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Receiving improv notes: How your brain rewrites feedback
Episode 46 • 6th April 2026 • Your Improv Brain • Jen deHaan
00:00:00 00:20:57

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OUT NOW! Get my latest guides, all about getting and giving improv notes! Find them and what's inside the guides at https://improvupdate.com/notes. 50% discount on your second guide if you grab them together.

Getting improv notes can affect your nervous system, and your brain. We look at why your brain rewrites feedback and how you can separate the actual content from the emotional delivery (aka, the framing). When a coach gives you feedback after a scene, your brain often processes their tone and body language before the actual words.

This means you might react to a perceived threat before you even hear the advice. We explore a metacognitive approach to receiving improv notes that helps you manage this early physiological response. You will learn an exercise to isolate objective facts, and we cover why writing down your feedback immediately can prevent rumination.

Go here for links to ALL episodes in this series on metacognition: https://improvupdate.com/receiving-improv-notes-and-understanding-how-your-brain-rewrites-the-feedback/

RESOURCES & LINKS:

CHAPTERS:

0:06 How your brain rewrites your improv feedback

1:23 The Eileen Gu metacognition example

2:56 Separating objective content from subjective emotional framing

4:16 The first wave nervous system response to tone and body language

6:09 Brian James O'Connell and sorting your feedback into categories

8:18 Why vague notes cause stress and worst case scenario thinking

10:03 How teachers and coaches control the feedback framing

10:52 Preventing rumination by capturing the evidence on paper

12:22 Rejection sensitive dysphoria and the physiological reaction to notes

13:46 Buying your brain time for the second wave of cognitive processing

14:56 A partner exercise to practice separating facts from delivery

17:11 A solo exercise for spotting your own framing patterns

Hey so for whatever reason my audio editor decided to HATE my butt today, and I've re-rendered this episode five times now. I've never gone beyond two renders in nearly 50 episodes! "For sure this one will be fine, I'll just render it." Nope. Now I'm at five test listens and there was always some little blip blunder every time that I missed (something got shifted at the beginning and caused a cascading error). Usually in the second half. Fun. funfunfun So if I've missed a blip in this one? I'm sorry. But I can't re-render and listen to my darn voice any longer lol I'm done it is what it is.

Downloadable content

Download the Free Post-Show Reflection Guide: Sent to your inbox when you subscribe to either newsletter (and added to the footer to each message if you're already subscribed).

NEW! Comprehensive guides all about getting notes as a student, or giving them as a teacher. Two guides, big discount if you get both! https://improvupdate.com/notes

Get a booklet with six exercises to help you get reps in challenging scenes called "Exercises to Ruin You"

Get more downloadable booklets here: https://improvupdate.com/downloads

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About

This podcast was created, written, and is hosted by Jen deHaan. Jen has certifications related to healthy communities (Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy), nervous system regulation and soon teacher training certification on community resilience. She has a BFA in teaching creative arts to adults. You can find her full bio here.

This episode was and edited and produced by StereoForest.com.

This podcast was made in British Columbia, Canada by StereoForest Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get the Student or Teacher/Coach guide about NOTES in Improv

Find the guides, more information, and full Table of Contents at https://improvupdate.com/notes



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Transcripts

WEBVTT

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You get a note after a scene.

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Maybe a note from a coach, or maybe the voice in your own head.

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That scene didn't work.

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I don't know, I've for heard that a lot.

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And something happens in your brain

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Instead of hearing the actual note that was said, you hear something else like, you are really bad at this, or

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They don't want you here.

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Or maybe uh everyone saw you fail and they be laughing now.

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The note itself might have been pretty useful.

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There might have been some actionable information in it, but you'll never find out because your brain grabbed the emotional framing and ran with that shit real fast.

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Now this is not uncommon.

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It happens to improvisers at every level.

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Feedback will come in, even if it's just how like the audience was that night, and instead of processing the content

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or the reality of what just happened, the brain processes the feeling that you got.

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And then the feeling takes over.

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Everything, and that's all you remember.

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I'm continuing this series on metacognition, and it was inspired by some clips that I saw from the Winter Olympics featuring Eileen Goo.

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who dealt with this same thing in real time, but on like a huge global stage.

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After winning silver in the Big Air competition, a reporter framed her result as two golds lost.

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Can you imagine that?

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And instead of accepting that frame, Eileen analyzed how the question was framed.

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Instead, she called that question a ridiculous perspective.

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It was

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beautiful and recentered on her own evidence, which was five Olympic medals, the most decorated female freestyle skier in history.

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and she separated the useful content, which was her actual result, from the emotional framing, you lost something, and responded to the content, the reality, instead.

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Now that's a metacognitive skill to develop that's directly applicable to how you handle notes in improv

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I'm Genda Fon and this is Your Improv Brain, where I break down improv concepts, often through a neurodivergent lens, and give you exercises to practice with a SIM partner or solo.

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I've also just made a new PDF and workbook for getting and receiving notes that's about the stuff that you hear in this episode, and more.

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So go check it out at improvupdate.

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com slash downloads.

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So every piece of feedback has two layers

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You have the content itself, which is the information about what happened in the scene.

