You Never Know...

Today is the day where I have the most groups of the week. In a recent development, I no longer have an individual session on Wednesday - not because of anything other than classroom reassignments - so Wednesday is my group day. We have six groups and a meeting on the schedule. Intern 34 will be in training for most of the day, and Intern 33 is getting more and more independent as I am moving myself farther and farther from the group area to do "work" while clients are engaging in music therapy.

I will be running three groups today, and yesterday was not a successful day for any of the groups that we saw, so I want to do other things today. Nothing worked yesterday. My students weren't interested in any of the things that I had selected. My intern's students weren't interested in any of the things that she presented. No one was interested in anything - and, not just in music therapy. It was rough, and it was one of those days where you could have had the most famous person in the world for each client walk into the room and they would have rolled their eyes and just said, "eh."

We had to talk a bit about where responsibility lies on days like these. I tend to blame myself when clients do not respond to what happens in the session, and my intern was starting to do that as well. I had to stop that before it became any more habitual. So, we talked about how to think about these types of days and how much we can actually take responsibility for when clients just are not interested in what happens.

On the second day back from any break, this response tends to be pretty typical for my clients. The first day is full of happiness that we are back to our regular routine. The second day means that we all get up feeling tired and resenting the fact that we can no longer sleep in. We always see a spike in significant behaviors of concern in the facility on the second day after break. We did not have to assist anyone in being safe yesterday, so that was a good thing. My group participants just wanted to sit and stare at each other and at me. Nothing that I prepared was what they were interested in, and I was not motivated to be an entertainer. So, we sat. I offered options and expectations, and they made their choices. I supported those choices, even though those choices were not what I had intended.

We will see how today goes.

One of the things that typically surprises my interns is when I stop a therapeutic music experience without completing it. This reminds me of a practicum supervisor that I had that would challenge my clinical decisions when I would alter my session plan in any way - if I used different words than on the plan, if I changed the order of our interactions, if I extended an experience past what I had stated on the plan because the client was very engaged. I hope that supervisor was just teaching me to think about why I was doing what I was doing, but I suspect that was not the case. I have the feeling that this particular supervisor lived with a scripted session and was not able to adapt as easily as I was. I also know that the supervisor was not as comfortable with the population as I was, even way back then. There is something interesting to me about expecting a 3 year old to follow a predetermined and unknown music therapy script. That is never the case, by the way! 3 year olds have a mind of their own and often cannot be forced into someone else's plan completely!! At least, that is my experience with most of the 3 year olds that I have encountered.

Anyway, interns tend to think that TMEs have to be completed in order to make it count during a session - or something like that. My philosophy about that particular topic is that boring clients is less effective than stopping something that isn't resonating with them. If they are not interested, then they are not interested and there is no sense in forcing a TME that has no client buy-in. So, when my clients are obviously uninterested as a group in what is being presented, I will abandon it and move into something else. I consider the ability to read the group's energy and interest level an important skill for interns and one of the things that marks their transition from student to therapist. I also consider that one of the most important skills when working with children and adolescents, so I watch for that with my interns and my clients. I try to make my therapeutic modeling match my words and expectations for my interns.

I did not really complete any of my TMEs as designed yesterday. Like I said, everything I presented was met with blank stares and limited interaction. We did not have any sort of therapeutic breakthroughs or any memorable moments. We just were present.

I am really hoping that today's groups will be a bit more used to the "getting up and going to school" routine because yesterday was rough. I also have some things that I have not used in a long time that I want to share, and it is disheartening to be excited about sharing something with someone who is extremely uninterested in what you have to offer. As I told my intern yesterday, sometimes this happens especially when working with adolescents. So, I head out into the cold, rainy world this morning with the hope that my clients will be in a more receptive mood and will find what I can offer interesting to them.

Unfortunately, when working with fellow humans, you never know...