5 Music Therapy Advocacy Conversations Every Music Therapist Will Have... At Least Once!

It is Music Therapy Advocacy Month here in the States, and it's time for an advocacy post! Here is a collections of advocacy moments and conversations that all of us will have at one time or another. How do you respond to these conversations? (I'll post my responses tomorrow!)

  1. Look, it's the music lady/man! Easily recognized by bags full of instruments that jingle, shake, and thump, your persona becomes completely linked with your job.
  2. You are so good at making people happy. My favorite variation on this particular theme? I kid you not! "Happy children making happy sounds!"
  3. What is it that you do? Followed by three seconds of stunned silence and then the follow-up question, "So, what is musical therapy, anyway?"
  4. Oh, I know what that is. My niece plays music to the elderly. Well. There's a bit more to it that that...
  5. I do music therapy with my clients/students/pets/children/etc. We have an iPod.
What other advocacy conversations do you have? 

The rest of this post is completely based on my own opinions and experiences. You may certainly disagree with me. Also, feel free to skip the rest of this post, if you are not a fan of opinionated music therapists going on and on and on about how their opinions are the best ones...

The key that I've found during conversations like these is patience. There is lots of misinformation out there that keeps perpetuating even though our profession's visibility and name recognition have increased by leaps and bounds over the past four years (Yes, it's been only about four years!) There is NEVER a reason to treat ignorance with challenges, bullying, or argument. Ignorance is best addressed through gentle education. If you do come across misrepresentation, however, let your regional representative to the Professional Advocacy Committee know about it. Here's the way to do that (Thanks to Carolyn Dobson who posted this on Facebook just a bit ago!!). 

"Suggestion: When you run across a misrepresentation of music therapy in the USA and want to post it, please post something in the tag indicating that. Also what region (city, state) so the appropriate PAC committee member can be alerted if necessary. It may or may not need attention but may be ignored if wording isn't used to bring it to light."

Being a good advocate for music therapy often means being a calm responder. When we go in to a situation of misrepresentation in full rant, we often come across as unreasonable people who want to control every piece of music and every musical experience that happens anytime, anywhere! I've found that a gentle approach and conversation that seeks a common pool of meaning is much more effective than going in and telling people that they are wrong, wrong, wrong! Often folks are just not aware that there is so much more to music therapy than plugging in an iPod - they are unaware of the depths that we have in our practice - but they have direct experience with the benefits that you can get by listening to music on an iPod, so that's what they use to try to understand what it is we do. Once you've had that initial conversation, it's time to let folks on the PAC know about the situation. They will decide how to proceed and do!

Go out there and be an advocate for music therapy. Not just in this month, but in all interactions from here on out!

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