It's Wednesday Again
...and I awoke with my usual feelings of dread. It amazes me how one group of clients can pull me into a morass of doubt, frustration, and feelings of inadequacy. Last week, I went with the "divide and conquer" strategy. It worked for about 40 minutes before the first major explosion occurred. I am hoping for a repeat of 40 minutes of good things happening before some sort of conflict happens...
Each of these clients would be fine in individual services, but group is what they have available to them. None of them can actually relate to other people in ways that society expects. This translates into disastrous sessions when there is little therapy happening. I awake in the morning, fretting about what might happen (based on actual, real-life experiences), and waste valuable time in a semi-anxious state. I'm a mess really. All on Wednesdays.
I think several things need to change. First, my way of interacting and my expectations of these clients needs to change. For the moment, the primary concern is not going to be about deep changes with therapist. The primary concern will be building stable relationships in the music therapy environment. We are starting with no more than 3 peers in our small groups.
Unfortunately, all of the clients have to be in the same music therapy space, but I do try to keep them apart via proximity and attention focus on staff members. I flit from place to place, keeping any type of appropriate activity going. I also am stepping in as primary behavior manager. I want them to see me as the rule-enforcer and then view their classroom staff members as allies (working on good relationships with those that have to be around them most of the time).
Today, we are going to play a game. We're going to play Down By the Banks with frogs. In this version, no one ever gets "out." The people who have the frog when I sing "kerplop" will do something - make a decision. Probably the tempo decision... As soon as I start to see some discontent going on in the group, I am going to move into instrument play and relaxation - the soundtrack to Inside Out is pretty good for emotional awareness work. We will focus on our coping skills - breathing, ignoring, taking care of ourselves instead of telling others what to do...
We'll see how it works.
It's an interesting life, this music therapy world I live in...
Each of these clients would be fine in individual services, but group is what they have available to them. None of them can actually relate to other people in ways that society expects. This translates into disastrous sessions when there is little therapy happening. I awake in the morning, fretting about what might happen (based on actual, real-life experiences), and waste valuable time in a semi-anxious state. I'm a mess really. All on Wednesdays.
I think several things need to change. First, my way of interacting and my expectations of these clients needs to change. For the moment, the primary concern is not going to be about deep changes with therapist. The primary concern will be building stable relationships in the music therapy environment. We are starting with no more than 3 peers in our small groups.
Unfortunately, all of the clients have to be in the same music therapy space, but I do try to keep them apart via proximity and attention focus on staff members. I flit from place to place, keeping any type of appropriate activity going. I also am stepping in as primary behavior manager. I want them to see me as the rule-enforcer and then view their classroom staff members as allies (working on good relationships with those that have to be around them most of the time).
Today, we are going to play a game. We're going to play Down By the Banks with frogs. In this version, no one ever gets "out." The people who have the frog when I sing "kerplop" will do something - make a decision. Probably the tempo decision... As soon as I start to see some discontent going on in the group, I am going to move into instrument play and relaxation - the soundtrack to Inside Out is pretty good for emotional awareness work. We will focus on our coping skills - breathing, ignoring, taking care of ourselves instead of telling others what to do...
We'll see how it works.
It's an interesting life, this music therapy world I live in...
Comments
Post a Comment