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And you have the framing, which is how that information arrives into your ears.

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So content sounds like the second beat ran too long.

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Or it might sound like you dropped the physical reality halfway through or your initiation was long and your partner just didn't know what to build on.

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But the framing, it can sound like the tone of the voice that delivered that note or whether the coach

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seemed frustrated or supportive or whether the teacher gave the note in front of the class or privately, if, you know, it was something that maybe should have been delivered privately.

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And the framing can also involve whether your inner critic adds its own spin to something before you've even finished hearing what the note was.

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So the skill here is learning to separate those two layers.

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When you can look at a note and find the content

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inside of it, what you can like take away and apply to your practice, then you have something that you can work with.

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When you can only hear the framing

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You get stuck in sort of emotional responses and you lose the note entirely.

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Now, taking notes in general takes a lot of practice because the framing often arrives

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First, for many people in their brains.

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Your nervous system is responding to the tone, the body language, the social context faster than your conscious brain processes words.

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And by the time that you're hearing the actual note, your body has maybe already decided whether this is safe or whether this is threatening.

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And this can happen even if you experience emotional processing delays.

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Your body still responds really fast, even if that's true for you, even if your conscious awareness of the emotion takes longer to arrive.

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And that decision that your brain makes fairly automatically colors everything that follows.

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So this takes practice because the framing often arrives first.

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For many people, your nervous system responds to the tone or the body language of the person that's delivering it, or even the social context faster than your conscious brain processes the words.

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So by the time that you're actually hearing the actual note, your body has perhaps already decided whether this thing is safe or whether this thing is threatening.

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And this can even happen even if you experience emotional processing delays.

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Like your body still responds really fast, even when your conscious awareness of what's happening takes longer to arrive.

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And that decision that your brain just makes on its own fairly automatically colors everything that follows.

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So let's talk about just receiving notes in general because you gotta do that first.

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So improv teacher Brian James O'Connell, also known as BOC, has a framework that he mentions in an excellent document.

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And he gives this document to anyone who takes his classes.

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So find a class, there's online ones too, and get this resource.

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The suggestion that he makes

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is to put every note that you receive into one of three categories, which he paraphrases from a screenwriting teacher that he had called Billy May.

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They are, that's great.

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I'm gonna try it

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That's how you would do it, and this is how I would do it.

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And fuck you, that's crazy, I ain't changing it.

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BOC says that you are the only person who gets to decide what notes go into which category.

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And if you overload them into all of one category, that's your problem to deal with.

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And I generally, I totally, I agree with that.

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So how these categories work in a nutshell, you either hear the content and take it.

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And although you want to be open to new information, you don't want to be too pliable, is what BOC says.

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Or you can hear the content and understand that it's useful to the teacher saying it.

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But you see a style difference and you let that content go because it's just not useful to you.

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Or you hear the note, you disagree, and you say, fuck you, basically.

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The useful thing about all of this is that these three categories require you to find the content first.

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You can't sort the note if you're stuck in the emotional framing.

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So the sorting itself forces you to engage with what was actually factually said.

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Although BOC does add a warning here that's useful to say, if you're constantly putting every note into the third category, that's worth paying attention to.

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At some point that stops being like a certain and starts being like a defense mechanism and you're probably the asshole in that case.

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So be honest with yourself about which category a note actually belongs in.

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So a specific note is easier to separate into a category because the content of it is very clear.

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Like a note that was your initiation was too vague.

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That gives you something concrete to work with.

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You can either agree or you can disagree, but either way, you know what the note is about.

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So a vague note leaves a gap, like an information gap, like that didn't work or something was off.

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In these cases, your brain has to fill in that missing information and a brain that's under a lot of stress

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fills those gaps with worst case scenarios a lot of the time.

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Like that didn't work becomes I didn't work.

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Or something was off becomes like something's wrong with me.

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Right?

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If you give notes to other improvisers, the more specific you are, the easier it is for the other person to find this actionable advice.

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Vague notes force improvisers to do really difficult cognitive work when it's already really stressful.

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It's already really difficult to do it.

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w during this like note receiving period.

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And if you receive a vague note as an improviser, you might not want to ask for more information to clarify it because then you risk questioning the note

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Which is a thing in improv.

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So feel free to just throw away vague notes unless you think discussing it with a trusted teammate or you know, you know the coach really well and they'll be fine with it.

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Uh if those things are worth it

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Do it if you can, but if you're not, throw it away.

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Throw it away

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As a teacher or a coach, you control a huge part of this framing.

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Your tone, your word choices, whether you give the note publicly or privately in certain cases.

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All of that shapes how the note lands before the student even processes the words.

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And the more you can strip your notes down to really specific, observable, judgment-free stuff.

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the better chance your students have of actually hearing and using those notes.

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And if you're teaching neurodivergent students, which you are, this becomes even more relevant.

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A note like that isn't working with no specifics leaves a gap that any brains experiencing rejection sensitivity will fill in with the worst possible interpretation.

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Most of the real processing doesn't happen in the moment that you receive the note.

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It's gonna happen later on.

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So when your brain is replaying the interaction.

