Your Tempo Healing, A Guide to Authentic Leadership with Alison Dagger

"When you build a strong, trusting, secure relationship with yourself, it becomes easier to form those relationships out in the world."

Barbara Schindler sits down with Alison Dagger, MA, LCMHC, MT-BC, a licensed mental health counselor, board-certified music therapist, and owner of Your Tempo Healing LLC in Waterbury, Vermont. Alison corrects the name of her practice in the first two minutes, and the correction tells you everything about her work. It is Your Tempo, because so much of life, school, and work pushes you to move at someone else's pace.

Alison trained as a classical flute player. Years of trying to give the conductor exactly what he wanted, nailing the tone and playing every note the exact right way, built a perfectionism that spread into every other part of her life and left her doubting her own instincts. She went on to work as a baker and pastry chef at 22, in a kitchen culture she describes as militaristic and full of men telling her what she could and couldn't do. Her practice, and her path to becoming an entrepreneur, grew out of wanting to build a space where she could stand in what is authentically her.

Barbara and Alison get into what a session actually looks like. Alison works from the body up, asking questions like "Does that sensation have a rhythm?" and whether it feels like a whole orchestra or one lonely melody. The music comes from the client's own repertoire, heavy metal and Taylor Swift included. Barbara shares her own reset word, peace, and Alison offers something more reachable for many people: a sense of okayness. Barbara also tells the story of moving to Vermont at the tail end of the pandemic and how a cashier at the local co-op, deliberately practicing people's names, started to give her a sense of belonging.

In this episode

• Why the name "Your Tempo" matters, and what it means to move at your own pace
• How rigid feedback loops in classical music training built perfectionism and self-doubt
• Coaching sessions where "And what about yourself?" comes up last
• The cultural belief that putting yourself first makes you egotistical
• Somatic work, brainspotting, and why healing happens in the body rather than the head
• Using rhythm and melody to describe what you feel without retelling the whole story
• Okayness as a step before peace
• Barbara's co-op cashier story and what it taught her about belonging
• Alison's message: the authentic you is still in there

Key Takeaways

• Self-trust is built internally first. Once you have a secure relationship with yourself, it carries into your relationships and responsibilities at work.
• Most of us find safety in our heads, analyzing and problem-solving, because the body is where we feel everything. The real shift starts when you notice what your body is telling you.
• A sense of belonging starts with small, repeated moments of being known, like someone remembering your name.
• You do not have to reach peace to lead well in a hard moment. "I am okay" is a strong place to lead from.

Action Steps

• At your next check-in with yourself, name one physical sensation before you name a single thought.
• Choose a word, phrase, or piece of music that brings you back to center, and keep it in your back pocket.
• Learn and use the names of the people you see every week, on your team and beyond it.
• In your next one-on-one, ask the person how they are doing before you ask about the work.

Questions to Reflect On

• Whose tempo are you leading at right now, yours or someone else's?
• Where did your own perfectionism get trained into you?
• What would it take to feel okay in this moment, without needing to feel peaceful?
• Who on your team might still feel like the new kid on the block? 

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Alison Dagger, MA, LCMHC, MT-BC, is a licensed mental health counselor, board-certified music therapist, and owner of Your Tempo Healing LLC, a private practice based in Waterbury, Vermont.

She specializes in helping performing artists, creative adults, and healthcare workers recover from PTSD, complex trauma, and imposter syndrome rooted in their experiences of sexual trauma, relational abuse, and dysfunctional family systems.

Drawing from somatic psychology, music therapy, and neuro-experiential approaches, she helps clients reconnect by centering their relationship to music.

Her work is grounded in the belief that healing happens through learning to listen inward with greater curiosity and compassion, creating an internal sense of worthiness and belonging that is no longer dependent on external validation.

A classically trained musician herself, Alison has worked extensively with survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse in both community-based victim advocacy settings and private practice.

She is passionate about helping survivors reclaim a sense of embodied safety, self-trust, and authentic expression by growing their capacity for creative connection. 

https://www.yourtempohealing.com/
alison@yourtempohealing.com

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Let's Talk
Want to talk through what self-trust and authentic leadership could look like for you and your team? Book a complimentary Discovery Call with Barbara https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/discovery