Dealing with Disappointment in Swing Dance Contests

I competed in swing dancing and didn't do as well as I wanted to. I want to feel excited and inspired and proud of myself, but instead I feel like a failure, embarrassed and disappointed. How can I feel less insecure about my dancing? How can I find validation of my dancing outside of competitions and performance?


Signed, 

Chelsea's Facebook Friends

If there were one answer to this question, we would have solved this problem by now. So, I vouch for a multi-pronged solution. Below are the things that have helped me the most with conquering my own insecurities as I pursue life and competitive dance.

Be Generous with Yourself

Calling yourself names and making hyperbolic statements about how you're a terrible dancer (and maybe even a terrible human being, now that you think about it) will not make you a better or happier person or a better or happier dancer. Self-flagellation doesn't help. Treat yourself like you would your own best friend. 

Be Generous with Your Partner

It is easy to play the blame game, and blame can be a quick and incidentally satisfying way to offload your negative energy, but it's not ultimately very productive or healthy to your relationship, especially if your dance partner is also your life partner. Whether you are the one doing the blaming or the one getting blamed, remember that your dance partner is their own person with their own feelings and their own journey that is just as valid as your own—but at the same time that you are your own person with your own valid feelings and journey. It is imperative to enforce healthy psychological boundaries in any relationship, and both partners have a role in this. Resist the urge to say "I told you so." Remember that your partner tried their best. Remember that you tried your best too. You both wish it had worked out better. But right now, when you're feeling terrible, is not the time to twist the knife or to solve your problems. Which brings us to...

Feel Your Feelings

Rejection never feels good, especially when it is unexpected. Negative feelings are incredibly hard to tolerate. For me personally, being able to tolerate negative feelings better—both my own and those of others—is one of the hardest and most rewarding things I've worked on in my own therapy. 

One of the most helpful things I've learned in therapy is that feelings have a beginning, a middle, and an end. No feeling lasts forever (even though at the time it seems like it might). And counterintuitively enough, negative feelings pass faster if you take the time to really feel them and process them rather than trying to run from them. If you try to run from your feelings (and worrying about them counts as a kind of avoidance), they will dog you; they will ever be springing up in unexpected places like weeds. In fact, it is precisely because you are avoiding feeling your feelings that you cannot be rid of them. As someone who has spent her whole life trying to avoid her feelings and only recently tried a new tactic, I can vouch for the transformative effects of this alternative approach.

So when you're feeling rejected, or insecure, or depressed, take a deep breath and allow yourself to move through the feeling rather than trying to avoid it. Let yourself feel the totality of all the negativity, for just a few minutes. Put what you're feeling into words, remembering that since you are practicing generosity you are not allowed to make totalizing negative statements about your worth as a human being. 

Here are two examples of healthy and unhealthy ways to put your feelings into words (drawn from extensive personal experience on both sides). Perhaps you will recognize something familiar:

Healthy feeling statements: "I feel so bad about how that contest went. I really thought I was going to do well, and I feel so disappointed at what happened. I'm worried that because I didn't do well in this contest that means that I'm not a good dancer (or not as good as I thought I was). I really wanted to do well; I really thought I had done well. Now I'm worried that I'm off-base about everything. I've put so much into this and to get the outcome I got makes me feel so insecure. Sometimes I even question why I bother." 

Unhealthy feeling statements: "That contest went terribly. My dancing was just awful. What on earth was I thinking that I was going to do well? I'm such a disappointment. This just proves that I'm not a good dancer (or not as good as I thought I was). I should have done better, but moreso I should wake up to the fact that apparently in addition to not being able to dance I also have been deluding myself into thinking I could dance at all. I've put so much into this and this outcome just makes me realize that none of it has been worth anything. Sometimes I even question why I bother."

So you can see that feeling your feelings is not about minimizing them or dismissing them. It's not about pushing your feelings onto your dance partner as a way to blame them for your feelings. Your feelings are valid and they deserve to be felt. But you have to treat them for what they are—feelings—and not turn them into judgments on your character or your partner's character. 

The first time you try this, I recommend that you do it in the presence of a trusted friend or loved one. If your #1 friend and loved one is also your dance partner, it may be helpful to choose someone else for this honor at first. Because once you have truly felt your feelings, you need someone to listen to you patiently, acknowledge how you feel, give you a hug, and tell you that you're wonderful. If your partner is also upset, they may not be in a place where they can do this for you (and you may not be in a place where you can do this for them). In time you may be able to do this for yourself and for your partner as well, but friends who can listen and love on you are always a good idea. 

Contextualize the Situation

Contests reward particular skills (e.g., aesthetics, good rhythm) and minimize others (e.g., feeling, humor, adventurousness). Contests penalize things that in the real world do not matter (e.g., making a mistake). Contests reflect parts of the real world of social dancing, but they are not the same as the real world of social dancing.

