The Actors Paradox

I have to admit, I've had to deal with some pretty messed up issues lately. I feel like I've grown in my self-awareness, but there seems to always be one thing that holds me back from really learning from the experience. It's what I call the Actors Paradox.

I'm not sure what the best way to describe it is, but I'll try to elaborate the best I can. As an practicing actor, you go through a huge range of emotions for different parts and roles. I've found that with this diverse range of emotions that I've had to practice, I've begun to really lose touch with what's real and what's not. I mean this in the way that when I come to an emotional issue, I never know whether I'm giving the situation too much emotional investment.

It may sound a little odd, but I find myself questioning: is this the way a regular person would react to this situation? Or am I making an unrealistic drama out of nothing at all? It's really a dumb situation, because obviously everyone has different magnitudes of reactions to the same situation, but I just wonder if I'm within that reasonable person's reaction or if I'm becoming melodramatic with everything I do.

Just today, while I was on the bus, I began to realize something specific in my life that really upset me. Now whether it should have upset me that much, that still has to be determined, but I remember after about 5-10 minutes of picking the issue apart and dwelling on it, I just came to tears almost instantly. It was obvious that what I was thinking about was very important to me, but again it became a question of if I was over-reacting or maybe even over-acting.

After that crappy bus ride to class, and a three hour rehearsal with my drama group, I made my way back home and found that it didn't bother me as much. To me, this was really unsettling. I'm the kind of guy who really likes to have his thoughts and priorities organized thoroughly, and it seemed like that organization just went out the window at that moment. I just hate having issues unresolved whether it's from denial or from just treating the issue too lightly. But at the same time, I hate making a disaster out of nothing at all. So I'm back to my original problem.

It might sound absurd, but I remember sometimes just as an acting exercise, I would try to over-react to emotional circumstances just to see if I could induce tears out of nothing really at all. I have to admit, it's worked a number of times with some of the TV show instances that I normally couldn't care less for, and it's helped me with my acting. But in the end, I find it's made my regular emotions completely clouded

So right now, I'm still wrestling with that same problem I thought of on the bus. A part of me wants to explode on the person whose caused all of this trouble to me, but then again there's that fear of acting too much on feelings and over-reacting. I'm really not sure what's the best plan from here, which makes me glad that I can talk to God about my worries.

I need a shrink...