music, therapy, and me

My anticipation meter is a bit off this week. No one has actually done what I have expected them to do in music therapy sessions. My first two sessions on Monday were horrible - assists, screaming, arguments. It was stressful and led me to spend most of the rest of the week thinking about how much trauma the staff at my facility go through without acknowledgement or mediation. I am someone who releases my emotions well other than through crying. I cry quite a bit in my car. There is something really surreal about having to go through a session where everyone is screaming, trying to engage them in something musical, and then having to turn around immediately to do it all over again. I am sitting there, playing my guitar, while my fingers are shaking from my adrenaline release. It is part of what I do, but I am tired and am ready to move on.  Fourteen months to go. At this time next year, I hope that we will know who the next music therapist will be. I will have taken most of my thin...

Yesterday was another rough day for my session - not for the ones that my intern ran, but MINE! I am starting to feel that this is a personal vendetta from my clients, but I know that is ridiculous. Today, I am heading into a full-moon (don't doubt, scoffers), upcoming winter storm, short-staffed, mess of a job to lead three groups. I am hoping that they will be at least a bit receptive to music therapy today. We have two other groups to go through - my intern will lead one completely and will do as much of the second as possible! In another setting event, I got home to a home without power - on webinar night. I was able to start a communication chain but had to cancel because I was unsure if the power would be on at webinar time. Sigh. At one point during my ONLY group session yesterday, there were two kids in crisis, one kid taking a break, and all sorts of situations happening. We had a new staff member in the session - don't even know the person's name - who did not app...

This has been a long, rough, severely understaffed week at my facility. Only one of the 15 groups that we have done so far have been fully staffed. Most of my groups have only one person coming with them to music therapy sessions. We're supposed to have at least two people in some of my groups and often we have more like four additional people coming into music therapy with our client groups. So, we are understaffed at the moment. This makes for very cranky staff members and kids who see a gap in supervision and try to take advantage of that gap. In addition, I've been dealing with some strange stuff behind the scenes - situations where people have overstepped their role in my training program and in areas where they have no business making decisions for me rather than consulting with me. I've had to fix things that should never have been an issue, and that is extremely frustrating for me.  The week has been progressing really slowly. It is still really hot here, an...

I work with some challenging clients. Every student who attends my school has been sent to that school program because they have failed in every other school environment. This often means that the group sessions that I have to do are full of kids who have learned to avoid undesirable tasks through aggression, tantrums, self-injurious behaviors, running away, and doing all sorts of things in order to gain attention or leave uncomfortable situations. Classroom groups are determined by people who never have to work directly with the students, and often group members are not very compatible with one another. At the moment, I have several groups that are complete messes. Imagine a group of 12 kids, ages 7-21 (yep, you read that right - we have that range of ages in the majority of our classes right now). Staff members are in all sorts of training at the moment, so there are never enough staff members to cover our basic ratios of staff to student interaction. Add to the environment the...

One of the things that I really try to do is to be honest about my life as a music therapist - it's not easy to admit when things don't go well, but it's important to recognize that things will not always go as planned. I am going to try something new today. Well, it's not really that new, but it will be new for music therapy for specific clients in specific sessions at my facility. Here's the big idea... CENTERS I know. Not that impressive, but the only thing that I can figure out to divide and conquer my clients who are struggling with appropriate interactions with others. We are going to do six different things during sessions today and tomorrow. I have file folder activities for one set of clients, a dice game for another set of clients, and a note hunt composition TME for the other group of clients for the first round of centers. Everyone will get out of the small, dinky, dingy music therapy room into the bright, large, high-ceilinged Discovery Center f...

One thing we don't talk about often is when music therapy sessions just simply do not work the way we want them to. I have learned that ignoring those crap sessions is NOT the way to go. When they happen, acknowledge them and then go into problem solving mode. Here's my current experience. For the past several weeks, some of my clients have hijacked the music therapy attempts going on and twisted it into something else. The group assignments aren't appropriate - there are kids that absolutely should not be stuck in a classroom together - but I have no say in how groups are decided. I am not alone in my struggles - the art therapist is having difficulty with the groups, teachers are having difficulties with the groups, other classroom staff members are struggling. There are struggles every where, but no solutions in sight. Yesterday's session included screaming, obscenities, fists being shoved in faces, attempts at self-harm, lots of kids leaving the session due to...