The Way I Fixed My Therapeutic Music Experience Writing

Gather 'round, all, to hear a tale of music therapy education many years ago.

Once upon a time, when I was a younger person, I entered school to become a music therapist. While I was there, I became what is known as a practicum student, engaging in learning about how to be a music therapist by working with clients and fellow student therapists in weekly sessions. I struggled with these practicum settings, as so many student music therapists do. In my five settings, I had five very different supervisors, all who had very different ideas of what I should be doing in my sessions, and worse of all for me, in my paperwork.

We, of course, had ONE way to write therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) - by the way, back then we called them "applications" which was an upgrade from the term "activities." I now call them TMEs because I feel that term more accurately describes what I try to write for myself and for my fellow music therapists. TANGENT!!

The problem with having only ONE way to write TMEs is that there are many different ways to interpret that ONE way. This was demonstrated by my five music therapy practicum supervisors. The one thing that most of them agreed on (at least, for the first three semesters)? I just didn't get what they wanted me to do.

For some reason, I just didn't know what they wanted me to write down. I struggled with the procedure part of any and all TMEs that I was creating. I was missing specific responses or not putting in things that were important. I just couldn't understand what was wrong. Everything looked good to me, and I thought I was following the examples the way they were presented. For some reason, though, I just wasn't giving them what they wanted.

This caused me to question my choice of career, but I also spent lots of time trying to figure out what they wanted versus what I was giving them. One day, I had a thought.

Did they want me to write a flow chart?

I sat down and wrote out a flow chart for my next TME. Once I had diagrammed the procedure section of the TME into a form that I could understand (because I could see it all very clearly), I was able to translate that into prose - a detailed procedure section. I turned in my session plan to my very exacting supervisor, and awaited the verdict.

It worked.

All of a sudden, I was no longer having difficulty with my session planning. I had figured out what I was lacking - AND I FIXED THE PROBLEM! For me, the problem came that I needed to learn in a different way, not that I couldn't get it or that they were teaching wrong, the way I was taught just didn't make any sense to me. Once I could translate what they wanted into something I could understand, it made sense what I needed to change.

From then on, my procedure sections of my session plans were just what my supervisors wanted, and we all lived happily ever after.

The End.

(To this very day, I still use flow charts to organize my thoughts, help me figure out my procedure sections in my TMEs, and, especially, to write. If you would like to see some examples of the types of charts that I use, look for the tag "Sing a Song Sunday" in the index located under the three lines that I find on the top of my blog screen.)

I am interested. What types of things challenged you during your life as a therapist that you found a solution to? For me, the flow chart concept was life changing. Did you have something like that? What was it? Are you currently challenged by something? 

If so, write it in the comments. 

There are many therapists out there who have been through the same things you have or are going through. Let's work together to figure out how to strengthen one another's skills.