right inside my head.
::But, yeah, I mean, I don't, the only thing that has come up for me in improv is the rare occasions when people don't take it seriously.
::And it's very rare.
::Or when people, that's just as bad actually.
::There's one other thing that happens, which is I've had one or two people not acknowledge when I have disclosed and not respond.
::And that makes me feel awful because I already have this underlying, oh my God, I'm such a freak.
::Like that's my negative self-talk that I engage in is thinking that there's something terribly wrong with me and that I don't belong in society.
::Which, you know, that's something that I'm combating, but it doesn't help if I tell an instructor, hey, I have this issue and they just ignore me.
::Yeah.
::Well, it's a very, it's a such a vulnerable thing to disclose many of these issues.
::Just going out and being vulnerable and then not having to acknowledge, I mean, that's a source of shame because of that.
::Even though it isn't something to be shameful about at all.
::It's something that's courageous, that takes a lot of strength to speak up.
::But yeah, when it's not acknowledged, it doesn't help the confidence to do that again, which is-
::It reinforces that voice in your head that tells you that you're a bad person because you can't stand it when people smack their gum.
::And reinforces the idea that it isn't just a physiological response.
::It's just something that's wired in that you can't help.
::It is a literal neurological condition.
::It's, you know, when they've done the research on misophonia, it is, it's not, it's not just, it's not just a hang up.
::Like people, people talk about hang ups.
::It's not, it's not like, oh, I have a bee in my bonnet about these people who chew gum.
::It's, you know, it's like you think about that, that high school teacher who wouldn't let you chew gum in her class.
::And you think that she was just a strict disciplinarian, but actually she probably had misophonia.
::Yeah, this is not a preference.
::I think we need to get the word out there.
::This is not a preference.
::It's not just, hey, I don't like this.
::This is actually something that is a wired in response that has some pretty big physiological mental ramifications.
::Yeah.
::I mean, well, every time you have a cortisol response that's screwing up your potential health outcomes for the future, right?
::They find that people who encounter high stress situations repeatedly store all of that stress in various places in their bodies.
::It doesn't just go away.
::So it's not without consequences that will pile on later on down the line, just like any other high stress experience.
::It's amazing to me too when you have some of these particularly high stress situations, how long, like you spoke about it earlier, having to go sit outside and wait, take care of yourself.
::But how long some of those can last, it can last over a day, you're still feeling out of sorts.
::It can be a long process after a PTSD, any of these situations that come up.
::Yeah, exactly.
::Especially when you start to, when you get far enough into it that you start to shut down, which when your brain just kind of, I don't even know how to, it's almost like, I think of it as a sharp, bright white noise that just blacks everything out.
::It's as if everything disappears.
::Yeah.
::And you go into a void and it's very disorienting and it can last.
::I've had some times when I haven't quite recovered from an incident for a couple of days.
::With autism, shutdowns and meltdowns are two very common experiences.
::And it's very hard to explain what that's like.
::A lot of them start with the sweating.
::Sweating is kind of step one on, oh, this is an actual, this is happening.
::This is a real reaction.
::But it's also, I mean, on the improv sense of very, very difficult to continue on in any improv if you are going into shutdown mode.
::But there's sometimes, you aren't going into a shutdown, but something's happened.
::And it is amazing the thing that it does to your brain where it's like, I can only think about such a narrow number of things right now.
::It's just so many things are just erased out of your head.
::And it's like, can I even continue on the scene?
::It's so, it's almost like a very living, you're in the moment, but there's not much else there.
::I'm not, it's hard to explain what it's like to try to do a scene.
::Do you have, have you had that experience where you've continued?
::I've tried to continue in moments where I've been at such a heightened, stressed out place and it's like I've never taken an improv class in my life.
::Yeah.
::And I might say something really almost like insane, just because I'm in my stress world.
::I'm inside of the anxiety.
::And so the things that are racing through my mind are all of my anxious, depressed, panicky thoughts, and those are not the kinds of things you want to do improv about.
::Yeah.
::I've actually, I've noticed over the last couple of weeks, I have a little bit of seasonal depression.
::And over the last few weeks, I have been doing some really terrible improv scenes.
::Because when you're depressed, sometimes you bring up topics that are just not appropriate.
::I had a coach yesterday who was like, okay, we're going to put some things off limits for a while.
::I've felt some of that.
::It's like, oh, that was some vulnerability hiding behind a character, I think, in that scene a little bit.
::I found with some of the sort of, you might be mildly triggered.
::I think I go to a spot of almost maybe pure robot or pure autopilot of some sort.
::It is like, I've never done any character improv or any emotion work before.
::It's almost like it eliminates all emotion, and I go pure into some sort of robot scaffolding mode of improv, where it's just autopilot.
::Something is running, but I'm almost not there.
::So I'm not sure that.
::If anyone resonates with going into robot mode, pure robot.
::Absolutely.
::Yeah, I think that's, and you know, that doesn't just happen for me with Misophonia, it's with anything that I was in a class where a couple of improvisers did a scene that was, it was hilarious because it was about PTSD and triggers.
