Taking psychological strain seriously

Fees, contracts and tests can now be spoken about factually. About the psychological side of this work hardly anyone speaks, although in everyday life it takes more space than the shoot itself. Reliable figures for Germany barely exist on that, so no statistic stands here. Instead it is about what the strain concretely arises from, what of it can be eased through organisation and how you notice that it is time to ask someone with training. This article wants to lecture nobody — you take the decision.

The double life is the actual work

What is tiring is rarely the shoot day. That is long, technical and at some point over. What is tiring is what sits between the shoot days: dodging when someone asks what you do for a living. Building explanations that have to fit together over months. With every photo considering where it could land.

Two phone numbers, two email addresses, two names, in case of doubt two calendars. Each of these precautions on its own is useful. In the sum they are a background process that never quite switches off, and exactly from that arises the exhaustion many people cannot place, because they “only work two days a month”.

If someone finds out

The reactions come out differently and rarely as one feared beforehand. Some people in the circle handle it more calmly than expected. Others withdraw without saying it. Sometimes it changes a relationship lastingly; sometimes after two weeks it is no longer a subject.

What helps in the preparation is a change of perspective: not “How do I prevent anyone finding out?”, but “What do I do if?”. The first question can never be answered conclusively; the second can. How far technical and contractual protection reaches is broken down in the article Working anonymously — with the honest answer that the likelihood can be lowered, but not brought to zero.

Comments on the net are not feedback

Public material brings public comments. A part of that is degrading, a part sexually intrusive, a part aims at the person and not at the work at all.

The most effective way of handling that is a classification: these comments are not an audience judgement and not an evaluation of your performance. Anyone who treats them as feedback takes on a second job that nobody is paid for.

In practice that means: switch comment functions off where it is possible. Filter message requests. Set fixed times at which you read messages, instead of being permanently reachable. Block without discussion. And do not reply — every reply lengthens the process and supplies material for the next one.

When work and body are the same thing

In most jobs a distance sits between person and performance. Anyone who botches a presentation has given a bad presentation. Here this distance falls away, because the working tool is you yourself.

That is why refusals quickly feel personal, although castings are decided by type, date and budget and not by worth. The opposite is just as treacherous: praise that applies to a body and has little to do with the person does not carry particularly far.

On top of that comes the shift between work and private life. It can irritate when acts that have become routine professionally are suddenly occupied differently privately — in both directions. That is not a disturbance, but a comprehensible consequence of two areas using the same vocabulary. Anyone who keeps their own rituals, their own places and their own language in private holds the separation more easily.

Irregularity is lasting stress

Commissions come in waves. Three shoots in four weeks, then six weeks nothing. The time in between is not leisure, but waiting — and waiting with an open financing feels different from a holiday.

Financial uncertainty hits the mood directly and also influences which acceptances one gives. Anyone who has to take an enquiry negotiates worse and says no less often. A reserve is therefore not only bookkeeping, but psychological hygiene; the realistic ranges for that are on the page on earnings.

A second pillar outside the industry works in the same direction. It takes from every single acceptance the weight of an existence decision.

What helps in everyday life

• A trusted person outside the industry. One is enough. Anyone who can speak with nobody carries everything alone — that is the most important single point on this list.
• Keep stage name and private person cleanly separate. Own phone, own email address, own profiles. Not only for safety reasons, but so that there is an end of the working day at all.
• Draw limits in time as well. Set reply times instead of being reachable around the clock. Free days stay free, even if a good enquiry comes.
• Do not take every enquiry. Two refusals in a row do not end a collaboration. Anyone who is constantly available is not paid better, but only booked fuller.
• After a shoot plan a day on which nothing is pending. A shoot day with travel often lasts twelve hours. The day after is not lost time.
• Sleep, movement, food. Banal, and still the first thing that falls away on several shoots in a row.

Professional help is not a confession

There are signals at which it makes sense not to wait longer: if sleep, appetite or drive change over weeks. If you withdraw from people who matter to you. If alcohol or other substances take on the task of bringing you down after a shoot. If you avoid situations that were previously unproblematic.

Points of contact are medical and psychotherapeutic help, specialist counselling for sex work and counselling services for people affected by sexualised violence. Much of that is also possible without a diagnosis, without a report and partly without giving a name.

We deliberately name no concrete names, numbers and addresses here: responsibilities differ by region and offers change. In looking for a suitable place we help if you want. And a practical note: appointments are rarely to be had at short notice. That speaks for asking early and not only when nothing works any more.

What we do and what we do not do

We ask one or two days after every shoot how it was — not in order to place the next date. We do not book anyone full who signals that they need a break. And we do not book further to productions about which we hear the same thing several times. How we work and what we live on is under About us.

What we are not: a counselling service, a practice or a substitute for therapy. We organise working conditions; the standards for that are on the page on safety on set. For everything beyond that people are needed who are trained for it.

And anyone who wants to stop stops. We try to talk nobody round, we do not ask for reasons, and there is no deadline. This work only functions as long as it is voluntary — otherwise it does not function at all.

Note: This article provides a general overview and is not a substitute for medical, psychotherapeutic or psychosocial counselling.