music, therapy, and me

I am exhausted, and this is the "it is almost the end of the school year, but not yet" type of exhaustion, not the "haven't been sleeping well" type. Most of this is due to one client at the moment. Everyone else seems to be doing what they usually do, but that one client... I have been doing this particular job for a very long time, and clients come and go at my facility on a regular basis. I have experienced many different types of people in my years at my job. The client type that I have the most difficulty engaging with is the type that feels that they have control over what everyone does around them. A peer cannot choose what to do because the client doesn't want to choose something. Now, I have nothing against someone deciding that they do not want to do something during my sessions. I champion personal choice in my sessions for my clients. If a client opts not to engage, that is fine with me as long as they are safe and say "no, thank you." ...

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...

Wow. Today's look back into my thoughts and blog posts has hit me hard. Check out this post from July 14, 2011 to see what I was thinking and writing about back then. It is definitely a concept that I am still living, thinking about, and trying to figure out - 12 years later... The past week was a difficult week - seems like the same sort of week that I had back in July 2011. This time around, I don't think that I did anything wrong. The students that had a bad time in music therapy came in that way - they had decided that they were going to hate every single thing that they were provided before they even knew what was g oing on. There isn't much that I can do when students are bound and determined to hate what we do - I believe that music therapy is most effective when the client is interested and invested in the process - when clients are unwilling to participate, then are the things that happen in a session actually therapy? My intern is going through this situation wit...

One of the AMTA requirements for interns is a minimum of 60 minutes per week of individual supervision - personal discussion about the intern's development and current standing in the program. One of the things that I have found is that 60 minutes a week is not always enough time to talk over all the things that I want to share with interns - and you know me, I do better with some plans and some systems, so I developed some special topic meetings in addition to the 60 minutes per intern per week. When I have two interns, they go through each special topic twice. When I have one intern, we cover more topics and the topics are not always decided upon by me. I try to put in some of that flexibility when I have two interns, but it is not always as possible as when there is only one. Anyway, I like our special topic meetings. Today, we will be exploring how to come up with ideas for things to do with our clients during sessions. We have almost finished the school required trainings and ...

Yesterday, I did something that I should not have done, and now I need to fix it. Today is our annual "Let's hype kids up on sugar and forbidden caffeine and send them into a world of unstructured and forced fun" day, and I hate this day with a passion. Unfortunately, I shared that hatred of the day with my interns yesterday in a frustration-fueled rant that I think may have caused them to not be able to think of this day as fun at all. That's my goof and what I need to apologize for today. I got bogged down into the mire about my personal feelings about this debacle of a day, and I spewed that all over my interns who have not had a chance to experience this for themselves. I treated them more like long-time co-workers than like impressionable learners, and I am not feeling good about that fact. So, I will go in an apologize to them about my attitude yesterday. They will do what interns will do, and they will sat that everything is okay, but it isn't. I know that ...

I took some time this week to think. Not all that unusual, but something that I need to do every so often to make my process a bit more clear. I did not read any more from my feminist theory book or look towards other resources. (I received a thesis from a reader, and I am getting ready to start that particular resource - thank you, you know who you are!!) I simply paid attention to things happening around me. I've been watching some Australian suspense television shows lately. This is something really interesting to me since Australian television has a completely different viewpoint of us here in America than we often hold of ourselves. That different viewpoint is prevalent in the shows I've been watching. (If you are interested, my current watchlist includes Pine Gap and Secret City.) I am enjoying the opportunity to view my government from the viewpoint of the writers and performers of a different continent. Now, I know that these shows are not completely based in re...

Last week, my randomly selected song for this next series of Song Conversion Sunday posts was one that sent me into some deep thinking about culture and cultural appropriation and that has challenged me to think a bit differently about the music that I have on my iPod and how I use that music. Now, to start all this off, I am not an expert on culture, cultural appropriation, cultural misappropriation, or anything other than my own experiences. My own cultural experiences are that of middle-class, caucasian America. I am a woman, I prefer the pronouns "she" and "her," and I do not have to spend much time thinking about cultural misappropriation because my cultural background seems to be prevalent in the place where I live. I have never really thought too much about whether the music that I use in sessions is something that I'm taking from another culture and shaping it into something other than what it was intended for originally. I guess this is something to...

I am involved in a situation at work that is getting more and more contentious. The last time this happened, I ended up filing a grievance against the (other) person who did the exact same thing to me. The grievance went through, and eventually, the person was fired. I am still there. I am thinking that this situation will also lead to difficulties, and I am so tired of having to defend myself against bullies who have the attitude of "Well, I'm here for the students," with the implication being that I (MJ) am not interested in being available for my students. Yep. I've been working at a small, rural school with absolutely no room for advancement or even recognition for the past 23 years for the GREAT paycheck (tongue firmly in cheek and this is definitely a statement FULL of sarcasm).  I woke up at 1am this morning (due to the cat) and then stressed about the incident that occurred yesterday for about two hours before finally falling back to sleep. The thing that...

