The Mental Effects of Dance

Dance is my favorite sport in the world, if it's even considered a sport. You can tone every muscle in your body and burn 1,000 calories, without even feeling like you're doing too much work. That is the main reason why I love to dance so much. I can "work out" and have fun while doing it, which you don't get from other sports.

However, there are many negative mental effects of dancing competitively, and you start to get in your head.

You start to become a perfectionist. For myself, if I don't master a certain skill, I'll beat myself up about it.

You compare your dancing to EVERYONE'S. This happens to my dance friends and me all the time, especially at conventions. If we are at a dance convention, watching all of these amazing dancers whip out the routine we learned in 2 minutes is very intimidating.

You will also start to compare your body to other dancers. Do you notice how every single famous ballet dancer is stick-thin? That's because many ballet coaches praise their students when they lose weight, making the rest of the dance community want to get thinner and thinner. Because of this, many dancers result in having anorexia.

Social media doesn't help in this situation either. Don't get me wrong, different social media platforms are great to post dance videos to inspire others and show people how talented you are. However, when we realize we don't look like that when we're dancing, we begin to get discouraged.

I get extremely frustrated even when I'm doing a TikTok dance, inspired by another individual, and I don't look as smooth or groovy as the original person doing it. I try and try again to look as good as the dancer in the video, but this always ends in me getting mad at myself if I can't do it. I only post a dancing video if it's absolutely perfect. Social media has increased the dancing standards so high, that it's made others insecure about their own ability to dance.

You will also develop self and organizational pressure. If you aren't flexible, coordinated, graceful, or in shape enough, you are doomed. If you are early in a leap or jump in a group dance, then you let your entire team down and won't win first place at nationals, etc. All of these pressures are dealt with daily by dancers. They might get so intense, that they'll result in depression, major anxiety, and other mental illnesses.

While dance gives more positive effects than negative ones, these were just a few negative effects I have dealt with personally. For those of you who think dance doesn't require any real strength, think again!