How To Keep Music-Making For You: Personal Music-Making for the Music Therapist
Written by Artemis Xenick
There is no doubt that music therapists are passionate about their music. We have each dedicated our lives to the pursuit of using our personal passions to help other people. Each day, we get to play instruments, sing songs, and even create original music with others. We are living the dream! Why then do so many music therapists stop prioritizing their own music practice? The answer is simple: when your hobby becomes your job, it’s difficult to return to it as a hobby.
Perhaps one of the most common reasons that music outside of music therapy starts to feel like a chore rather than a cathartic passion is due to the high levels of burnout in the field. Burnout is one of the most common occupational hazards in music therapy, due to the active emotional participation required in the day-to-day responsibilities of the job (Gooding, 2018; Silverman, 2015; Trondalen, 2016). Essentially, because of the high levels of emotional presence required in daily music therapy practice, clinicians spend exhaustive amounts of emotional energy on their clients and therapeutic music each day, leaving little of that energy left for their own personal and musical cultivation. This level of emotional capacity used by music therapists likely is increased due to the inherent emotional quality of music. It is hard to not engage emotionally with our clients when music is the medium that we use.
Burnout can have potentially negative effects, not only in one’s professional life, but their personal life as well. This can lead to lower productivity and motivation at work, as well as increased anxiety and lower self-esteem outside of work (Maslach et al., 2001; Rupert, Miller, & Dorociak, 2015). As a result, those who experience less burnout and greater job satisfaction are more likely to stay in the field (Cohen & Behrens, 2002; Decuir & Vega, 2010).
Burnout is a common side effect of working in a helping profession, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be.
Our personal musical histories did not begin with music therapy. We all nurtured a deep love for music from childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and from this place of passion decided to devote our lives to using the musical power that we had become so well-acquainted with to help others along their journeys. We began our careers as music therapists because music is an integral part of our being. This fundamental truth can get away from us when our hobby becomes our job. So, what if one of the keys to combatting burnout is returning to and nurturing our inner musical child?
The musical self can be defined as “the personal use of music-based activities to maintain creative and artistic happiness, passion for music, satisfaction in musical endeavors, and interest in continued artistic and professional growth” (Davis, 2014). Although our musical self can certainly be nurtured by our clinical musical experiences, the personal use of music is crucial to attending to our own musical self.
Research states that nurturing the musical self allows for music therapists to enhance their creativity and better attend to their clients’ musical needs (Bruscia, 1987; Priestley, 1994; Robbins & Robbins, 1998; Borczon, 2004). Tending to our musical selves can not only combat burnout levels, but can also have benefits for our clients and practice. By remembering the joy that comes with music, it may decrease some of the obligation we feel towards music and emotional engagement as a result.
However, the idea of nurturing the musical self is quite abstract. How do we actually go about finding ways to be musical in our personal lives when music dominates our professional lives? Below are some practical solutions to combatting burnout by nurturing your musical self: it’s not only possible, but necessary.
Return to Your Musical Origins
To nurture your musical self, return to where your love of music began. In other words, you must first tend to your inner musical child before you can tend to your current musical self.
This can include playing or even just listening to pieces of music from your early days of lessons, performances, and ensembles. The idea is that by returning to a piece that is already engrained in your memory (and we all know the great connection between music therapy and memory!), you can have a complete and active musical experience that allows for ease of playing and minimal cognitive effort.
When tending to my own inner musical child, I have enjoyed playing songs from my early days of piano lessons. I can sit down and play songs that I don’t have to think very much about. The pressure of perfection and performance is lifted, and since my fingers already know what to do, I can just play and release. Afterwards, I feel accomplished, pleasantly nostalgic, and more in tune with my own musical self.
Community Music-Making
Another important aspect of our personal musical journeys are the ensembles that we were a part of. For many of us, this was where our love of music began; a space where we belonged, with people that were similar to us, all tied together with music.
Making music with others can be a beautiful tool for building and strengthening relationships, group emotional processing, and decreasing musical pressure and expectation. It can be therapeutic to be a part of a musical experience that we do not have to facilitate, plan, or lead!
Community music-making can include participating in community ensembles and seeking out performance opportunities, but it can also be as simple as jamming out to music in the car with loved ones or going to a concert. We deserve to be musically fed; it can be helpful to seek out these opportunities.
