Feeling Down About Myself and My Life as a Professional Music Therapist

It is halfway through the Online Conference for Music Therapy, and I am feeling like a failure as a music therapist.

This happens every so often, and when this happens, it usually has to do with hearing what other music therapists are doing in their practices and then heading down into comparison canyon and then moving over to imposter syndrome island where I tend to wallow. It often leads me to wanting to do more for me and for my clients and then feeling like a failure because I am not doing the same things that others do. 

I have to claw my way back into understanding my own successes as a music therapist and figure out what I want to contribute in my career and role as a professional music therapist.

I am a natural music therapist. I have been singing since birth, and I love singing with others. My first instrument (other than voice) was the cornet - my father's cornet - and I played that at school because I was not allowed to take both band and choir for my electives due to needing things like language and typing and the like. I sang in church choirs from the age of seven until just recently, and learning music has always been easy for me. I started playing both guitar and piano at the age of 18, and my skills are functional on both of these instruments. What I lack in my musicianship, I make up with my relational skills. I know how to read people with and without music. I especially know how to relate to people with intellectual and psychiatric diagnoses - in ways that others don't seem to be able to accomplish. I am passionate about how we teach music therapy students to do this job and about strengthening the functional skills of other music therapists. I seek and crave music therapy community, and that craving has increased since I closed my internship in October.

I feel like I have stagnated in what I do with my clients. I feel like I am no longer innovative in my role, and that makes me sad. I am not sure how to break out of this, but part of it is that I feel lonely in my role at the facility and in the music therapy world.

One of my co-workers asked me when I had last learned a new song, and I was able to come up with an answer - the beginning of the month. I learned I Gotta Feeling as performed by the Black-Eyed Peas to use in a resolution therapeutic music experience (TME). I was able to use my ear training to figure out the chord progression (it's my kind of song - repeated chords throughout), and I enjoyed learning it. I did not lead the TME with my clients, but I have it figured out. I also told my co-worker that I had composed a couple of songs during the past week - one of them will remind my clients that there are only seven letters in the music alphabet. I firmly believe that composition and repertoire building are two different skills, but I try to practice both skills as much as I can.

So, as I am sitting at OCMT 2025, listening to music therapists and music psychologists from all over the world talk about what they are doing with their clients, I am feeling like I am no longer doing something new.

I am not someone who enjoys wallowing - I really don't. So, when I start to sink into my wallow, I start to try things to break me out.

That is where my brain is now - how can I get through this period of wallowing? I will be brainstorming and thinking about things to do.