The truism is that how well you do in dance contests tells you how well you do in dance contests. It tells you how you were evaluated by a set of particular people with their own opinions and values who based their assessments on an incredibly small snippet of your dancing in a high-pressure setting at tempos that are probably too fast. And because each judge has their own set of values, what pleases one person may not please another—and if these values are diametrically opposed, it may not be possible to please everyone. 

Judges also vary in their levels of expertise and experience with judging; speaking as someone who judges contests more than some and less than others, remember that we are all only human. Judging a contest is a skill and requires immense amounts of self-knowledge, visual acumen, critical thinking, and processing speed. Try it for yourself next time you watch a contest (or rewatch a contest on YouTube) if you want some perspective. 

Contests also put a somewhat artificial boundary on the number of people who will be rewarded, and usually that boundary has a lot to do with not making everyone's butts fall asleep while they watch from the floor. If the group of people who entered the contest is relatively homogeneous, then the criteria by which finalists are chosen become rather picky. Sometimes it is just luck, a numbers game—you got seen at the right moment by the right person. That boundary does not mean that those who were not rewarded are somehow deficient. It means that the ones who were rewarded did the right thing at the right time in the eyes of the people who were chosen to select them. It is a rather narrow thing. 

Examine Your Values

How well you do in dance contests does not tell you whether you are a "good" dancer. It does not tell you whether you are enjoyable to dance with. If you want to know those things, ask your dance friends or a trusted dance teacher. Hopefully they will tell you if you smell or if your technique has some rough edges. But most likely they will help you remember that you are wonderful and that they love you and love dancing with you. 

How well you do in dance contests also does not tell you whether you are living up to your own values for yourself. If you want to know that, ask yourself. What do you care about? What are you going for with your dancing? To what degree are contests an appropriate venue for you to gauge whether you are succeeding at upholding your own values? You might find that contests tap into only a minority of the things that you care about, and it's up to you to determine whether you get more benefit from them than not.

You also have to consider your values in context. It's unlikely (and would be rather unhealthy) if dance was the only thing you valued in life. What do you want your life to look like, and what role does dance play in that? For me, I also have a full-time job, a marriage, a child, friends, and other hobbies that I enjoy. Sometimes I want to stay home instead of dance. Sometimes when I'm at dance events I want to hang out with my friends instead of dance. Realistically, I am not going to spend much of my time practicing. There are dancers who are working harder at dancing than I am, and I must be real with myself that this means that they will improve and sometimes beat me in contests. Because my real goal in life is to live my values, and dance is only a part of that, and competitive dance an even smaller part of that part.

Solve Problems When You're Calm

The heat of the moment is not the time to dissect what went wrong and how you can fix it. Problem-solving can wait until you've calmed down and had a good night's rest to recover from the weekend. When you're feeling bad, your focus has to be on the here-and-now. Acknowledge your feelings and they will pass, because all feelings have a beginning, and middle, and an end. Be generous with yourself and with your partner, and surround yourself with people who love you and can help you feel better. Remember that contests are just one part of the swing dance experience, something that you can choose or not choose to participate in, and that they don't determine your worth or skill as a dancer or a person. 

Why I Compete, and an Anecdote to Prove I'm Not Making This Up

I compete because I like to perform and contests give me an opportunity to do that. It's also nice to be recognized by the community. Since I teach dance as a side career, I also compete because contests are a way for me to get my dancing seen by organizers who might want to hire me and students who might want to learn how to dance like I do. They are also a chance for me to share my vision of what dance can look like and feel like. 

As a case in point, this past weekend at ILHC I got second place in the Strictly Balboa contest and didn't make finals in the Balboa Jack and Jill. All this happened on the same day—which was, I kid you not, my birthday—and you can imagine I was so disappointed and so excited all at once. At dinner before the Strictly finals I had my time to feel disappointed about the J&J. My success in one venue but not another (and this isn't the first time this has happened) made me doubt whether anyone appreciated me for me, not just as someone's partner. To be honest I still worry about this and am working on working through it outside of dealing with the momentary disappointments. 

But I also knew I wouldn't be able to perform that evening if I didn't get through feeling disappointed. Thankfully my wonderful husband and dance partner David listened to me and told me I was wonderful and his favorite dance partner, and I kissed my sweet little boy as he tried to use french fries as a vehicle for eating mainly ketchup as a meal, and I worked through it all and remembered I have such a big and full life. Even in writing this, I am practicing being kind, and remembering that there are so many ways to contribute to our community that matter so much more than a contest. I'm hoping to use this blog as a platform for being a part of that. Hope to see you on the dance floor soon.