Pick Up a New Instrument
Learning a new instrument can bring us back to the joy of exploration and curiosity that guided the beginning of your musical journey; the triumph and struggle that comes with learning and discovering something that is brand new.
Do your best to eliminate all pressure to be “good” at this instrument; this is purely for your musical child. Release your inner perfectionism and experience the joys of discovering your new instrument, giving yourself grace with mistakes and gaps in understanding.
It is important to be intentional that this is an instrument that is unlikely for you to use in your clinical practice; this is an instrument to be strictly used for hobbies. Once you introduce it in a clinical setting, the pressure to be “good” at this instrument may resurface.
Set Musical Boundaries
Since music is a hobby, job, and core part of who we are, implementing and maintaining musical boundaries in the workplace is crucial. These boundaries can help to distinguish how music feels in the workplace versus how it feels in your personal music making, therefore making personal music feel different and special.
Some examples of what these boundaries can include what music is just for me at home? What music is strictly for work?), determining when practicing feels right, and scheduling time for personal music making.
My own experience with setting musical boundaries in my practice has gone through much trial and error. Some specific boundaries that I have learned to keep in place include not listening to music relating to my clinical practice in the car, setting specific practice time every morning so I can use time after the work day for personal music creation, and setting time for personal songwriting. These specific practices have helped me to keep my relationship with music healthy, and are helping me to build a long-term relationship with music that is enjoyable rather than obligatory.
Prioritize Silence and Other Hobbies
Another crucial strategy to nurturing your musical self is to intentionally create and enjoy time away from music. Like any relationship, it is important that music is not your “one thing”. While tending to your musical self is important, be sure not to force yourself to be musical outside of work if it still feels like a chore. Pushing yourself to be musical just because you feel like you should be may damage your relationship with music more than it helps it.
Sometimes silence, or taking a break to engage in other activities can rejuvenate you more than music. There are days that on my way home from clinical work, I need to sit in silence because of the large amounts of stimulation and emotional effort that I have been steeped in all day. Silence can allow for a cleaner slate to process the events of sessions and any other emotions.
It is also important to engage in other hobbies, to fuel your soul in ways that music can’t reach on a given day. Music is an incredible tool for connection, recreation, and engagement, but it is not always what we need. For me, additional hobbies including traveling, spending time with loved ones, reading, staying active, and spending time in nature help me to create a healthy and balanced relationship with music.
Give yourself the space to miss being musical, and you will likely return to music with a fresh sense of excitement and curiosity. As the old adage goes, absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
Songwriting and Composition
I’ve saved the best for last, as this is my personal favorite way to nurture my musical self. Engaging in music creation with songwriting and composition can simultaneously tend to our inner musical child while prioritizing our present musical self as well. This aspect of music blends exploration of new instruments and ideas while thriving on emotional intention and being present while engaging in it.
There are many ways to engage in songwriting and composition that do not feel abstract or intimidating. I heard in a podcast once of a band that writes routine “adventure albums;” they travel around the country or just their hometown and write an album about the places and things that they experience. This way, inspiration does not have to magically pop into your head, rather you are intentionally seeking it out.
Another way to get into the habit of creating music is to establish a routine for yourself, such as writing a song every week or every month. This may feel challenging, but will again help you to search for inspiration that you may not know was there. And if you write one song a month, by the end of the year you’ll have completed twelve original songs; an entire album!
A very fun way to practice songwriting is through improvisation. Whether alone or in a group, improvisation is a great tool not only to create fun products but to rebel against your inner perfectionism. By releasing perfectionism and letting your improvisations not be “good,” improv can be filled with joy. A great way to get started with improvisation is to use generators that come up with musical elements for you. Here are the links to some musical element generators to aid you in your improvisation journey:
Finally, my favorite (and most used) way to incorporate songwriting into my own personal music-making is to write songs to process my own emotions and experiences. Especially if said emotions and experiences are fresh, it is very helpful both to my own emotional processing and musical creativity to write songs based on those things.
Personal music-making is important for the music therapist because it helps prevent burnout, increases creativity, and allows for music therapists to better provide musically for their clients. Find a pocket of music-making that does not feel like work to you. Release your inner critic, tend to your inner musical child, and most of all, enjoy yourself.
