TME Tuesday: Back to the Basics

Do you ever get into the habit of overthinking your therapeutic music experiences (AKA: TMEs? applications? modules? or any term that is out there for what you call what you do with your clients during sessions??)??? 

I find that I will get into a mindset where everything has to have a visual aid. Everything has to have a deep meaning song experience. Everything has to incorporate the theoretical foundations of at least five philosophical structures before I will even deign to consider the TME as part of my session strategy. 

This type of "perfection" thinking is dangerous for me. I end up feeling stuck between my capabilities and my dreams of what music therapy "SHOULD" be. Nowhere in my definition of music therapy do the words "visual aids" appear. Nowhere in that definition does it state that I have to know everything there is to know about music and the brain before I can make music with my clients for their therapeutic benefits. Nowhere.

So, why do I get into these periods of overthinking? This has always been something that I have fallen into - even before the advent of social media - but that has been greatly exacerbated by seeing the projects that other people have no problem promoting all the time. I have always tended to compare myself to other people, and I always end up feeling "less than" when I do. I also often feel that I am failing my clients because I am not giving them all the cute stuff that I "COULD" give to them. The simple fact is, in fact, that my clients do not need cute things. They need meaning.

It is funny that I go through this over and over again. You would think that 30 years of this type of pattern would be one that I could break, but I haven't yet. It tends to be more pronounced at times like this when I am sick, but there are always little whispers in the back of my head. I know better than to remain in this type of mode for long, but it is hard to break out.

The purpose of this post, though, is to talk about the fact that TMEs do NOT have to include visual aids or fancy theoretical constructs or every single chord analyzed for where brain centers light up. Often, when I am stuck in "perfection" mode, my clients lead me into the types of interactions that they want and need. For example, many times, my clients are content to build relationships through just playing music. We just get an instrument each, start a groove, and go.

There is nothing wrong with that.

In fact, as a therapist who strives to keep humanistic principles at the center of her interactions, client-led interactions are the most valuable. So, why not drop the visuals in favor of the music and the relationship?

When I return to my job this upcoming summer session, I am going to try to strike a balance between the gee-whiz and the basic of all the basics. There will be times when I have a visual aid for every session and there will be other times where I don't have anything at all. My goal for this summer is to have more functional communication aids available to my clients, so I am finding words that we can use in our songs and while making choices and to ask for what we want and need.

In the next couple of days, I will probably make some small choice boards out of foam board and duct tape. I will use Velcro to make places to display different icons and then use them in my music therapy room to help me understand what my clients are asking for during sessions. That is something practical that will allow me to use visuals but also use those visuals for a functional goal - increasing communication.

Right now, I have two communication collections in my TPT store - one for food and another for animals. Each collection includes color and black and white versions of clip art animals along with storage pages. Each is $7.00 and once you purchase the file, you have unlimited access to the file forever. I just ask that you send other people to purchase their own copies rather than sharing the file... Signing up for TPT is free, and there are TONS of free resources that can be used in music therapy sessions with little to no adaptation.

So, back to the basics for me include focusing on increasing opportunities for communication for my clients. Back to basics include simplifying what I have to prepare in order to do things with my clients. Back to basics ALWAYS includes focusing on my clients before anything else - what do they actually need to be engaged in what we are doing? How do I get the disinterested interested? Even a little bit of interest would be better than complete refusal. Of course, I also work with adolescents, so refusal is part of the job. So, let's aim for a spark of interest in what is happening in the music therapy room...