The Resilient Dance Teacher Podcast
Aug 27, 2026 · 12 min · 6 segments
Have you ever felt like you don't deserve your accomplishments, even when you've worked incredibly hard for them? In this episode, we're talking about imposter syndrome—what it is, why so many dancers…
Today is episode 25, and are you ready? We're going to be talking about imposter syndrome, the silent disruptor in the dance space.
Okay, so what is imposter syndrome? According to an article from Psychology Today, "Instead of acknowledging their capabilities as well as their efforts, individuals who experience imposter syndrome often attribute their accomplishments to external or transient causes such as luck, good timing, or effort that they cannot regularly expend.
Whether in the areas of academic achievement or career success, a person can struggle with pressure and personal expectations." So is that you? Are you someone that struggles with imposter syndrome? I do believe that a lot more people struggle with it than we realize.
Maybe we don't realize that's what's happening.
But personality traits largely drive imposter syndrome, so those who experience it also likely struggle with self-efficacy and maybe even perfectionism.
Raise your hand if you're a perfectionist in the room.
I'm raising my hand.
[chuckles] It's no surprise that many individuals who grow up in competitive dance environments may struggle with perfectionism, and I know that because, again, I certainly do.
But then it's like, okay, well now what? How do we promote healthy environments in the dance space for our students and for ourselves? Because the beliefs that we have about ourselves matter more to us than what we actually see happen.
Even if we're experiencing a lot of what we portray as, quote, "success", if we don't have the self-talk that aligns with that and that backs that up to where we believe that we're successful, we'll miss it.
So for example, maybe you've had a student who is at competition, for example, or just performing on stage, and they perform their solo so beautifully and they pour their heart out into the performance, and let's say they even place at competition.
But maybe they had a small slip, or they fell out of a turn or something, and then that's all they can focus on, and that may cause that dancer to feel like they don't deserve the success they had.
Or maybe they completely disregard the success altogether because all they can think about is the mishap that they're replaying in their mind that you didn't even really notice or the audience doesn't really even notice, right? Well, when I was a student, I absolutely had times like this.
It's you prepare so long for the end of the year spring show, and then you get one, maybe two chances to perform, and if I fell or if something happened, I would beat myself up, and that's all I could think about.
So how can we reframe this way of thinking? How can we reframe negative self-talk and negative thoughts and stop that from turning into feeling like an imposter and feeling like you aren't good at the thing that you're doing, whether that be as a teacher, but also how can we help our students to not adopt that mentality as well so that they can think more positively about themselves and have a really healthy relationship with self-talk? And self-talk is, is anything, any type of talking [chuckles] to yourself internally in your head that, that might happen.
It can be positive, negative, neutral.
It's, it's natural.
It happens.
But let's talk about how we can use self-talk as a tool to, to think out loud and shift this mentality away from feeling like an imposter.
Positive self-talk is good, but sometimes the negative self-talk gets too loud that it just completely abolishes the positive.
Can you think of a time when you've caught yourself in that cycle where we have one negative thought and then another negative thought and it just keeps compounding to where all the positive things just kind of go out the window? But I encourage you to try this instead.
Say your thoughts out loud to yourself and/or to someone that you trust, and then process.
Ask yourself, "Is that 100% true?" So for example, if a student messes up a sequence on stage, or let's, let's say you're the student.
You're, you're the performer, and you mess up a sequence one time and automatically think, "I always mess up," and then suddenly you're thinking, "I'm not a good dancer." But challenge yourself to reframe that and ask yourself, "Does a mess-up on stage actually mean that I'm a bad dancer?" No.
And then finish it with a positive thought such as, "But I did perform with so much heart, and I felt really good about that." Or something.
Today is episode 25, and are you ready? We're going to be talking about imposter syndrome, the silent disruptor in the dance space.
Okay, so what is imposter syndrome? According to an article from Psychology Today, "Instead of acknowledging their capabilities as well as their efforts, individuals who experience imposter syndrome often attribute their accomplishments to external or transient causes such as luck, good timing, or effort that they cannot regularly expend.
Whether in the areas of academic achievement or career success, a person can struggle with pressure and personal expectations." So is that you? Are you someone that struggles with imposter syndrome? I do believe that a lot more people struggle with it than we realize.
Maybe we don't realize that's what's happening.
But personality traits largely drive imposter syndrome, so those who experience it also likely struggle with self-efficacy and maybe even perfectionism.
Raise your hand if you're a perfectionist in the room.
I'm raising my hand.
[chuckles] It's no surprise that many individuals who grow up in competitive dance environments may struggle with perfectionism, and I know that because, again, I certainly do.
But then it's like, okay, well now what? How do we promote healthy environments in the dance space for our students and for ourselves? Because the beliefs that we have about ourselves matter more to us than what we actually see happen.
Even if we're experiencing a lot of what we portray as, quote, "success", if we don't have the self-talk that aligns with that and that backs that up to where we believe that we're successful, we'll miss it.
So for example, maybe you've had a student who is at competition, for example, or just performing on stage, and they perform their solo so beautifully and they pour their heart out into the performance, and let's say they even place at competition.
But maybe they had a small slip, or they fell out of a turn or something, and then that's all they can focus on, and that may cause that dancer to feel like they don't deserve the success they had.
Or maybe they completely disregard the success altogether because all they can think about is the mishap that they're replaying in their mind that you didn't even really notice or the audience doesn't really even notice, right? Well, when I was a student, I absolutely had times like this.
It's you prepare so long for the end of the year spring show, and then you get one, maybe two chances to perform, and if I fell or if something happened, I would beat myself up, and that's all I could think about.
So how can we reframe this way of thinking? How can we reframe negative self-talk and negative thoughts and stop that from turning into feeling like an imposter and feeling like you aren't good at the thing that you're doing, whether that be as a teacher, but also how can we help our students to not adopt that mentality as well so that they can think more positively about themselves and have a really healthy relationship with self-talk? And self-talk is, is anything, any type of talking [chuckles] to yourself internally in your head that, that might happen.
It can be positive, negative, neutral.
It's, it's natural.
It happens.
But let's talk about how we can use self-talk as a tool to, to think out loud and shift this mentality away from feeling like an imposter.
Positive self-talk is good, but sometimes the negative self-talk gets too loud that it just completely abolishes the positive.
Can you think of a time when you've caught yourself in that cycle where we have one negative thought and then another negative thought and it just keeps compounding to where all the positive things just kind of go out the window? But I encourage you to try this instead.
Say your thoughts out loud to yourself and/or to someone that you trust, and then process.
Ask yourself, "Is that 100% true?" So for example, if a student messes up a sequence on stage, or let's, let's say you're the student.
You're, you're the performer, and you mess up a sequence one time and automatically think, "I always mess up," and then suddenly you're thinking, "I'm not a good dancer." But challenge yourself to reframe that and ask yourself, "Does a mess-up on stage actually mean that I'm a bad dancer?" No.
And then finish it with a positive thought such as, "But I did perform with so much heart, and I felt really good about that." Or something.
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