music, therapy, and me

I am officially heading towards panic time. I have tons of things going on and nothing is really getting finished up. My stack of file folders to offer for sale is growing, but everything needs to be laminated, velcroed, and finished before it can be considered "ready." I have things that I need to get printed and then bound into books. I have projects that I want to make and offer just for fun because I remember how thrilled I used to be to find things about music therapy. I would like to give that thrill to someone else out there. Maybe that's what I will do right now - forget about the stacks of things that are on my living room floor, forget about the existential crisis that I am slipping into because of other things happening around me, and forget about the pressure that I am placing on myself to achieve the vision of perfection that I have in my head about how I want all this to go, and just create some stuff. I'm going to play around with paper and mus...

I have been thinking about lots of futures this week - my own, that of my clients, my students, my interns, my professional organization, my profession. I'm not exactly sure why this has come up this week, but it has so I am going with it. The personal future questions are coming up because I accomplished something on my "evolve" 2020 list. I spoke to a financial planner about retirement. Whoo-hoo to me for doing something so "middle-aged" and forward thinking!! I'm pretty clueless when it comes to saving for retirement other than just putting some money away every month in a retirement account. My sister, though, wants to retire in seven years and is pressuring me to go with her. I'm not sure if I will be able to do so, so that's what is spurring this particular task on. So, I talked to this woman for a bit on Monday afternoon - after a difficult Monday - and we made plans to meet in person during my spring break.  Oh! Another future thing. I ...

Let me start this off by saying a couple of things. First of all, I do not get any financial compensation from Teachers Pay Teachers by recommending this platform OTHER than the small amounts that I get paid when I sell you a file of some sort. Second, I do NOT talk about anything that I do not use personally, so all of the information that I include here are things that I use to spur my creativity and to develop therapeutic music experiences for my clients. If I don't mention it, then either it has no benefit for me as a person or as a therapist. When I go on to let you know about creators on Teachers Pay Teachers, I just want to show you that there are people out there who are making wonderful files that can have a direct impact on what we, as music therapists working with all sorts of populations and in all sorts of situations, can actually do with our clients using the merger of music and visuals to further reinforce information. I also like showing you what is available to y...

I am in the most difficult part of my role as music therapy internship director right at this moment - that of observer and NOT therapist. My interns have taken over all groups but two and a practicum student has taken over one of the two groups leaving only one group per week for me. This will continue for the next two and a half weeks and then we'll have spring break, and I will get 10 groups back. In the meantime, I have to sit by the wall, watching and trying REALLY hard not to interfere in what my interns are doing in their group sessions. As a result of all of my time sitting and watching, I've had lots of time to just think. So, I think about all sorts of things - the future of AMTA, the ways that the difference in age groups seems to be working - or not working, education, clinical training, TME ideas, the price of chocolate, the list of chores that I have to get done pretty soon, whether group members are engaged in therapy well, whether I will finish my day in a g...

Whoo-ee. I haven't made it through the first sentence of this article without having to reach for my dictionary. I'm thinking this will be a long synthesis - mainly because I am not all that up on psychoanalytical paradigm jargon. As I scan through the article that I've selected, (citation below if you want to read this with me) I think my new first step is to scan through, identify all the terminology that is unfamiliar to me, and then take the time to define that terminology so I can then read the article with some context of what is being said.  Now, admitting that I don't know what is being said is a HUGELY humiliating thing for me to do. I pride myself on my intelligence and my mastery of vocabulary and of music therapy concepts. When I come across the world of psychoanalytic music therapy, however, my mind starts to shut down because I just do not understand what is being said. These are the times when my behaviorist/humanistic/sensory integration background...

I have been on a quest lately... It's taking over my front room and spreading to my back room and just piling up everywhere. Even through the mess, I am really excited about what I am doing in my free time. I have signed up to be an exhibitor at the Midwestern Region Conference for the American Music Therapy Association. This is a big deal for me because I've never really thought about doing this before and several people have encouraged me to think about it and now I am moving out of my comfort zone and into my unsteady future by putting myself out there for others. I have started my process of making visual aids for my exhibition hall debut. I have made a stack of visuals for all sorts of therapeutic music experiences, and I am getting myself organized so I have things to offer my fellow therapists. The bits and pieces that go into making complete visuals are currently stored in a small box awaiting lamination. I have pigs and coins and animal cards and dinosaur rhy...

I am my own worst critic. Anyone else find that to be true? No other person ever seems to think that my failings are as catastrophic as I find them to be. I lie awake and think about every misstep that I have taken in my life and I end up in anxiety patterns that interrupt lots of other situations. This seems to be a trend in those of us who are music therapists. We are naturally drawn to be with others. We love music so much that we want to share it with everyone in a way that allows those others to experience music with a therapeutic benefit. We constantly face skeptics and naysayers and people who think that they can do what we do because they have made a playlist. We fight for recognition in almost every interaction that we have with other people, and it can become exhausting. We often figure that our lack of recognition has much to do with our selves rather than with our society, and that is easy to personalize to the point of fatigue. I have to stop and remind myself that...