The Hidden Reason Actors Struggle with Self-Tapes—And How to Break Through

As an acting coach and performance and well-being coach, I often hear actors say the same thing: “I can access my emotions in live auditions or scenes, but when I self-tape, I freeze.” If that sounds like you, you’re not alone—and there’s a reason why this keeps happening.

When you’re acting in person—either doing a monologue or with a scene partner—you’re good at accessing emotion. In fact it is one of the aspects of your acting you feel good about. You’ve always been very sensitive and empathic, since you were a child. You were the child that cried when Bambi’s mother died and when The Snowman melted.

You were the teenager who wailed uncontrollably in the restaurant when their boyfriend broke up with them. You’re the adult who identifies with the word ‘empath’.

Tears come easily for others, for the state of the world, for yourself. Tears of sadness, tears of frustration and anger, tears of helplessness, tears of love.

You’ve felt at times embarrassed about how easily you express emotion but ever since you decided to work as an actress, you’ve embraced and even been proud of this side.

Except when it comes to self-taping. You hate this way of doing things with a vengeance. You hoped it would disappear after the world returned to normal after the pandemic. But ‘nope’.

Not when it comes to self-taping. You keep reading about how casting agents don’t want to go back to live auditions. They can save time and they can save the actor time by looking at the self-tape. Some even think they only need to watch four seconds of the self-tape before they know. This makes your stomach churn.

So how can you make self-tapes work for you?

This is what a recent client was wondering when we started to work together. I’m changing some of this client’s information to keep them unidentifiable but am sharing this with their permission.

Step 1 – Understand Why You Struggle with Emotional Access in Self-Tapes

a) Increase awareness with the support of an acting coach-therapist

I first invited her to say her lines to me, a real live person (albeit on a video call). I asked her how she felt doing this, what she noticed in her body, her emotions and vocal quality. She said she felt a little shy as we had only just met but felt ok about her performance.

I then asked her to say her lines towards her iPhone, as if she was self-taping – with me observing . This was a good way for me to see what she meant about struggling to access emotions—did I experience less emotional access in the self-tape? How did my perception differ or not from hers? I did notice that she seemed less relaxed in the self-tape.

I then asked her to do the self-tape again but this time to really take notice of what was going on for her. I asked her to take more notice of her experience. I asked:

What does she experience as she is preparing for it? For example, what is she thinking and feeling as she does her hair and make-up, as she puts on her costume, organises the props and fiddles with her phone?
— She notices she feels nervous and in her head, disconnected from her emotions.

What does she notice in her body as she is saying her lines?
— Her body feels stiff and still.

Where is the energy and movement and warmth?
— There is some in her hands and cheeks.

Which parts feel frozen or disconnected?
— Her jaws, her chest.

What is happening with her breath? Is it light or deep?
— It’s shallow.

Fast or slow?
— Slow, she is holding it.

Is she at times tensing her muscles, facial muscles?
— Yes, and her neck.

What is she feeling?
— As if she is only feeling superficially.

b) Exaggerate the self-tape pattern to reveal the block

I ask her to repeat the self-tape experience but this time to exaggerate whatever she noticed. As if she was doing a comedy of her self-taping. For example:

• Think even more critical thoughts as you are prepping
• Imagine an even more critical and scary casting agent watching your self-tape as you do it
• Hold your breath even more (without making yourself faint of course)
• Freeze certain parts of your body even more

Then we stop and discuss, “What was that like?” She commented that she felt very uncomfortable exaggerating the tension and the numbing. As she said this she was visibly crying. I asked her what the feeling was and she said: grief.

I invited her to stay with the grief and breathe into it without trying to change it or understand it. She connected with an image of needing to control herself and her emotions as a child in front of her step-father. He would make fun of her and call her a drama queen when she became emotional.

She remembered driving to the seaside with her mother, step-father and brother in the car. The car broke down on the motorway and had to be towed off. The holiday was cancelled.

