music, therapy, and me

I made the mistake of listening to a bit of the news on my afternoon commute yesterday. I did this because I left the iPod on my desk at work and did not have my usual distractions. I thought, "let's catch up with the news."  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 stron...

A friend of mine messaged me yesterday to ask me how things were going, and I started to cry. Yesterday was one of those days where clients who used to love being in music therapy were ripping things off the walls, breaking the thermometers, and destroying things, all while trying to hurt me. Actually, it was just one client, but still, it hit me deep. We are very short-staffed at the moment, and the only staff members that were present are not ones that I know. I have no idea if they were trained in our crisis management system or not. All I know is that they did NOTHING to help me out. This happens every Tuesday, and I am exhausted by the situation. The student refuses to talk to me or to use the program that the student has agreed to use. This happens regardless of what we are doing or the sounds we are making which makes it seem personal. The student will bring in noise-cancelling headphones and then destroy them rather than wearing them. add in the fact that the student makes thre...

Draft #4 of this blog post... I am in a complaining mood, and I am frustrated by all sorts of things - by how my administration negates the work that I do at every opportunity, by drips on the bottom of the oven that smoke furiously when I try to cook, by kids who do not do what is asked of them (my mind goes automatically to ending that phrase with the words - ON PURPOSE), and many other things. I know the reasons behind all this, but that doesn't make it any easier to live through at the moment. I am trying my best to remember that it is not effective to spew my bad mood over everyone else. I do not have to bring other people down to my level. In fact, I don't want to make others wallow in my bad mood. That is not an appropriate response to the general cranky nature of me at the moment. I am also trying to remember that what I am reacting to is not always the actual situation - I am reacting through a layer of crank that is not a universal reality...it is just in my own...

I am getting ready to go to my surgeon for my (hopefully) last post-surgery check on the knee that had to be operated on last December. It has been a long, LONG year of questions, realizations, and therapy. I have come to the conclusion that every therapist should have to go through therapy for something that they didn't want to happen to them in the first place. Having little to no choice is something that makes for interesting revelations about yourself during the process. It's one thing to say something like, "Well, I think that being in therapy is a professional responsibility," and a completely different thing to say, "I have to go to therapy to get better." I've done both, and I can tell you, the second statement is the one that led me into greater insights into myself as a person, a patient, and a therapist. I have one more test to go through before I can be released from care. It will be with my physical therapist, a great guy who pushed me i...

Are you your own worst critic? I am. There is no one harder on me than me. When I fail at something, I cannot let it go. I feel guilty and disappointed in myself and it comes back in a flood of emotion every single time I start to get a bit anxious or overly tired. Does anyone else get this way, or is it just me? All of this is precipitated by a missed meeting yesterday. I didn't get a clue that I had missed the meeting until right before leaving for PT and my part-time job, and when I did, I was absolutely set back. The person I was supposed to meet with called me, but didn't leave a message, so I didn't even know that she was waiting for me to hook up the computer. I was supremely angry with myself and then felt guilty when I realized that I had let two other people down. I am a perfectionist. I expect perfection in myself, but allow for imperfection in others without any issues. I expect that others will not be perfect, but I insist on striving for personal perfectio...

One of the things that I talk to my clients about ALL OF THE TIME is coping skill development. My clients are often extremely impulsive and do not have any type of control over their emotional responses, so we all stress the need for coping skills. My kids hear about coping skills in art therapy, in music therapy, in play therapy, in talk therapy, and in other areas as well. We all are on the coping skill bandwagon and hope to assist our clients in finding their ways of coping with situations in their lives. One of the things that is often missing in coping skill development is modelling within a situation or circumstance. We, the adults, talk about using coping skills, but we are often in complete control of our own emotions when doing so. We strive to be calm, in control, and exemplars of what we look like when we have internalized our coping skill strategies. We don't often demonstrate what skills we use in order to keep ourselves calm - we just do them. My goal for this wee...