Baby Steps...Baby Steps...Baby Steps

I am very tired.

Some of this is due to the increase of medication that I have had to take due to my seasonal allergies, but I think most of the tired feeling is from frustrations and challenges at work.

That's right. Work is affecting everything that is going on in my life.

This isn't a big surprise to me, but it may be to a new professional out there. What happens at work can affect what happens at home and the opposite is also true. What happens at home can affect what happens at work. I cannot completely separate my work life from my other life - it is just not completely possible. Trying to deny the effect of work on my non-work hours just leads me to constant stuffing and avoidance behaviors - neither of which are good for me.

It is time for active solutions to this problem.

I cannot control how my clients react to what I present. All I can do is present my expectations and my requirements to them in a consistent manner each and every time. I will script my responses to the most typical client behaviors at this point.

I will engage in active self-care practices - more than usual - during this time. I will drink water. I will journal. I will sleep. I will cry if I need to cry.

I will offer help and direction to my co-workers as I can. I will try to model the responses that I want others to show to students when they are acting out. Folks are getting WAY too much attention for behaviors of concern than I think they should. I will be modeling all sorts of planned ignoring and limited interaction responses to behaviors of concern. I don't have the energy to yell or engage in fighting with seven year olds. I can stick to my expectations without having an increase in my risk. Many of my co-workers are new, so they don't have that sort of resilience built up yet. They are still very much in hyper-reactivity mode. 

I will ask for help.

I will survive until Break. We have three more days of therapy sessions before break comes. We have three days of planning and inservice time before break arrives. At this time next week, I will be preparing for an all-school event where I will have some sort of role but will not be planning or running any part of the event. It will be a day away from our regular routine. It will be the last day of my senior intern, so I have to get ready for graduation and all that. I will survive.

Baby steps towards my end goal of therapy sessions that are actually therapy sessions - not allowing my students to completely control what happens in our session.

Baby steps.


I think I need junk food for breakfast today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear AMTA

Dear American Music Therapy Association: I am debating long and hard about remaining in this relationship. I have been in this relationship since college, and this is not a decision that I am taking lightly or without great cost.  I am not happy with what you are bringing to this relationship. Now, I have been a selfish partner over the past several years - mainly because I am not feeling like we share a common mission anymore. It is easy for me to place the blame on you, but I know that this is not all on me. I have tried to be invested in communication and support and understanding, but everyone comes to a time where enough is enough. I am trying very hard to decide if the benefits that you provide to me are worth the feelings that I have about where I think you and I are going. I am not sure that our destination is the same anymore, and this makes me sad. To be completely honest, I am only in this relationship these days for the music therapy interns. I don't think that is a hea...
Read more

Songwriting Sunday: Repetition

Image
One of the things that I find to be helpful with my client population (children, adolescents, and young adults with dual diagnoses) is repetition of phrases, lyrics, and music. As a result of 30+ years of working with this population in various iterations, I have found that my clients respond the most to songs with three repeated phrases to prime their responses with a different phrase to communicate the important part of the experience. DISCLAIMER: This is not a definite way to write music for clinical interactions. This is what seems to work well with my particular group of human beings. Don't go to your supervisors and tell them that I told you that this is the ONLY way to write music - It is NOT! You have to find what works for your clients and for their clinical goals. Since my clients respond well to this type of song, I tend to write songs in this format more than any other. What I have found is that my clients remember these songs more than the ones that I do in different f...
Read more

Being An Internship Director: On Hiatus

Image
It has been long enough since I have had an intern that I am seriously feeling like I have little to say on the subject. At the same time, I am currently writing Chapter 5 of my general internship handbook, so I am able to write about being an intern and what types of things to think about during this important time in our professional development. It is a strange place to be in, and it is one that is a bit challenging for me. Right now, I have had three vacant internship positions since the beginning of the calendar year. I will have a vacant position next month and that will be an entire year of rejected offers. In the past nine months, I have offered positions to three applicants who have declined. It is interesting how people complain that there aren't enough internship programs, but programs like mine are empty. I guess there aren't enough internship programs that pay large stipends (which mine cannot) out there. I get it. It is interesting to me how we have moved from an ...
Read more