Epilogue:( In case anyone is curious.) Nine years ago I accepted a position as a paraprofessional in a university music and dance library. Obviously, the job duties are different; much more important to me is the vast difference in the setting. It’ s clean, it’ s quiet, my coworkers are always polite and appreciative, and I neither witness nor receive any abuse.
no one had discussed that with me or even informed me, nor even thought about where my group would meet instead.
To be clear: I don’ t particularly care about having a nice office, and I certainly don’ t believe music therapy can only happen in a‘ pretty’ room( though privacy and being able to hear one another would be nice!). Rather, I cite these incidents to provide examples of the steady stream of morale-crushing“ You’ re just not worth much” messages I received as a music therapist.
I promised above to say more about co-workers telling you how you should conduct your sessions; that will be my final example of the things that led to my job dissatisfaction. This issue demonstrates a combination of several factors I’ ve already mentioned: the erroneous belief that music therapy is‘ easy,’ the tolerance of verbal abuse in institutions, the devaluation of our work, and the tendency of staff to believe that they should be in charge on their‘ turf.’ Naturally, this will be more of an issue if you work in a setting where you have to have staff present during sessions, as was the case in my final music therapy job. Their interference went far beyond mere‘ suggestions;’ when I chose not to follow their directives, they often responded by becoming insulting and disruptive, aggressively demanding an explanation for my choice, and complaining to my supervisor.
Fortunately, my supervisor was largely supportive and did have some understanding of what music therapy involves. Sometimes she was able to minimize staff involvement in my sessions, which was helpful. Less helpful, however, was her suggestion that I write something to help the staff understand what I was doing. I felt that was not feasible, and more important, I felt it didn’ t address the root of the problem: the staff’ s failure to respect a trained professional’ s judgment in a field about which they knew virtually nothing.( I doubt that they told the dentist which tooth to drill— yet they probably knew more about dentistry than they did about music therapy.)
You may be wondering why and how I stayed with it as long as I did. Well, I‘ dealt’ with it— unsuccessfully, apparently— in many ways. I tried convincing myself I was wrong to feel the way I did, that I should be able to better tolerate all the ugliness I witnessed and was subjected to. I tried to become the best music therapist I could. I tried to demonstrate the value of music therapy to my coworkers. I attended conferences and gave presentations, and the inspiration and validation I received there did indeed lift me up... for a few days out of the year. I tried changing music therapy jobs, repeatedly, until I finally concluded that they just didn’ t vary that much: the issues that were eroding my job satisfaction and emotional wellbeing are systemic and present in( almost?) every institution.
I know some music therapists are happy in their jobs. Some work in awful institutions and manage to deal with it better than I ever did. Maybe some even work in places where their work is respected and the clients are welltreated. And some are miserable and continue to stick it out anyway, for whatever reason( s). I was one of the ones who just couldn’ t take it anymore.
Do I have any solutions to offer? The conditions in institutions, the way our society treats people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations... Those are huge issues that can only be addressed by society as a whole. But I do believe there are things the music therapy profession can do-- and things we can avoid doing-- to address some of the other issues I’ ve described. We can stop suggesting( particularly to students and those considering entering the field) that being a music therapist is an easy, fun job; both clinicians and educators should consistently present music therapy as the extremely challenging field it is. On a related point: we can avoid suggesting that the goal of music therapy is to entertain or‘ cheer people up’ and instead honor the fact that we are asking our clients to change in some way, and that is serious, challenging work for them too.
We can focus on doing high quality work that requires our special skills as musicians and therapists, rather than activities like‘ balloon bopping.’( We can hardly blame people for thinking that music therapy is something anyone can do when they see us doing things that, well, anyone can do.) We can also underscore the importance of being trained to use a modality by not‘ dabbling’ in other modalities( e. g., art) ourselves. By letting go of some of these unnecessary practices, education programs would be sacrificing some breadth, but would then be able to go into more depth in more relevant areas, helping their students be prepared to do quality work as music therapists.
Epilogue:( In case anyone is curious.) Nine years ago I accepted a position as a paraprofessional in a university music and dance library. Obviously, the job duties are different; much more important to me is the vast difference in the setting. It’ s clean, it’ s quiet, my coworkers are always polite and appreciative, and I neither witness nor receive any abuse.
Editor’ s Note: This article was originally written as a response to a blog post Roia wrote,“ So You Want to Become a Music Therapist” which you can find here.
15 | P a g e
How has your work environment affected your passion for music therapy? Tell us: musictherapyclinician @ gmail. com / Facebook