...And, Just Like That, It Is Time to Blog...

I spent most of the day sleeping. My bed was too uncomfortable for a bit, so I went into the craft room and laid on the floor there before heading back to bed for a four hour nap. I think I skipped my medications yesterday which made today a "getting back into the routine" day which means extreme exhaustion and sleeping all day. When I did get up, I felt better, ordered food, ate it while sitting on the floor (my favorite place to sit), and then finished up a revamp of tonight's webinar program. I am still exhausted, but I think I'll be able to stay awake through the webinar...I hope.

We are going to talk about how I write and organize my therapeutic music experience strategies. There are so many deliberate word choices in that sentence, that I feel that I need to elaborate on why I wrote what I wrote.

I have chosen to call what I do with clients in the session "Therapeutic Music Experiences." I started off calling them "applications" because my undergraduate professors insisted that we did more than just "activities." I continued to call things "applications" until an intern from Michigan introduced me to the term, "Therapeutic Music Experiences" or TMEs. That resonated with me as I felt that it described what I was designing more than just "application." I didn't really feel that I was designing an "application" - that was what I did when I was with clients. I was designing something else entirely.

So, my "application" file became my "TME" file.

I then started looking at the way I had been taught to write these ideas down. Now, I have the artifacts from that time, many decades ago, when I had to write down 25 (oh, that number seemed SO out of reach as a freshman) ideas and music references for use with five different client populations. That assignment took most of the semester, as I recall. We always started with a purpose statement - the primary goal of the TME, but we only thought of one at a time. More than one per TME was not expected. I'm not sure if my professors were trying to help us out or if they just didn't think more globally - I think the former rather than the latter, but I'm not sure about that.

I still keep the bones of the first way I was asked to write "Applications" but I have expanded that format significantly in what I include and how I think about each of the different elements of my strategies.

I also deliberately use the word "strategy" rather than "plan." For me, a plan seems more limiting than a strategy. It may be a question of semantics, but it is an important distinction in my mind. I prefer the idea of going into therapy with a strategy that I change and adapt to each client in a way that makes every single music therapy session a unique experience. If I think of what I do as a plan, I often feel like I am limiting my options when working with clients.

This also has its roots in my undergraduate education. I remember being challenged by a supervisor because I changed the order of my TMEs to accommodate client needs in the moment. I still did everything that I had planned to do, but I shifted the order to fit the attention capabilities of the 3 year old that I was working with. I felt like she was hypercritical of my process, but I was able to explain why I went with the dance/freeze TME instead of the alphabet recognition TME first. She challenged my therapeutic decisions every week and made me a better music therapist because of it all!

I approach each session as a strategy. My ultimate goal is the client's desired outcome. I do every possible thing that I can do to facilitate the client in their treatment goals and outcomes. I want every interaction within the music therapy environment to offer opportunities for progress - from the opening to the last note of the closing. After all, someone is paying for treatment - don't the clients deserve the biggest bang for their therapy buck? If I view what I do with clients as part of a bigger strategy, I have lots of options for exploration and interaction and engagement.

I think sleeping all day was a good thing for me. It seems that I have found a spark of something that interests me again.

If you are interested in more about TMEs, my way of developing them, ideas of TMEs to use in sessions with clients, or session strategy development, I encourage you to look in the label or search using any of those terms listed here. I've written lots and lots on this particular topic over the past 14 years.

Thanks for reading.