Lights, camera, action! Imagine standing on a stage before a crowded audience, but you don’t know your lines. Worse yet, you don’t even know the other performers’ lines.

Performing improv is not for the faint of heart. With rare exceptions, most people shrink at the prospect of entertaining a crowd with spontaneous humor. It can be so anxiety-producing in more ways than one—yet that may also help to explain why improv is good for an anxiety problem, according to the research. Here are some of the ways that is true.

Increased tolerance for uncertainty – Anxiety and worry are often associated with uncertainty about the future. Major life changes can be triggering for someone with anxiety or depression. The discomfort from not knowing what will happen next—even in an interpersonal interaction, when one person has social anxiety disorder—can feed panic, rigidity, and avoidance behaviors.

Improv classes can increase one’s tolerance for sitting in the discomfort of uncertainty, however, thereby reducing social anxiety. That was the conclusion of University of Michigan researchers in findings published in December 2022. They followed a group of teens who, instead of receiving clinical therapies for social anxiety, took part in improv classes.

As part of the experiment, the students participated in common improv exercises such as the acting out of a story. Each participant would introduce a new surprise line that the next person would have to build on.

Meanwhile, the researchers surveyed the students’ levels of social anxiety and discomfort with uncertainty, both before and after each training. A noted decrease in discomfort with uncertainty, they concluded, had other positive psychological effects—one of which was less social anxiety.

Less social anxiety – In earlier research in 2019, improv classes were effective at reducing social anxiety in adolescents with social anxiety disorder. (The disorder is characterized by an intense fear of talking or interacting with others and can include physical symptoms like blushing, trembling, or a shaky voice.) Less social anxiety was also a predictor of “increases in social skills, hope, creative self-efficacy, comfort performing for others, and willingness to make mistakes, along with marginal decreases in symptoms of depression,” according to the authors of the study.

Less anxiety and depression – Another study went further in assessing how improv classes might be used to treat anxiety and depression. In this case, the researchers paired improv classes with cognitive behavioral therapy, an evidence-based intervention for anxiety and depression. Study participants received a one-hour improv lesson and a one-hour therapy session each week.

After four weeks, the study participants showed reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression. They also exhibited less perfectionism, (which tends to correlate with anxiety and depression), and higher levels of self-esteem.\

Less performance anxiety – Performance anxiety is very common. It can encompass not just social anxiety but certain sexual hang-ups, those pre-game jitters before you compete, and that panic felt in the lead-up to a work presentation.

One way that improv classes may help with performance anxiety, according to those who have studied it, is to expose people to the situations that cause their anxiety. In this sense, improv classes function a bit like exposure therapy. Many people, when they do the thing that scares them, find their feelings of fear subside. Their anxieties about performing in front of others or engaging in unscripted interactions may not go away entirely, but they often do decrease to a point where they seem much more manageable.

Greater self-confidence and self-esteem – Learning how to think on one’s feet under pressure can boost confidence. There are also the positive social connections that form from shared humor and mutual vulnerability. The ability to laugh at oneself, to see the humor in one’s mistakes, builds adaptability and resilience, and in turn self-assurance. No wonder that research says enhanced self-esteem is another mental health benefit of taking improv classes.

Today improv classes abound, offering both direct and indirect ways to address anxiety issues. Whether you’re looking for a supplement to therapy, an opportunity at self-improvement, or a way to have fun and explore a new dimension of yourself, improv classes may be the solution.

Use the random improv generator to generate random improv scenes for your acting classes