Rachel Nolan, music therapy & psychotherapy

11/17/2025

11/16/2025

Per uje, notice it with setting boundaries within a self, too.

We all wish setting a limit looked like:
➡️ “No” → instant cooperation

But in real life?
Setting a limit is rarely a straight line — and it’s not because you’re doing it wrong.
It’s because children learn boundaries through connection, not compliance.

A realistic limit-setting moment might look like:
✔️ pushback
✔️ big feelings
✔️ validation
✔️ holding the limit
✔️ getting curious
✔️ working with your child, not against them

And eventually… cooperation arrives.

If it feels messy, emotional and repetitive — that’s parenting.
Limits stick best when they’re delivered with calm, empathy and consistency… not perfection.

✨ You’re not failing. You’re teaching.

11/15/2025

11/15/2025

06/06/2025

Get out of their heads, make a home in yours. You can do what you want to do and be how you want to be.

05/29/2025

02/04/2025

!!

04/03/2024

(it counts)

credit: https://www.steinbergdrawscartoons.com/

Credit: https://www.steinbergdrawscartoons.com/

04/03/2024

Always always parenting ourselves with the choices we make, the messages we give ourselves about what is and isn't worth doing for the fragile and suggestible little human that is us.

01/22/2024

Honestly.

Tumblr user eldritchbagel:

You're just a mammal. Let yourself act like it. Your brain needs enrichment. Your body needs rest. You feel hunger and grow hair. You need to pack bond with other sentient things so you don't become unsocialized and neurotic. You are biologically inclined to seek dopamine and become sick when chronically stressed. "Hedonism" is made up to place moral value on taking pleasure in sensory experiences. I am telling you that if you don't let yourself be a fu***ng mammal, as you were made, you will suffer and go insane. No grindset no diets no trying to be above your drive for connection. Pursue what makes you feel good and practice radial rejection of the constructs meant to turn you into a machine. You're a mammal.

Tumblr user ldritchbagel:

I am so serious about the way people are taught to view themselves as separate from and above any other animal being the root cause of a lot of problems. You're not better than a beast.

12/02/2023

👏👏👏

08/17/2023

As a musician and a music therapist, people often assume I'm going to have a lot of opinions about what you should listen to.

I've had more people than I can tell you confess guiltily to me that sometimes they listen to sad music when they're sad, which other health professionals and no-good busybodies have told them is obviously making it worse.

It's a common perspective! Once I sat in a lecture theatre in an institutional mental health setting where music therapy practicum students presented to allied staff the groundbreaking work they were doing with the people in our collective care. Two professionals behind me scoffed disapprovingly at the lyrics of a song written by a patient, declaring that the lyrics were negative and the patient was ruminating.

Of course the lyrics might be negative. This is a hospital. People are suffering, they make art that allows them to encounter their own pain; a music therapist witnessing that, supportive, warm other humans witnessing that, a person witnessing it for themself, is self-evidently precious.

I trust people to know what music they need. We're the best judge of that for ourselves. I just think we can often stand to be reminded to stop and ask ourselves what music we need.

Often in conversations about this, after clients tell me all the reasons they think it's actually HELPFUL sometimes for them to listen to sad music when they're sad. or pi**ed off music when they're pi**ed off, we usually together naturally come around to acknowledge that yea, there's some music that totally can make it worse. I don't know about you, but there are some songs that I would do best to never hear again in my life. We're the best judge of that, too.

Anyway, today I joked to some pals that for all my musician and music therapist identity, when people lately ask me what I'm listening to? The answer is lately I largely listen to the playlists of electro-swing and chill-step that the algorithm on youtube recommends me because it has got used to me searching for the one or the other when I am, respectively, cleaning or working. 'Cause... sometimes that's what we fu**in' need and music, once again, has our back. I'm also listening to Patsy Cline so I can learn it for some of my elder clients in long-term care who are tired of my "country western" repertoire consisting of "Walk The Line" and "Oh What A Beautiful Morning."

Anyway, here's what I'm genuinely listening to lately.
So chill. So productive. So bear. I am very sophisticated.

Any you? You should listen for what you need and listen to what you need.

(feel free to drop your current jams in the comments!)

Like a bear in the wild, embrace the strength within you and let it guide you through every challenge....Please subscribe to my channel, this upload is compl...