Taking Time Off (and accompanying guilt)

I was recently asked this question and it was too important not to share.

If you’d rather listen to this, click here to listen to the podcast episode!

“Do you ever feel guilty taking off of work?”

This is definitely something I’ve felt throughout my career and something I still face today.

I feel like we, as music therapists, care sooo much about the people we work with, and we see just how much our work means to them. It’s so hard for me to take off and let go of the work.  But yes, it’s really necessary for us to have time off to rest and recuperate.

The question asker went on to say…

“Then when you go back to work you feel obligated to shove as many patients in as possible because you just took off? I don’t want to be lazy. I don’t want to do a disservice to the people I provide care for. But I also don’t want to make myself worse than I am.”

Here’s my response:

It may feel like you’re lazy, but you’re not. It may feel like a disservice to your clients, but it’s not. It’s totally normal and [should be] expected for people of all professions to take off and tend to their own needs.

It is an important practice to take time off and strengthen the muscles of caring for ourselves.

We continued the conversation, and this person said that their loved-one is in the military and the mindset is “always work yourself to the bone… so even though I’m not deathly ill or with fever, I don’t want to get worse.”

I feel this so deeply. Tending to ourselves and taking the time we need to live a healthy life is a hard thing to learn when our culture is always telling us to go-go-go and not ever stop working, but that’s just not humanly possible.

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My first year of working was also my first year of marriage. My husband and I were figuring things out each day - how to live with each other, how to make an income in our first jobs, what food we each liked, what chores we each hated, etc. Although it’s just everyday life things, doing them for the first time with another person is a challenge. Any new thing is challenging.

At this time in my career, it was my routine to work, work, work after I had worked the full day. I had visual aids to make and songs to learn. I had documentation to write and sessions to plan. My work was my life… and it wasn’t healthy.

One day I came home from work, and started at my usual routine. My brand-new, still shiny - out of the box 😉, husband said, “Is this always how it’s gonna be?” He longed for me, as any newly married person would long for their partner. He dreamed of cuddling on the couch watching a comedy, or talking about our days and dreaming about the future. My "go out and work, come home and work" lifestyle was not what he imagined marriage to be. Something had to give.

Three years later, I was burnt out and I stepped away from music therapy for a season. I had a few jobs in between, but my work routine hadn’t changed. I don’t even remember if I ever took off for a vacation. I felt desperate to make money, prove myself as a new professional, and gain experience while helping as many people as I could. Maybe I had a “poverty mindset,” maybe I was a perfectionist, or maybe I was just overly ambitious. Either way, working yourself to the bone is unsustainable.

I remember working with a coach, my usual over-worked self desperately looking for an answer. She told me this: you can either plan your time off or your body will make you take the time off (because of sickness, exhaustion, etc). That has stuck with me like gum stuck in my hair. I would much rather be the decider of my time off! And if you think about it, wouldn’t you like to take time off when you’re feeling good …not just when you’re sick!

So let’s take this a little deeper. I’m going to read through this instagram post that really hit me recently. It’s something I want to hold onto forever and continue facing all the feelings I have about it.

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1SQN9YxiC2/?igsh=cGUyZ3dqc2MyZXg5

Slide 1:

“The belief that constantly fixating on the needs of others is a form of altruism will keep you trapped.”

Okay… so what do you mean by that?

Slide 2:

“Constant self-sacrifice becomes morally coded in our consciousness as what makes us a ‘better’ person.”

Here’s the music therapist version of that sentence: “Constantly working with our clients (pushing ourselves above and beyond) and not taking time off becomes lodged in our brains and hearts as what makes us a better music therapist.” 😬

Slide 3:

“We grow exhausted & resentful as we witness others willingly taking what we are offering- while we ourselves, become more drained.”

Do you ever feel like what you are giving your clients is exactly what you need? (Time, patience, space, love, a listening ear, a musical presence)

Slide 4:

“We grow exhausted and resentful as we witness others tending to themselves & simply not doing what they don’t want to do, while we frequently bypass our own needs.”

We often disregard the time, space, and limits that are necessary for us to do our jobs and not burn out. I think it’s our duty as music therapists to show others what we need in place to do our jobs and to set that standard.

Slide 5:

“We feel perpetually victimized by our own compulsive relationship with self-sacrifice.”

Slide 6:

“None of this is about altruism.”

Slide 7:

“It’s about believing we are only worthy of belonging and security if we are giving.”

Slide 8:

“It’s about trying to control our own anxieties about disposability, image, and relational security.”

Isn’t this so true when we think about music therapy?

Too often we stretch ourselves to meet the demands of the organization in order to prove to others that music therapy is worth it. So, I suppose we are overworking to control the situation - go above and beyond for everyone to like us so that we have job security, right? I can’t tell you how true this has been for me in various jobs, mostly at a subconscious level. It’s hard for it not to be this way when we constantly have to fight for our jobs and the beautiful work we do.

Slide 9:

“For many of us, these dynamics are related to the mother wound.”

Beyond my scope of practice, but this sounds like a really good start to a personal therapy session right here.

For anyone else wondering here’s a quick definition of the Mother Wound from a couple articles on Psychology Today. Articles are linked in the show notes and blog post of this episode.

“The best way to think of the mother wound is a loss or a lack of mothering. This is typically a deficit in the mother-daughter or mother-son relationships that is passed down through generations, and it is a reflection on how we have experienced parenting and how we parent. While not a specific diagnosis, it is a way of looking at how current codependency behaviors may be linked to missing elements in the past.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-and-recovery/201910/the-mother-wound

“…it refers to a type of attachment trauma that instills deeply rooted beliefs that make the child feel unloved, abandoned, unworthy of care, and numb to their feelings.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/un-numb/202311/mending-the-mother-wound

Slide 10:

“It can be worth asking- where did I learn that my needs are less important than every other soul?”