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This is when spiraling or that rumination can start happening.

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You rehear the note and every cycle, every replay adds another layer of interpretation.

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And by like

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of several passes, the original note has been rewritten in your brain into something way bigger is filling up that noggin of yours.

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And it's

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probably so much more personal than what the teacher coach actually said.

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So one thing that helps here is writing the note down.

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Write it down as close to the original words as you can.

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before your brain has time to rewrite it.

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So the actual content on paper or on your phone is gonna help you when you catch yourself remote

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You can go back to the words that were actually said instead of the thing that your brain turned it into.

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And this connects directly to the evidence-based approach that I mentioned in an earlier episode, which I'll put a link in the chat.

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The show notes for you.

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Your written-down note is that evidence.

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And the rumination is kind of more like the affirmation thing.

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It's just not trustworthy.

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So, for those brains that experience rejection sensitive dysphoria, feedback can trigger a physiological response that feels completely

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utterly disproportionate to the note that was actually given.

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Now a constructive note from

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A trusted coach might feel like you're being told that you don't belong.

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And the emotional intensity, that thing is real.

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Even if your logic is telling you that isn't what's actually happening.

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The body is responding in that way anyway, no matter what.

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So you telling yourself to just not take it personally

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That doesn't address the physiology thing that you're actually experiencing, and it doesn't get rid of the irrational reaction.

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And literal processing, that adds another layer of complexity for some people.

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So if a coach says that scene died, a literal processor might hear like the finality of that comment and or the catastrophe in the phrase.

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A coach might have just been saying it casually.

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It's a turn of phrase.

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Or if somebody says, yeah, I couldn't follow you in that part, you might take a real literal read that you're too confusing to work with or to improvise with.

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So the gap between what they said and meant

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and what your brain thinks they said, it can be a pretty big gap.

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And it's hard to realize that you're filling in gaps that don't exist.

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Exist.

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So what helps here is recognizing that that first wave, that first response that you have to a note

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That's your nervous system activating, right?

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It's an automatic response.

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And the second wave is your cognitive processing that might not be based on reality

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If you can let that first wave just kind of move through and not act on it, the second wave has a better chance of finding the actual content.

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And this might mean asking for a minute before responding.

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If you choose to respond, you could write the note down, do that thing, and come back to it later on after practice.

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And another thing that could happen is you might get an answer later on during the class or practice that gives you a little bit more information that might help clarify what's actually going on, the reality.

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Doing any of these things buys your brain and your nervous system some time and it gives the overall situation a chance to add that content.

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that your nervous system may be ignored.

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So the exercises.

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These exercises train your brain to separate that objective, actionable, fact-based note

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From subjective emotional framing and judgment in general.

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And your ultimate goal here is to build the habit of verbalizing

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this separation, so that thing becomes more automatic.

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And this can be useful if it's really tough for you to separate those things.

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In this exercise, both players in a scene are going to take turns giving and receiving details while keeping it all low stakes and specific.

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I love specifics.

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You'll remove all of the emotional framing and just communicate in a very objective manner, making factual observations about each other.

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So for the first one, two players up, or you can pair people off for this exercise, or you can do it as a warm-up.

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The scene partners sit and face each other fairly close

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to each other, right?

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Player one is going to make a very factual and emotionless observation about player two.

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This is going to be something like you're sitting on a bentwood chair.

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And then player two is going to respond to that.

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I am sitting on a bentwood chair.

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Matter of fact.

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And then player one says whatever they saw physically when player two said that, such as

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You raised your eyebrows.

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So now the players are going to swap and repeat.

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Player two is going to say like, you broke eye contact

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Player one, I broke eye contact.

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Player two, you smiled when I said that, but your voice was strained.

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Players can note anything physical that they notice.

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Emotion, vocal tone or musicality, body language, whatever.

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So what's happening here is that the players are learning to separate the objective facts, the things that are being said, from the way that they're being delivered.

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They can notice the facts without attaching judgments or putting framing on them.

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This of course also helps us in our scenes as well.

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what words were said and what was the framing.

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So for the solo exercise, after practice you're going to write down the notes that you received as close

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to the original words as you can.

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You can also do this if it's not too disruptive on your phone as soon as you get a moment that you can type it in there

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Next to each note that you receive, just write the actionable content next to it

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Now, if you want, you can use a PDF that I've created for this sort of thing.

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I offer it when you sign up for my newsletter at improvupdate.

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com.

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It's also linked at the bottom of every newsletter

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That PDF gives you a really structured way to do this, but a notebook also works or you can use an app on your phone.

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So write down those notes that you've received or that ones that you gave yourself as well.

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as close to the original words as you can.

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And then next to each one, write the actionable content.

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And over time you're going to start seeing patterns in your own frame.

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The way that your brain consistently rewrites the neutral notes into personal judgments.

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And noticing these patterns is the first step to interrupting them.

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Now that's all I have for this one.

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I'm Jen deHaan and this is your improv brain.

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You can also get a PDF that's all about getting and receiving notes at improvupdate.

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com slash downloads.

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It's brand new, go check it out.

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Thanks for listening and bye for now.

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