Meeting Our Emotional Needs

A core focus of the Schema Coaching for Musicians is meeting our core emotional needs as we make music. This helps us feel more calm, assured and free, which lays the ground for more creativity, personal expression and technical control.

I like to work with the model of seven categories of emotional needs from Lockwood and Samson, 2020.

Emotional Nurturance & Unconditional Love

Connection, acceptance, support in expressing emotions, compassionate guidance, navigating limits.

Dependability

Safety, consistency, fairness and predictability.

Playfulness & Spontaneity

Support for play, emotional openness and spontaneity.

Autonomy Granting

Privacy and freedom to learn one's own way.

Autonomy Support

Affirmation of capability and competence.

Intrinsic Worth

Developing self-worth not dependent on comparison.

Confidence & Competence

A healthy role model who is confident and competent.

Positive Schemas: Positivity in Mind and Body

When our needs are met, we activate and cultivate positive schemas (hence the name of the coaching style). A positive schema is a network of related, positive thoughts, emotions, sensations, and memories. We feel good in both mind and body.

For example, when our need for Emotional Nurturance & Unconditional Love is adequately met, a related positive schema might be:

Thoughts

“I am accepted as I am. I am free to express myself. I know that people will support me.”

Emotions

Content, Grounded, Happy

Sensations

Steadiness, Calmness, a sense of freedom

Memories

Other times we felt valued and supported.

Realising Our Creative and Technical Potential

With our needs met and positive schemas active, we feel good in ourselves. We also tend to lean more into positive, healthy attitudes and behaviours. We call this our Healthy Adult Mode. Here, we are in tune with our needs and emotions, we are more steady and able to focus, more understanding and compassionate in the face of challenges, and more balanced in our outlook. These attributes also aid our music-making.

We also often feel more free to explore, play around and experiment, express ourselves spontaneously, open up to imagination, and so become more easily absorbed in what we're doing. This is our Happy Child Mode showing through.

Together, these qualities help us to realise more of our creative and technical potential in quite a wide variety of areas over time. We have the resources in us. This coaching helps us access them.

This is what we are aiming for.

Understanding Common Issues in Music

The Schema approach also helps musicians gain a clearer understanding of common creative and technical blocks and performance anxieties.

None of these are 'bad habits' or personal flaws, but signs of unmet emotional needs.

Let's look again at the need for Emotional Nurturance and Unconditional Love to explain. When it goes unmet, we can develop maladaptive schemas that show up like this:

Thoughts

“I am not understood or accepted here. I can't express myself freely. I have to show up in a certain way.”

Emotions

Apprehensive, fearful, stressed, lonely.

Bodily Sensations

Anxiety and stress symptoms. Pressure, tension, restriction.

Memories

Other times when we felt unappreciated, invalidated or pressured to conform.

Trying to Get Our Needs Met

When maladaptive schemas are active, we are tighter in our bodies, and our minds are more full of stress, anxiety, and worry. We cannot play freely in these states. We also tend to lean into more reactive habits and behaviours that can be detrimental to our success in music:

• Rushing through our practice to 'get it over with'

• Over-practising to 'try to get it right', but to the point of fatigue or injury

• Avoiding practising to try to escape the mental stress connected with the music

• Numbing out emotionally when we play for others, so we can't be hurt by criticism

• Censoring our personal expression as we perform, so it can't be rejected to begin with

These and other patterns are learnt coping mechanisms. We do them because, on some level, we feel we have no choice, even though they do not serve us. We are trying to get our needs met: to maintain connection, find acceptance and feel emotionally secure.

A Shared Experience

If you relate to any of this, you are not alone. I see that these and other patterns are very common amongst musicians. I relate to them myself.

We may sometimes belittle ourselves for having them, but they are not our fault. They make sense given the culture we have grown up in, which tends to prize productivity and achievement over meeting our emotional needs.

Working in music, we often get the message that we have to perform perfectly, or that our ability is not 'good enough' in comparison to others, or that we have to conform to certain rules and expectations to gain approval.

Working many hours on our own can be a lonely endeavour, and the industry can be highly competitive, so we may feel quite isolated at times.

Transcending the Difficulties We Face

These challenges are unfortunately not going away any time soon. We also cannot solve all our problems permanently. But:

• We can mitigate and reduce stress and anxiety.

• We can find fulfilment and joy in our work.

• We can flourish, even in a stressful environment.

These are the aims of Schema Coaching for Musicians.

When problems in music show up, we can work to meet underlying core emotional needs where they remain unmet. We can shift out of stress, anxiety and frustration, out of self-limiting habits, and into more calm, confidence and creativity.

I call the techniques that help bring this about our Positive Schema Toolkit.

Building Your Positive Schema Toolkit

I work with musicians to find the techniques and approaches that suit them and integrate them into the music directly. We can work with many different aspects of music, including:

• How we proceed through our practice and performances: how we pace ourselves.

• How we engage and work with our bodies: how we sit, stand, move, and gesture; how we use our senses of listening, touch, and sight.

• Our inner dialogue: what we say to ourselves as we learn, play, and create.

• What and how we feel: the emotions or feelings that come up in relation to the music.

Getting the Message Out

I am passionate about this approach. It has benefitted my own playing, and I have seen (and heard) significant change and progress in the people I work with who now use the techniques themselves.