::Oh.
::Except neither of them had PTSD or knew what triggers were.
::Right.
::And so the scene was very insensitive.
::And I sat there the whole time thinking, should I leave the room?
::Should I speak up?
::Should I do?
::And I was so new at the time that I just squashed it down and squashed myself down and tried to, tried to handle it.
::And then I did a scene almost immediately afterwards.
::And it was one of the worst scenes I can still remember.
::It was, it was just like I was painting by number.
::But like you said, with no emotion and very unskillful, very robotic.
::I guess probably some sort of protection mode.
::But what you mentioned about, that's I think a fairly good reminder on some of the social commentary heavy hitting topics to know them quite well before trying to take them on, especially in an improv unscripted sense.
::Listen, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing a scene about PTSD.
::And in fact, I think we should do more scenes about PTSD.
::But because I have it, I want you to do it in a way that is correct and that captures the real experience of what that is like because it is a very stigmatized condition.
::That for many years, they just called shell shock or what was it, survivor syndrome.
::So it was really thought to be only for people who had fought in war, but actually turns out to just be what happens to you if you live in society sometimes, unfortunately.
::Yeah, with those kinds of things, even really, really difficult topics, if you have experience with them and you have compassion and a point of view, a perspective that is thoughtful, I want to hear it, I want to see it.
::But if you're coming out with something that is not thought through and it's on a hot button topic.
::Yeah, because we want to make sure that we're punching at the bad thing, we're punching at the stigma, or we're not punching at the condition, and it's hard to get that right if you don't know a lot about the things that you're bringing into a scene.
::Yeah.
::We should talk about PTSD sometime.
::We should, yes.
::Yeah.
::That is a big topic.
::That one might, that's going to be a heavy conversation.
::Yes.
::Yeah.
::But it's a wide one.
::It affects so much, especially, well, especially in any era, but it's also very much right now.
::I mean, in the 2020s, I feel like if you don't have PTSD, there is something very special about you.
::Yes.
::And I would love some of that serum or whatever secret sauce.
::I would love it too.
::Me too.
::Yeah, that would be great.
::Is there anything else that you'd like to add about what we spoken about today?
::Gosh.
::This has been a weirdly fun conversation.
::So that's the first thing.
::I just want to thank you for bringing me on and talking with me about this.
::The last thing I would like to say is if people want to chat with me, if anyone feels like, oh, I just would like to talk to somebody who shares this issue, I am here for you because this is something that I'm kind of passionate about because it really does affect my improv world pretty significantly.
::So if you have questions or are looking for resources or you just want to chat with somebody who understands what it's like, I'm here.
::That's amazing.
::I love it.
::I love it.
::And yes, we all have backs, don't we, in improv?
::We have each other's backs.
::I love that.
::I got yours.
::Yes.
::I want to thank you so much for joining us today.
::And do you have anything you'd like to plug before we go?
::Well, right now, I have two teams that have more shows this December.
::The next show I have is, I believe, Monday, December 18th at 9:30 p.m.
::with Improv College.
::That is an episodic, improvised Hallmark movie called Oops!
::We Fell in Love.
::I love it.
::That's a narrative improv with some folks up in Canada who are really wonderful.
::You're in Canada.
::No, I'm in Canada.
::We're the Canadians.
::Then my all-female long-form team, Dolly Lana has a couple shows.
::I think we have at least one on the books.
::There's one on Friday, December 22nd at something like 6:30 p.m.
::on Andy Abramson's Improv Extravaganza.
::I love it.
::That's a great big long online improv.
::Yeah, it is.
::It's really interesting because he does these long shows.
::Dolly Lana always ends up coming on after some act that is very hard to follow.
::I don't want to get too blue, but I'll say there was a woman who was singing about squirting.
::She wasn't just singing songs about that experience, she was also singing them to the tunes of songs from The Sound of Music.
::Yeah.
::So we always end up going on after someone who's done something just really like, wow.
::Wow.
::That's unique.
::Very creative.
::Well, thank you so much, Sabrina.
::I really appreciate you coming and speaking with me, and I hope we can do it again.
::Me too.
::All right.
::You made it to the end of the podcast again, the end of episode five.
::Thank you so much again to Sabrina for joining me this week.
::So I didn't have to be alone.
::All right.
::I guess I have some plugs too.
::I have online classes and I work with the world's greatest improv school.
::The school has online jams, teams, and more.
::So go check out the school at wgimprovschool.com.
::I also have a website called flatimprov.com, and I'm trying to start writing some of these episodes out as posts.
::I also list a whole lot of other online improv related things on the website.
::Online shows, other podcasts, and I have a newsletter that goes out every second week with a bunch of improv stuff, myself and other people's stuff.
::So check it out and consider contributing your own improv things to the site or the newsletter.
::flatimprov.com/submit.
::This podcast lives on Substack.
::The easiest verbal way to say how to subscribe to that is flatimprov.com/substack.
::So go to the site, contribute some stuff, send some stuff to me for these episodes.
::And as always, thanks for listening.
