music, therapy, and me

Welcome to my corner of the world where it is currently storming. The thunder and lightning is going along with a steady rain. The winds haven't kicked up yet, but it will be a windy day as well as a storm-ridden time, and I am feeling restless. I had one client who cried throughout music therapy yesterday. We don't know why, but the client was presenting with a positive affect until entering the music therapy room when the client started to wail. This client does not do this often, so it was a mystery to us all. The client is non-speaking, so trying to figure it all out was difficult. I always want to change a sad mood into a happier mood, but there are times when we just need to wallow. Have you ever seen the episode of The Middle where Frankie is trying to have a good cry? Everything in her life interferes with her attempts to cry out everything that is happening in her body. I have days like that - the only thing that helps me release emotion, hormones, stress, and grief is...

Do you ever have times in the year where you find yourself affected by many different things simultaneously? I am two days post-vacation and am missing my family members who are now safely tucked away in their own homes. I still work in a warm room, but my room is a bit cooler than it has been for sometime now. I have an itchy neck area - I think I have a rash there that I will need to treat with my old ointment. It is not currently very hot here, but the heat will be building through the weekend. I am not feeling very effective in my personal life at the moment. I do not know why I am feeling this way, but it probably has something to do with my summer SAD. I do not enjoy summer much in this area of the world, but it is what it is. I has also taken me lots of time to acknowledge that I do not like how I feel and act during the summer months. I am not doing much to counteract this as far as medication goes, but I am doing things to help me keep going through the heat and the humidity t...

'Tis the season of watching classroom set-ups on social media. Do you know the videos I'm talking about? The ones where teachers set up their super cute classroom themes and bulletin boards in a fast-forward type video? My sister, who is an elementary school teacher, is currently in the process of getting her classroom theme put together. I always love watching the creativity of others in setting up their environments, and I am always jealous of their space and ability to keep things up on the wall with their students. My students and my space are not conducive to cute themes and color-coded, coordinated wall decorations. The things that I have up on the walls of my music therapy room are functional rather than coordinated. My room is already decorated with lots of paintings from various murals, so things are already as busy as I want them to be. These facts don't stop me from wanting a classroom where I could make my own cute theme happen though. As I am a week away from t...

Please know that this entire post is going to be affected by the fact that I have an outer ear infection and am in pain. So, just know that what I write might be different if I were a bit less stuffy and a bit more healthy at the moment... Today is the second day of the Midwestern Region AMTA conference. I am sitting here, in the hotel room, with about two hours before I want to check out of the hotel and just finish up the conference. I bought my breakfast yesterday evening - it is sitting in the fridge and waiting for me to pop it into the microwave. I have a list of presentations to go to for the rest of the day, and I am going to skip out before the end of the day to get home. I am tired and in pain, so a four-hour drive seems like an eternity to get back to my place and my ear drops (I didn't have an ear infection when I left home on Thursday). The conference has been fine. It really is nice to be around music therapists, but it is interesting to see what is going on in our re...

In yesterday's faculty meeting, I was informed that my music therapy space is once again being taken away from me to accommodate offices. I attempted to ask for clarification, was redirected in front of my co-workers, and then burst into tears in front of the entire faculty. My question was not answered, and now I am humiliated, very upset about not having my music therapy space secure, and ashamed of my response. I am tired of this happening to me. In my time at my facility, this particular situation has happened six different times in my ten moves around the complex. It is always interesting that I get kicked out of a treatment space in favor of giving other people offices. I am taking this very personally at the moment (rational brain is not anywhere to be seen) and did not get an answer to my question in the moment which could have settled this entire situation down if the administrator had just taken the 3 seconds to answer. I am very skittish when it comes to my space, and I ...

Trigger Warning: This post includes conversation about the deaths that my family has experienced recently.   I woke up extra early this morning and could tell it was nowhere near time to get up. I rolled over and actually went to sleep (which is unusual for me). I then dreamed. Now, I don't usually remember dreams unless they are full of negative emotions, and these dreams were just that - full of grief. For some reason, William Shatner was in the first part of the dream and the second half took place in the kitchen and hallway of the church that I grew up in back many decades ago (but that still looks exactly the same as it did back then). There were two people who had lost their adult children in the span of my dream - William and another person (I remember recognizing her, but I cannot remember who it is now). I was there when both of them heard about their loved ones. I woke up fully engulfed in my grief for them and in my own grief. There was just too much similarity between m...

I was sitting at my computer yesterday when I realized that I was grinning. I wasn't looking at anything or doing much of anything important, but I was smiling. It has been so long since I had a smile on my face just because that it felt a bit foreign to me. I took yesterday off from work, using some of my precious sick time to have a mental health day. It was a good day. I packed up some of my craft room stuff, the rest of the clothing, and some of my books. I felt like I had accomplished quite a bit, and I was smiling! I know that this doesn't seem like such a big thing, but it is not my usual way of dealing with the world. At least, it hasn't been my way lately. I can't really remember the last time I just felt happy in my own skin the way I felt yesterday. The last year and many months have been difficult, to say the least, and I think I haven't really felt like things were coming together until yesterday. I have worked with clients through almost all of the pan...

