Music Therapy Moments - Taking Some Time to Be Grateful for My Career Choice

Gratitude is something that you hear lots about if you are in any way interested in self-care or mindfulness or any sort of personal focus programming. I have been encouraged to be grateful for what I have and what I am experiencing in the middle of great experiences as well as in the middle of devastating experiences, and it can be difficult, but I do find this type of mindset valuable for my mental health.

I have a Facebook tradition of making a Daily Happiness post. I started this about three years ago when I noticed that all I was doing was complaining about things - my health, my frustrations with things. I decided that I needed to start a gratitude practice in the mornings to start my day off a bit better than things were going. I was in a pattern of burnout and didn't really like the people who signed my paychecks, and was seriously contemplating leaving my job. Every morning, I would get up and gripe about having to go to work. Then, the messages about gratitude and the need to find the positive in my life situations finally snuck into my consciousness and stuck there.

At that time, I decided that I needed to change my outlook, especially in the mornings. So, I started my Daily Happiness Facebook habit. This habit has been challenging at times, but important to me. There are days when my happiness overflows, and there are days where I post things like being happy that I have a working ice machine. (That one is quite a stretch.) Today, for example, my happiness is that it is Friday. I am glad that the end of the work week is coming because I need a day to sort through my ever expanding to-do list.

Today, though, I am going to focus more on Music Therapy Gratitude than my personal happiness discussion.

I had a good day with clients yesterday. Once participants get over the shock of seeing our newly carpeted space, they settle into the music exploration that we have with one another. Yesterday, I had a group that I saw on Wednesday, so my strategy for the other groups (who I only saw once this week) was already over and done with. I do not repeat session strategies in the same week, so I had to come up with something different for that group to experience. I was sorta at a loss about what to do with my clients, but inspiration struck the way it usually does.

I got out a part of the drum sets for each person. I also put seven different materials into some small containers for each person in the room. We spent most of our session time bouncing different things off drums - making hypotheses about whether the materials would make sounds on the drum head - experimenting, and talking about our results. My clients seemed to enjoy throwing things at drums (they always do, and so do I, to be completely honest!!), and we got into a bit of scientific thought with my clients who are often less academically challenged than they could be (in my opinion!). As I was watching very different clients engaging in the same TME simultaneously, I was struck anew about how much I love being the music therapist at my facility. My clients are challenging, true, but they are also so wonderful! I get so much from them, and I hope that they get even a smidgen of something memorable and meaningful from me. 

There are times when finding meaning in work is difficult. For me, those times tend to come when out of the music therapy room demands become more onerous. There are times when the stressors of how I have to comport myself in the facility become more difficult than they have to be (this is not one of those times, by the way). Those times make a gratitude practice a bit more difficult, but I still try.

This week, though, I have been able to find those grateful moments pretty easily. It is easy to be grateful for new carpeting. It is easy to be grateful for having a space to do music therapy that is consistent and all your responsibility. It is easy to be grateful when clients seem interested in what I am doing in the music therapy room. It is easy to be grateful when the administrators are showing up to see what I am doing and find it favorable.

It is more difficult to find this attitude of gratitude when things are not going exactly the way I envision them.

I am fortunate that I enjoy most of my professional expectations. I like doing music therapy with my clients. I like my clients (most of the time). I enjoy the opportunity to sing, dance, make music, and drop things on drums whenever I feel that it is appropriate for the persons I serve. I enjoy talking to other music therapists about what we do. I find it fascinating how much we are the same and how much we do things differently as well. I enjoy hearing debates about what we want from our profession. I enjoy hearing other points of view, and I appreciate congenial debate and discussion about controversial topics.

I am so grateful that I was listening while at the University of Evansville when our lecturer mentioned the two words, "music therapy," at the end of a lecture about work in music education. I am grateful to the professors who started my journey of becoming the therapist that I have become as well as to the students and interns and professionals who have continued to sustain my journey. I am grateful that I was able to work with Sheryl Kelly and Angie Powell at my internship. I am pleased that I have music therapy friends from all over this planet, and I am grateful to know a small part about how those friends do what we all say we do in their own countries and situations.

I am grateful.

Now it's time to go to work...

"See" you tomorrow.