Pulled In Many Different Directions - How Do You Choose Your Path??
Bad idea.
I have made a concerted effort to avoid the news since 2016. This mainly happened because I did not find any sort of rational thought happening when I was listening to what was going on in our world. I handle the news a bit better when I can choose how to interact with it - I can skip right over things and just read headlines, if I want.
The ten minutes of news that I heard contained so many difficult items that I was unable to continue to listen. I started the CD in my sound system and then sang along with Wicked for the rest of my trip. I will make sure that I have my iPod when I embark on this afternoon's commute.
The issue that I have with listening to the news is that there are so many important things happening that cause a strong emotional response in me that I cannot handle the emotion overload. I cry when I hear about how people choose to treat other human beings, and I find that I respond more strongly to everything these days. The news is full of stories of how people choose to hurt others, and I cannot immerse myself in secondary hurt.
So, I put up a shield to help myself handle the things that I can handle and to protect myself from things I cannot.
The difficulty with putting up shields is that I am often unaware of what others are experiencing and do not have any information about how I want to proceed. The benefit is that I can choose how I respond to what I have to respond to - the situations of my life and those of my clients.
If you have read this blog, then you know that I was once part of the Facebook group, Music Therapists Unite, but I left because I felt that we were not united at all! I found that particular group to be full of bullies who just wanted to tell other people what to do with their professional identities and lives. I do not respond well to bullies, especially when those bullies are just shoving their opinions onto others and being mean about it. So, I chose to leave that group because it was more detrimental to my way of being a music therapist than beneficial. As a result, I am often clueless about what is happening in the controversies in my profession.
That is also a shield.
I strongly believe that I am entitled to any opinion that I form. (This is also a common thread through lots of my blog posts!) I also will defend your right to hold your own opinions to the bitter end! I do not think that opinions are only right or wrong - there are many perspectives and experiences that build how we think about things. We each have the opportunity to believe what our experience and perspective tells us. I have supported the opinions of many people that I do not agree with because I expect that they will respect my right to hold a different idea. I get most frustrated when people tell others that opinions are wrong. That is not true.
Right now, we are all being pulled in many different directions. For me, I am trying to figure out things about Russia and Ukraine, the governance that happens here in my country, state, and town, and what is happening in other states that will eventually have a direct influence on how I work with my clients, masking mandates being lifted and continued virus exposure happening, the list goes on and on. There are people who post fundraisers for causes that they believe in all the time. I am bombarded by calls to help animals in shelters, to send money to "save the arts" campaigns, to sign petitions for this, that, and the other thing. All of the calls to action become overwhelming, and I have to disconnect from that social interaction as well.
Here's the deal.
I cannot do everything for everyone. No one can. I can't spend all of my emotional responses on things that others care about without neglecting the things that I need to focus on for my own mental health and well being. I cannot.
As a result, I have to figure out what actions I can take that support myself and can make a difference in the world. I have to be able to focus on the things that I can do rather than the things that I want to be able to do. I am a fixer - I think that is an inherent part of being a therapist - wanting to help others. One of the things that has kept me a therapist for this many years is the realization that I cannot fix everything and not everyone thinks that they need to be fixed. (This is where opinions affect what I think and do...)
This reminds me of the old joke - How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change.
I know, silly, but it does represent the difficulty of wading through strongly held opinions held by others. I cannot continue to tilt at the windmills of a person who believes things that are very different from what I believe without hurting myself and, possibly, that person as well. I do not like arguing with people about opinions without establishing ground rules first. There has to be an agreement that we will disagree about things and still make the effort to be friends. There also has to be an agreement that the conversation is not going to end in a winner, but that there will be mutual deepening of understanding at the end of the debate. Without some courtesy and respect from both sides, conversations are not very productive (in my experience - that is why I left Music Therapists Unite).
At the moment, I am not worrying too much about situations that are happening beyond my own travel radius. I have nothing to contribute to the situation in Ukraine, so I am not choosing to spend much of my limited mental bandwidth on that situation. I have my opinion about it and about the figures involved, but I cannot change what is happening. A Facebook post from me is not going to be the point of change that will solve all world problems. A blog post is not going to make everyone suddenly believe that MY view of what and how music therapy should be done in the world is the ONLY view.
I am comfortable in a world where there are different opinions about things. I am happy to know that there are other people who disagree with my ideas because I am limited in my scope and experience. I am also comfortable changing my views and opinions based on facts shared by others. I just don't feel like I have to think the same way as person A or person B or any person out there. I am my own person, so I have the right and privilege to feel the way I want to feel about ANY TOPIC OR SITUATION AT ALL!
It is just about time to head off into a pre-storm world. We will have a winter weather advisory starting tonight and lasting until Friday morning. Dare I hope for another snow day, two days before Spring Break?? I would really like two in a row since Friday is an inservice day where I will have to spend 90 minutes listening to people who will not have useful information for me in my role as music therapist but that I have to do because "that's what we are doing on that day." I would rather not have to make the commute to work on Friday, but we probably will have to since it is a day without students. We will see.
Happy Wednesday.
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