08/09/2025
Tough love is not our way. Much more can be achieved though laughter and caring.
If your singing teacher doesn't teach you with love, they're not a good singing teacher.
I've heard several stories lately of singing teachers using a “tough love” approach.
Belittling, pressure, guilt, shame, dismissal. The old "break them down to build them up".
These are not helpful or effective teaching tools. Not if you want actual growth.
In this century, the “tough love” approach doesn't work. There's no sound pedagogical basis for it.
So why do we still see it being used?
My best guess is that when a teacher does these things, they’re projecting their own trauma.
They're fulfilling an unexamined need to create the narrative that their own bad experiences as a student meant more than misery and misunderstanding.
They're unconsciously trying to prove that what they went through was formative and valuable, rather than the impediment that still affects them all these years later.
Learning to sing is inherently vulnerable. It shows us deeply every facet of who we are and offers us an opportunity to explore, heal and grow. In this place we can truly meet our most uncontained and unrestricted dreams.
Teaching with love doesn’t mean we don’t do hard things together. On the contrary, love is a prerequisite for creating a space inherently safe and conducive enough to truly take things as far as they need to go.
With love we can learn to become comfortable in discomfort, to tolerate the uncertainty of recognising we’re not yet where we want to be.
If our goal as singers is to have vocal instruments that are free, expressive, and authentic, then there is NO reality in which we can fully inhabit this state while merging with fear and shame.
The singing that moves us as human beings is singing that is deeply connected to emotion. This is not possible if we are not safe.
If you feel like your singing teacher’s studio is contributing to the burden of shame, guilt and fear that we must all learn to unlearn to reach our full potential, then it’s time to leave that singing teacher to work their own stuff out.
