For a lot of performers, the identity came first.

Long before the first professional credit, there was already a felt sense of being a performer. Something that had nothing to do with contracts, and everything to do with who you were.

Work usually gives that identity somewhere to go. A show to be in. A company to be part of. A reason to say, out loud, this is who I am.

When the work disappears, a contract cancelled, a season cut short, a longer gap between jobs than expected, the identity does not disappear with it. But it can be left with nowhere obvious to land.

That is a different kind of difficulty from grieving a job. It can sound more like: who am I on a Tuesday with no rehearsal? Who am I when nobody asks what I am working on? Who am I if the thing I have always been is, for now, unemployed?

Some people manage that gap by staying constantly busy. Auditioning for everything. Picking up anything adjacent. Filling the diary so there is less room to notice the quiet.

Some manage it the other way, by quietly stepping back from calling themselves a performer at all, as if lowering the stakes might make the waiting easier.

Neither response is wrong. Both can be ways of trying to hold onto an identity that currently has nowhere to be expressed.

Counselling does not create work. It cannot make a contract appear. What it can offer is somewhere to bring the parts of your identity that do not currently have anywhere to go, and somewhere to sit with what it is like to wait, sometimes for a long time, to be that person again in front of an audience.

If a quieter season in your creative work has left you unsure who you are without it, you are welcome to get in touch.