My beautiful music therapy room - I'm ready to use it! I think it will be a regular day today. I'm saying that with a bit of hesitation since the magic hour of 6am has not arrived yet, but I don't think that we will have to have an inclement weather schedule day today. I'm really hoping that we do not. So, in the past week (as we have had THREE inclement weather days - I attended two of them), my office has become more of a cesspool than usual. There are boxes of things for the store that need to be labeled and repackaged to fit the storage that I have available for me. There are projects to go through. There are things to make, things to toss, things to bring home, and things that just don't need to be there. I have facilitated 17 groups in the past two days - usually I do 10 groups in two days (and my interns do most of those groups these days, so I oversee 10 groups in two days). There is a certain level of exhaustion from being in the spotlight all the tim...

She REALLY likes my robe! I have written a version of this blog post now about five times. I got a bit frustrated with myself because I was coming across as a bit too whiny and "poor me-ish," even for me - just couldn't stomach what was coming across my keyboard. So, I decided to change up my routine a bit and see if that would help me write something that includes some sort of solution to problems that are happening around me. I took my shower in the middle of my morning rather than at the beginning or at the end like I usually do. My routine is more of a task list than a schedule, so I often mix things up a bit, but showers are not usually all that flexible for me for some strange reason. I decided to see if some shower time would help me to figure out what is going on with me. Here are some of the details. My family members, all out in California, are struggling with various and sundry medical issues. Some of these are specifically time-framed, others are not. ...

'Tis the season for making goals and having good intentions to follow through, making ourselves healthier, wealthier, and wiser, right? I set my goals for each year in August when the new school year begins, so I am about halfway through with my intentions - I'm not doing too badly, but there is always room for improvement (check out this blog post if you want to know more about my intentions for 2018-2019). So, because I am already finished with my self-reflection for this upcoming year, please indulge me as I make some resolutions for our profession - all of us who are music therapists... (NOTE: These opinions are completely my own and are in no way meant to be interpreted as fact by anyone. They are OPINIONS, and, since this is my blog, I get to spout those opinions as much as I want. I do not receive any financial compensation or benefits or perks based on the things that I write here. If you find that you do not like my opinions, feel free to comment below [note that I ...

True story. My grandmother loved all things November. We made command appearances at her house for Thanksgiving every single year until we started high school because it was her preferred holiday and she loved having people around. Her birthday, November 22, was a big part of our celebration responsibilities, and we would do things up right! There would be open houses, big meals, ping-pong tournaments, cousin spats, and (shudder) formal portraits. My grandmother and I shared one unfortunate trait, however. We were both as stubborn as the day is long. We also both knew that we were right and the other one was wrong. This picture is the result of one of our interactions. I was three. Now, I am the oldest cousin, sister, and person in my generation of the families I am part of. I have always been expected to do what I am told, and I often did just that - what I was told. But, for some reason, being at Mama Icie's house just brought out the stubborn in me. In this particula...

I am going to work today with a plan full of nothing to do and then will be engaging in some serious self-care and creativity. Let me explain. My Fridays are my planning and preparation day. It is the only day where I do not have any groups scheduled (that's a LONG story), and the individual sessions that I scheduled kept getting scheduled over (been there, done that, won't ever allow it anymore - but, in these cases, it meant that people who weren't doing ANYTHING actually started to do something, so I got out of the way). If I've done my job well during the week, I only have some documentation to do as part of my chores. If I haven't done my job, then the work piles up. This week? I did my job well. Even going in on time (not WAY TOO EARLY), I was able to do most of my documentation during the school days and not feel overwhelmed. I have 2 more group sets of notes to finish for the entire week. That's all!  So, this means that I have some time to ...

Well, it's been fun, but it's almost time to head out and get back home. I gave two presentations yesterday, and the feedback was tremendous. I spoke about how I strive to become a more research-informed clinician to a group of about 46 folks. I admitted that my journal shelf is pretty but underutilized. I showed them one of my journals - from 3 years ago - still in the plastic covering. Did you know that the plastic covering on our journals starts to actively degrade after 3 years? I left a trail of fragile plastic bits in my wake! Several people thanked me for admitting that I struggle with the integration of research into my clinical practice. I even found out about PICO stuff in the nursing literature (I haven't started to explore that yet, but I hear that it's a way to help you parse through research to find information). My second presentation yesterday was about navigating slumps. We talked about such uplifting topics as burnout, secondary trauma, and compass...