OOOOOF - doesn’t that just smack you right in the face?!!

I feel like as music therapists, we are taught to give and give and give of ourselves. I mean, just look at how college is set up? Far too many classes and credits for the amount of time one person can accommodate. Far past the amount of time someone is using in a full-time job. Far more than what our bodies naturally want and can give. And yet, that is what our education is training us with. That is what we are expected to carry out. I try to remember to tell my students every semester that I am proud of them for taking time off if they have to cancel a session. I try to applaud them, while still providing guidance when necessary, when their writing is not at a top-tier level. I want them to know what’s actually realistic.

And then as many of us in the profession know, it’s hard to be a music therapist (in a one-of-a-kind position that is often teetering on the edge of being cut because insurance largely does not cover music therapy and no one else wants to pay for it). And so, we constantly feel the need to prove ourselves… I wonder if that’s the music therapist - mother wound. We will never have a stable job, never feel secure in our work, and always for eternity have to fight for our worth as professionals. 😬 Yes, I’m using this face again because saying that feels so cringe.

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So let’s go back to the conversation at hand: Taking time off. What are we to do with this?

Start with what you can do -

When I feel like I can’t possibly afford to take time off, I confront what I need in the moment. I likely need to make more money to feel comfortable taking more time off, so in my position as a business owner with private clients and contracts, I think about raising my rates to actually accommodate the reality of my work and time. I also have to face my spending and money management habits. Honestly, I can go with one less bag of mango a month and save a good chunk of change each year so to “buy” me some leeway with taking time off.

Another option is to take your job down to part time and fill the rest of your hours with another type of job that’s not as demanding as music therapy. I know several people who have done this, myself included.

The difficulty of time and money has also been a reason for people to pursue further education in music therapy or another area of expertise in order to get a better-paying and sustainable job.

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Okay, brief pause to mention that many other professions are faced with these same difficulties. I feel like every social worker or therapist I’ve talked with are similarly trying to earn more money, carve out more time, and care for themselves better, every single day. Although we have a unique profession, the problems we face may not be unique to music therapy jobs.

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Okay, here are some things we already talked about if money is an issue and that’s why we’re over-working:

- ask for a raise or raise your session rates

- manage your money and spending

- go down to part-time and supplement with another job that is not as taxing

- pursue further education in order to possibly get a better-paying job

- pivot to another career that promises more support and sustainability

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Now if we talk about the whole altruism idea, which talks about us working until we’re sick because we want to do good in the world at the expense of ourselves, then we can look at this from another angle.

Not taking off because it would wreck our clients:

Let’s think about breaking free from this idea that we are responsible for others’ care. We see the amazing responses to music therapy and think “how can my client possibly live without this?!”, and at times, that is exactly what our clients are telling us. Don’t let this be a trap! We have to look at everyone else caring for the client and see that we are simply one part of the story. I think with some people we work with, we may be part of a smaller circle, but it’s important to make sure that we are not the sole caretakers of our clients. If that is the case, I believe we have an unethical relationship with our client and before working any further with them, we need to empower them to build their support system. One important part on my intake forms is the question “what does your support system look like?” And that’s on there exactly for this reason. I am not your family. I cannot take care of you beyond our music therapy sessions, nor should I.

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If you hold onto this great feeling of responsibility for your clients, I’d challenge you to dig deep and find where that is coming from. This is something that came up for me in supervision, which I then brought into my own therapy. With my supervisor I quickly found the root of that feeling of responsibility, and with my therapist I uncovered more and worked through the feelings attached. The responsibility I felt came from a place of trauma from a time when I cared for a family member on the brink of possible death. I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS BEHIND MY FEELINGS TOWARDS MY CLIENTS. Yay for supervision! And a good story to reflect the importance of reflection, awareness, and supervision.

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This part of the conversation is for my fellow music therapists working in hospice care, and the reality of our patients dying. Within end-of-life work, I am often faced with this thought: ”If I don’t see my patient right now, they will die before I get to them!” What I have to realize is yes, that very well may happen. Yes, that has happened. And yes, that will happen again. But the reality is, people will die at any moment and that is not a reason I shouldn’t care for myself and take time off. I have to accept that I cannot, nor should I, be there for everyone at every moment - then I am not actually living, am I? I don’t have a self if it’s just attached to what I can do for others.

Taking time off helps us face our relationship with ourselves. It forces us to look straight in the mirror and say, “You matter. I care about you. You are worthy of time just for you.” When we practice the act of taking time off (setting up our schedules in a certain way, having a conversation with our bosses, spending time to pick days off) we are becoming the caretaker that we’ve always needed and sending the message that we are loved, we are not abandoned as we are here for ourselves, our feelings matter enough to spend the time feeling them, and we are worthy of care (not just our clients).

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This is a lesson I’m learning alongside all of you. It’s a really hard part of this work, and I get so caught up in the day-to-day that I forget to schedule in time for myself. I forget how rejuvenating breaks are, I get tunnel-visioned into my fears around money. I am here reminding myself that things will work out - I will be provided for. And every time I take off, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t lose out on money because it’s factored into other weeks and areas of my work. And taking time off helps me remember that music therapy is my job, not my life. My clients are people I serve, not those I live with or do life with.

Time off is separation that is good and healthy any way you look at it.

I have a free reference for you that will help with your process of taking time off. Click here for the resource!

Sending you love as you navigate all the complex feelings and difficult decisions around taking off!