music, therapy, and me

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 focu...

When I was in my undergraduate training, learning how to be a music therapist for the first time, we did all sorts of data collection during our clinical practica. We did time sampling and frequency counts and all sorts of mathematical processes to interpret the data that we took. As a graduate student, I had to delve deeper into data analysis. Data drove everything in those environments, and there is a role in my current job, but it is not as difficult as it was when I was in school. Here are some setting details: I am an educational enrichment therapist. This means that I see every student in the school for an hour a week. I do not do eligibility assessments, formal assessments, or carry any IEP goals. All students have music therapy whether they want it or not. All of the goals and objectives that I carry are internal rather than formal. Most of the music therapy sessions are groups. Individuals are rare these days. Okay. Now that you know where I am coming from, let me explain how ...

It is Tuesday again, so here is a therapy technique that I use when working with my current crop of children, adolescents, and young adults in a psychiatric residential and day school. Overplanning everything! Sound simple? It really is. For every session that I lead during my workweek, I have about twice the options of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) available than I actually use. I use my session strategies like a menu. Students come in yelling at each other - that calls for some non-verbal interactions - let's play a game! Students seem exhausted - that calls for some alerting - let's do some stretching and movement. I have my options available for me at any time in the session. This means a bit of strategizing on my part. I have to know the materials that I have available to me during the session time. I hate having to get up to get materials out of cabinets during sessions, so I use my strategy to plan what I might want to use. I have ways that I accomplish this. Most...

It is Tuesday, so let's talk about a therapy technique that I have used over my many years as a music therapist. That's right. It is  Therapy Technique Tuesday !!  Today's technique is the negotiable/non-negotiable threshold. Are you ready?? I work with adolescents. My adolescents are very angry when boundaries and expectations are placed upon them. When they get angry, my adolescents tend to become aggressive, confrontational, and just plain mean. As a result, over the past thirty some odd years, I have learned to offer choices for things that just do not really matter to how music therapy sessions work. I call these my negotiables. The things that do matter are my non-negotiables.  Non-negotiables include anything that will harm self, others, or property. Non-negotiables also include how we speak to others, even when we are escalated or angry. These non-negotiables are things that I have to keep under control due to safety needs and requirements. Other things are comple...

This has been a rough couple of weeks at my place. We have had more assists in music therapy than in months and months of time. I have had to initiate an assist in the past seven days which ALWAYS makes me hesitant to return in a therapeutic relationship with clients. I really hate putting hands on clients who are in crisis and hurting self, others, and are creating significant property damage, but it is part of my job as music therapist at my facility. As a result, my own emotions have been out of control. We are all in a place of exhaustion and emotional lability, so it becomes more important for me to utilize my rational brain rather than my emotional brain when I am in the role of therapist. When there are emotional outbursts that lead to aggression and assists in my area, I tend to go into my own crisis cycle - my thinking becomes limited, my body braces for flight/fight/freeze responses, and I get into a tizzy. This has become more difficult to navigate lately - so many reasons w...

If you have never seen the movie, What About Bob?,  starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, I recommend that you find it and watch it. It is a silly take on the therapeutic relationship (which goes pretty wrong during the movie). While I am thankful that none of my clients have had that sort of focus on me, there are parts of the movie that have enriched my understanding of being in the role of therapist. One of the things that has stuck is the terminology of the therapist who recommends that the client focus on the smallest of steps to get through what appears to be unsurmountable issues. The term is "babystepping," as in "Don't focus on what you have to do to go to a meeting. Focus on the smallest step. Stand up. Walk to the closet. Select clothing." Each one of those steps is a babystep, and this is a concept that helps me navigate my world as well as helping me interact with my clients in music therapy sessions. My clients and I share a need for technique...