Become Your Own Good Teacher

As musicians, we unconsciously absorb far more than technique, repertoire, and stylistic knowledge from musicians and teachers around us.

We also internalise ways of thinking about music, practice, performance, mistakes, discipline, success, and worth.

In an ideal world, these messages would consistently support curiosity, growth, creativity, and wellbeing. But musical culture often carries something else alongside its strengths: over-scrutiny, harsh self-judgement, perfectionism, and the assumption that “serious” music-making must involve struggle, pressure, or self-criticism.

Over time, these voices can become internalised. Eventually, we no longer need an external critic because we learn to criticise ourselves automatically.

One of the ideas that deeply influences from Schema Therapy is the concept of Limited Reparenting.

In therapy, coaching, or teaching, this means offering an experience of guidance that helps a person strengthen healthier, more adaptive ways of relating to themselves. The goal is not dependence on the teacher or therapist, but gradually developing the capacity to do this internally.

In Schema Therapy language, this is part of strengthening the Healthy Adult mode.

In music training, I often think of this as developing an “Inner Good Teacher.”

A healthy inner teacher does not motivate through fear, shame, or relentless pressure. It guides with clarity, encouragement, attunement, structure, realism, and care. It can recognise effort without catastrophising mistakes. It can encourage discipline without brutality. It can remain connected to curiosity, imagination, embodiment, and musical expression.

Importantly, the “parent” in Limited Reparenting should be understood broadly. We are shaped not only by parents, but by teachers, peers, institutions, audiences, cultural norms, and the wider musical environment. All of these voices can become internalised.

Part of growth as a musician involves recognising which internalised messages genuinely help us flourish, and which merely keep us trapped in anxiety, tension, over-control, or self-defeating patterns.

As teachers and coaches, we can model healthier ways of relating to music-making (and relating to ourselves and others in music, too).

But as musicians, we can also begin learning to do this work ourselves:

Strengthening the Inner Good Teacher that helps us practise, perform, learn, and create with greater balance, freedom, and wellbeing.