Therapy Technique Tuesday: No More Session Planning!

For my entire career, I have rebelled against the idea of session planning.

I struggled with procedure sections in my undergrad training. I've written about this recently - how I would take the example in our practicum handbook, change the details but not the format, and would be told that it "was not right." That was all the feedback that I would get. I would ask how to make those sections "right," and no one could tell me how to do that. I had a revelation in the summer between my junior and senior years (thank all that is good in the universe), and then I was able to figure it all out, but that experience has left me a bit leery of writing session plans.

One of the biggest issues that I have with session plans is that there is so much that happens in a session, and it is impossible to foresee every response. Plain old impossible!

So, I don't write session plans. I haven't for my entire career because I find the practice to be busywork. Instead, I focus on therapeutic music experience (TME) development and session strategizing.

In my head, there is a difference between planning and strategizing that I will probably not explain very well on this stormy early morning, but just know that there are differences between these synonyms in my way of doing things.

For some reason, I think of planning as a set structure that has to be followed. This has quite a bit to do with one practicum supervisor that I had that would sit in the observation room and check off the steps that I had planned as I did them. After the session, I had to justify all of the variations and deviations that I had completed in the session. "Why didn't you do alphabet when you entered the room as was on your plan?" I would respond, "The kid was screaming when I picked him up from his classroom. He was still upset when we entered the music therapy clinic. I decided that movement was better for him in the moment than sitting down to do his letter recognition. We did the alphabet once he was able to think again."

A strategy, though, feels different in my brain. A strategy implies that there will deviations and variations and adaptations to any plans that have been made, and the focus shifts to me as the therapist (where it should be, by the way) to accommodate what the client needs in the session through our musical interactions.

So, what do my strategies look like??

Well, when I am running sessions in my current job, all of my strategies are written on post-it notes. I keep two notes on my computer at work where I can move them to the guitar if I need reminders. I list the specific TMEs that I want to address during sessions, and that is all that I need. This simplicity is because I have developed the TMEs in ways that are easily interpreted by me. I can look at a post-it that includes - Book, Boomwhackers, Piano Exploration, MJ Don' 'Low, Balls and Drums - and I know what I will be doing with each group based on the group personality and the possible scenarios that I can envision based on my therapeutic relationships with the clients in each group.

Once I am in the session, I adapt and change the strategy to what the clients need in the moment. Adaptations come from knowing the psychology of music, the elements of music, and how my clients are likely to react to music - things that I have practiced and practiced for many years. It comes with knowledge and experience, but it also comes from focusing on the possibilities of music in a therapy setting from the very beginning of our music therapy training. The plan should not be a script. It has to be a foundation for our interactions to build on.

I need to think more about this, and it is time to get ready for work, so I hope to continue this discussion later on. I hope that this makes sense to you out there.

Comments, questions, and respectful debate is always encouraged!!