Well, hello there. It is time to start reading my book again - Emotional Processes in Music Therapy , by John Pellitteri. I am in Chapter Four and have reached page 78. There are about 160 pages to go before I hit the references. Let's see if I can get to the end of this book by the end of the calendar year... Anyway, time to head back into the ideas... Emotional States - p. 78 - emotional states are "inferred constructs." I like this statement because it means that all states have to be interpreted - either by the person experiencing them or by others who are observing specific behaviors. There are five theories shared in the text - each of these is based on the research and information from specific researchers. Physiological-Behavioral - James-Lange Cognitive Appraisal Theory - Lazarus Cognitive View - Implicit Memory Model Physiological-Cognitive - Schachter & Singer Social-Cognitive - Sociology, Cultural Psychology In these different foundational emotional theori...

(I have NO idea why this font changes when it does...frustrating.) I FINALLY finished chapter three of my current music therapy enrichment book - Emotional Processes in Music Therapy by John Pellitteri. This has not been a difficult read, but it has been difficult to get back into the routine of reading again. I shall strive to do more, but I am making absolutely zero promises these days. I finished reading the last part of the third chapter last night before bed, and it was an interesting view on emotion and how emotion is linked inexorably with culture. This was a concept that I have never considered before - that culture shapes how we feel about things. As I look over emotional times in my own life, I can see some of this cultural influence coming into play. As an introvert, I have had times when my behaviors were considered "less than desirable" and "weird." I didn't want to go to church youth group if all we were going to do was talk about going skiing. I ...

I'm not going to lie to you - this was not an easy week to get to reading, but I did a bit of it and here's what I have to report... This week's chapter is the last of the first section of the book, and it covers how we have developed ideas of culture, language, and music in ways that are both unfamiliar and givens, at least in my knowledge base. Chapter three dives a bit into sociology, anthropology, and emotional psychology to discuss how we use music. There is a bit about whether animals use sounds as communication/language and some debate about whether those sounds are also musical in nature. I did not get through the chapter yesterday. There will be a much better review and report next Sunday (I hope). I find Pellitteri's writing style very readable and the concept makes sense to me. I haven't had to write down many vocabulary words to check (which tends to happen when I read music therapy texts), and I know what we are discussing most of the time. I like that ...

Yesterday, I sat down and wrote a long post about how I was feeling depressed and burned out completely with even the thought of having to work. I didn't publish it because there are times when my writing is just too raw for me to share. I left my home under a waning moon and drove to work. During my drive, I had a grief moment overtake me, so I was sobbing about the last Christmas and how my Dad cried when I gave him some computer speakers (because he knew he was dying and I think he realized he would never get to use those speakers), and it overwhelmed me. It still does as I am sitting here crying as well. I am not sleeping well and everything just seems to pile up until I can't move. Then I got to work. I slogged through my documentation for five groups and the individual session that I did on Tuesday, prepared myself for my two groups of leading and the three groups that my intern is currently taking over (but hasn't completely moved into leadership so I still have to a...

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...

I am feeling pretty good today - lots less of the hysterics that have been happening the past two days and lots more of the rational brain kicking in (so far, at least). I thank you for reading over my posts lately. I know that these emotions are not comfortable for me to have or to share, but the ability to write things down and then put them out in the world is an important part of my process in handling things that I am uncomfortable with - and sharing my feelings is one of those things that I have difficulty doing. Isn't it strange that I have difficulty sharing my own feelings? This is literally what I encourage my clients to do all the time - share how they feel. Yet, when someone asks me, I tend to just cry. That is my emotional communication style. I cry. I always have, and I hate crying in front of other people because I always cry. I try to stuff my emotional response down as far as I can, but I also know that stuffing emotions is not healthy. It's a strange conundrum...

I am stuffing lots of emotions way down deep at the moment. This is the second post that I have written this morning. The first was too steeped in grief and guilt and specific situations happening in my life at the moment to share. It was raw and not something that I want others to glimpse often. I may be able to share some of the thoughts at some point with someone, but I just can't do it now. So, here are the happier things happening. When I arrived at work yesterday, the closet was empty of all the stuff that had been stored in it when it was the student store. The carpets were filthy, but I had expected that - not everyone lives by the adage "leave a place better than you found it" that I learned in Scouting - so I swept the big pieces out and vacuumed the dust bunnies. After that, I moved the cabinets from where they were appropriate for student shopping to places where I could maximize the space in the closet for my music therapy stuff, and my intern and I started m...

I have decreed it to be so, so it shall be so! I started crying this morning when I saw a suicide prevention public announcement encouraging people to engage others in small talk. To be completely honest, this type of crying is not unusual for me at all. My primary emotional outlet is tears and always has been, so having a crying day is not strange. It is normal. Today, however, I think I am going to refrain from some of my "work-from-home" foci to allow myself to be able to burst into tears at any moment without fear of being on video. I think today may be a planning/visual aid/TME development type of day. I can work on music production without having to be filmed, so red, swollen eyes will not be a problem. Why is today declared a "Crying Day?" There is no specific reason, just more of the roller coaster things that are happening in the lives of others at this point. I am physically fine - things are at my normal for this time of year other than the broken fingers...

All of my plans have been completely upended in the past month due to various health issues and hospitalizations and days off, so nothing has been happening the way I like to plan it all. (Cue the guilt shivers going up my spine.) Seriously, though, this past month has been a struggle, and December seems to be the same - full of struggles for me. Right now, I'm very much stuck on an emotional roller coaster ride, and most of the ride is downhill. This has affected everything that I've been trying to do lately. I was fine last week because I didn't have to go to work. I was able to sleep when I needed to sleep and could be away from people. I found some of my missing creativity and interest in things. Now, I am back to work, back to work issues, and my calendar is filling up with all sorts of things that I have to get finished. Meanwhile, my emotions are sending me into patterns that I am familiar with but that I don't like at all. So, that explains why my Tuesdays hav...