She’d been so looking forward to it and was so disappointed she had burst into tears. Her step-father had told her off forcefully, calling her a ‘selfish girl’ and a ‘drama queen’. Her brother had joined in by taunting her. Mum hadn’t stood up for her.

I wondered to myself if she was projecting her step-father onto the video camera. Whether she was projecting the step-father into the imagined casting director who was going to view the playback. Whether she was projecting her mother, who nice as she was, abandoned her daughter in that moment, onto the iPhone that was filming her self-tape.

I shared this with her. She nodded energetically which suggested there was something there to explore. I asked her if she was ready to explore, and she was.

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Step 2 – Use EMDR to Separate the Past Trauma from the Present Trigger

I then used an EMDR technique. I asked her to imagine a split screen where one part of the screen is the iPhone timing her and one screen is the step-father. I asked her on a scale of 1–10 how she felt about self-taping using the iPhone right now. 10 is the worst feeling, 0 is the best. It was 7. As she watched the light bar going across her laptop screen on our video call, she took in that the iPhone and her dismissive step-father were two separate elements. I asked her again for the number and it was 4/10.

As a performance and well-being coach, I see how powerful this moment can be—when someone sees that they are not reliving the past, but responding to it with a sense of safety and agency.

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Step 3 – Rewriting the Emotional Script with Support from Your Acting Coach

So I invited her to imagine going back to that incident in the car. But this time she could re-do the scene and say to her step-father and mother what she hadn’t at the time. I asked her to imagine her step-father was where she usually placed her iPhone to film her self-tapes.

“How dare you talk to me that way, you big bully,” she said.

“You have no right to use the fact that you are an adult to belittle me like that. You have no idea how it has impacted me to feel my emotions are stupid.

And all because you felt stressed about the car breaking down and wanted to take out your mood on someone. And all because you cannot connect with your own emotions.

I dunno, I mean maybe someone crushed your emotions. But you had no right to crush mine like that…”

And so she carried on. She connected with anger, with hurt, with grief and sadness that she had experienced that. I let her go with it and experience it till she ran out of steam.

I then asked her if she was willing to ‘be’ her step-father but this time to respond as she would have liked him to at the time. He would apologise, hear her, validate all of her feelings. He would take responsibility for the way he behaves and that is actually how he behaves towards himself.

Once she had said everything she needed from him she went back to herself. There was a bit more back and forth between her.

I asked how she felt now after this ideal response from him. She felt more ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ and validated. I invited her to say to me “all my emotions and vulnerability are valid at all times.” She said it with conviction.

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Step 4 – Reinforce the Shift with Bilateral Tapping

We then reinforced this positive belief using bilateral tapping. She tapped alternately on her left and right arm. Left-right, left-right as she imagined telling her step-father what she thought and him apologising and taking responsibility.

Finally I asked her to think of the idea of self-taping and give me a number between 0 and 10 for what it brought up in her. This had now gone down to 2 from 7. I suspected there was probably some processing in a later session to do around mum’s not standing up for her when her step-father humiliated her. This would likely bring the number down to 0.

Next I asked her to once again do the piece as if she was self-taping, looking at her iPhone set up for self-taping. This time she reported feeling much more in contact with her emotions and with her body. She felt more relaxed and at ease. She said that she had even imagined her step-father smiling apologetically and applauding her after she had said her lines.

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How an Acting Coach-Therapist Can Help You Reclaim Emotional Freedom on Camera

I hope you enjoyed reading about one of the ways I work with accessing emotions when self-taping. There are many other ways and it depends on you and what arises naturally out of our work. Each person I work with is unique and I believe that we co-create the type of therapy that is most going to help you.

If you would like to discuss further how I can help, then feel free to schedule a free call here. As an acting coach, a performance and well-being coach, and an acting coach-therapist, I help actors navigate emotional blocks, access vulnerability, and bring their full selves to the work—whether on camera, on stage, or in life.