My experience in the music business has proved helpful in building swift rapport with clients.
I’ve been working in the industry for more than 20 years and understand what happens behind the scenes and don’t hold unrealistic preconceptions about their work. While I provide psychotherapy for artists and music industry professionals and health and welfare consultation for record labels, tours and venues, before then I started my career in venues, at festivals, in studios and on tour. This context saves time as we share a frame of reference.
The music industry is sustained by relationships.
This lends itself well to an attachment-based lens, even if on the surface the business is driven by musical expression (and the performance, marketing and monetisation of it). However, I can pinpoint instances when holding on too rigidly to the analytic frame has proven to be the wrong approach. Managers often request a meeting prior to arranging an initial consultation with their client. To begin with I resisted, explaining that this would be inappropriate as the artist was an adult. Over time I realised that my rigidity was counterproductive. If the manager believed I was unco-operative they’d go elsewhere.
Before the work can begin you must first get past the gatekeeper.
Many managers are involved in their artist’s professional and personal lives, so vetting healthcare professionals is par for the course. A parent-child dynamic can emerge, and much can be re-enacted that can be explored in therapy. The client may describe dynamics like over-involvement, enmeshment, coercion, enabling and splitting.
A brief meeting with the manager is a sometimes necessary first step.
I now use it as an opportunity to demystify therapy and outline the parameters of how I work, emphasising that ongoing contact is not possible. I listen to what is shared, without colluding or attempting to create an alliance that would foster triangulation, as that would interfere with future work with the client. I am also aware that this is a window into how a central relationship operates. Managers may voice concerns of symptoms or pressures; if they express a need to be heard themselves I refer them on. Many managers who have referred clients to me have been the most stable relationship in that client’s life, and instrumental in the client receiving ongoing psychiatric support.
High-profile clients often have little control over their diaries.
Sessions are scheduled by PAs or day-to-day managers, and payments are processed by accountants, so these features are not sources of material for interpretation. Frequent travel means that we may not be able to meet at the same time every week. Instead, the nature of the therapeutic relationship – consistency, predictability and attunement – creates a secure base and safe haven within which they can explore, reflect, regroup and organise their feelings.
Therapists are not immune to parasocial relationships.
If therapists hold preconceptions about their clients (or their workplaces) it can get in the way. Being near to fame can be seductive and can appeal to the therapist’s narcissism. This can lead to the blurring of ethical boundaries, such as by asking for favours or dual relationships. When therapists sate their own curiosity in sessions rather than attending to the client’s inner state, or if they try to ingratiate themselves to the client, it raises a red flag and hampers trust. Often the client retreats as therapy no longer feels like a safe space.
When an artist comes to therapy they are seeking a relational sanctuary: an attuned, regulated mind to assist with mentalising.
Therapy can also provide an experience of being deeply understood, held and valued. It may be one of the only spaces where the client is neither elevated nor diminished, and where the relationship does not depend on performance, productivity or proximity to fame.
Career transitions, particularly when careers end, can be deeply destabilising.
Overnight the artist loses everything: aspirations and future plans, a career and income stream, a social circle and even perhaps their identity. For most, being a musician is a vocation or a calling. It brings to the fore a painful truth that the adoration they receive is conditional. They may be loved but they aren’t cared for, and their time in the sun may be brief.
Tamsin is offering Therapy Today readers a 50% discount on the audiobook of Touring and Mental Health: the music industry manual with the code TherapyToday at Music Industry Therapist.