Finding Grace for Myself and My Faults

I am my own worst critic.

Anyone else find that to be true? No other person ever seems to think that my failings are as catastrophic as I find them to be. I lie awake and think about every misstep that I have taken in my life and I end up in anxiety patterns that interrupt lots of other situations.

This seems to be a trend in those of us who are music therapists. We are naturally drawn to be with others. We love music so much that we want to share it with everyone in a way that allows those others to experience music with a therapeutic benefit. We constantly face skeptics and naysayers and people who think that they can do what we do because they have made a playlist. We fight for recognition in almost every interaction that we have with other people, and it can become exhausting. We often figure that our lack of recognition has much to do with our selves rather than with our society, and that is easy to personalize to the point of fatigue.

I have to stop and remind myself that I do what I do for several reasons - my clients are my first reason. My love of music is my second reason, and combining the two things into a profession just makes me feel happy. I love what I do as a music therapist, but there are times when the act of being a music therapist is exhausting. There are also many times when music therapy is the best experience ever, and I leave interactions and sessions with so much energy and pride in my clients that I can burst!

This is a great profession, and I have absolutely no regrets about choosing this profession 36 years ago as my choice for a vocation.

But, I am still my own worst critic.

At times, I agonize about the choices that I have made in the middle of a session. My "woulda, coulda, shoulda" goblins come out and take over my thoughts. "I should have known that song would trigger client A and not played it." "I could have done something differently." The litany goes on and on as my anxiety and press for perfectionism spurs me into my own evaluation process. I always come out on the negative side of any self-evaluation when I am anxious about things. At times when I am less self-critical, I am able to use my rational brain to remember that a) I am human and have flaws and b) I can only ever strive to control my responses and reactions to what my clients do - I cannot and will not ever be able to control other people and c) it is part of life to make both good and bad decisions, but the trick is to learn from decisions that have turned out to be bad and figure out ways to try something different the next time around.

When I start down my path of self-study, I try to figure out what sort of mood I am in - anxious or rational (I am rarely both at the same time). If I am anxious about things in general, I am less likely to have a positive evaluation process. I will use my anxiety to think about everything and I will come out on the side of "wrong." If I am rational, I am able to view things through my humanistic lens and be a bit more forgiving.

Right now, I am not very anxious about things, so I am able to look at my job performance, my self-care strategies, and my current decisions in a more rational, less emotional format. Even being my own worst critic, I am able to find the grace and patience and caring for myself that I offer to my clients.

I am my own worst critic, but that's okay right now.

Thanks for reading.