What I’ve Learned About Myself After Moving Halfway Across The Country

I’ll be honest: moving halfway across the country was not easy. As many of you may know from my introduction post, I grew up in Connecticut and went to college right outside of Manhattan. While I was away from home at college, I was still close enough to go home on the weekends.

Moving to Springfield to work here at MTC has turned out to be one of the best decisions I could have ever made, but definitely one of the hardest. I miss my family, friends, and pets back on the East Coast daily, and I know they miss me too.

However, this has been an amazing learning experience for me in so many ways. Here are a few things I’ve learned about myself in my short time out here:

  • I’m a lot more independent than I thought I was! Going places alone used to be a little scary for me, but since I’ve been living on my own in a new place, I’ve found the joy in it. Taking myself out to dinner, seeing a movie by myself, or even going to a museum alone have been weekend activities I enjoy doing with me, myself, and I.
  • The importance of self care. In the past few months, I’ve really learned what self care is and is not for me. It’s made a big difference both with dealing with the emotional toll my work can take on me at times, and the emotional toll being so far away from my support system can take.
  • Although I’m far away from my support system, FaceTime, social media, and phone calls are wonderful things! I talk to my parents on the phone a few nights a week, and sometimes we FaceTime and they hold the phone up to each of the dogs and cats so I can see them. Although it’s not the same as being there, it really does help a lot to be able to so easily connect with my family and friends.

I’m enjoying figuring my new life in Illinois out, and not a second goes by where I regret my decision. I’m super grateful to the team at MTC for being so amazing and making my transition so smooth, as well as the wonderful families I serve at MTC. And not to leave out my incredible parents, who supported me through this journey — you guys are the best!

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you around MTC!

Intern’s Corner – Week 11

“Short-Term” Self-Care

Hello again!

I hope you all have had another great week! It’s been an eventful one for me! This week has been the end of summer session groups with Listen & Learn classes and some of our contracts. Lots of stuff has happened! 

I’ve most recently discovered the importance of “short-term” self-care. As therapists, we talk about self-care a lot. In fact, I’ve already done a blog post about what I do for self-care. When I think of self-care, I always think of it occurring at night or the weekend when the work day is over. What about during the few minutes you have in between sessions? I’ve recently discovered how important these few minutes are. 

These are the moments you have to center yourself, to prepare for the next session, recover from a previous session, or even simply to have a quick meal or snack. I’ve noticed that my mindset during the few minutes in between sessions carries over to my next session.

I didn’t realize how important these moments are until this week. I have five sessions back to back one day at the beginning of the week. During one of these sessions, something unexpected happened and I had five minutes before my next session to let my emotions out and recover. This may have been the fastest cry I’ve ever had, but I had a job to do and I knew I had a short amount of time before the next clients needed me. 

These five minutes of letting my emotions out in our office with my supervisor helped me recover from a hard session and prepare myself to best serve the clients I was seeing next. I let myself cry for a few minutes, talked to my supervisor, and then wiped my eyes and led the next session. This “short-term” self-care is a rather extreme example, but it is what I needed in that moment.

Here are some other examples of “short-term” self-care that I do or have heard that other music therapists do:

  • Sit in silence
  • Meditate
  • Listen to a song of your choosing
  • Read inspirational quotes
  • Reflect
  • Write down one thing that went well in the previous session
  • Do nothing/Sit back and relax

We talk about self-care a lot. In college, I didn’t really take it seriously. It’s amazing how quickly I am learning in the “real world” just how important it is. Self-care should be taken seriously.

I would love to hear from you! What do you do to take care of yourself during those few minutes in between sessions? 

Thank you for reading! Have an amazing week and happy August!

Emma Kovachevich