music, therapy, and me

Forgive me if I am repeating the same things over and over, but "that" client is starting to display patterns that I am going to use for developing therapeutic interactions. Basically, "that" client wants me to sing and play my guitar and nothing else. The problem with that?? Every other client in the room wants to play instruments and listen to music recordings! One client hits me when I am singing songs that are not preferred but does not tell me that - just hits me. We had a good session yesterday. For nineteen minutes. At the 19 minute mark, I turned on some music. As soon as I put my guitar down, "that" client started to escalate. Please note that nothing was being played at the moment. It wasn't the song, it was putting the guitar down that was the antecedent to the severe behavior of concern that occurred. Noted. The problem? "That" client is not the only client in the group therapy session. I cannot deny the other clients the opportun...

This will probably be a short post because I got out of bed an hour and a half after I woke this morning. I do not have much time to write, but I do want to keep up with my named posts, so here goes. Today is Friday (thank goodness), and I have a chance to write about something fun... for me, at least. I am a puzzler. I especially love logic puzzles, and I am very drawn to real-life puzzles. I manufacture puzzles at times just so I have something to solve. Right now, my biggest puzzle is how to do better with using the materials that I have to support music therapy services in my clinic. Here's how this particular thought got started... For two weeks now, I have had sessions that I have lots of things that supplement at various places. For example, I have lots of instruments that would have supplemented my unit on the Pacific Island cultures very nicely, but they are at home and not at work. I did not take them into work for this week because I did not remember that I have said ins...

Okay, I admit it. I am a bit obsessed with getting into a routine on how to do things - in both my personal and professional lives. It is much easier for me to make and use routines at work than it is at home which is strange since at home there is only me to coordinate and lead through routines. At work, it is co-workers, clients, and interns who are part of the routine. Summer sessions are also a bit more difficult than the regular school year because we work four days and then I get three days off in a row. It is amazing how quickly you can get accustomed to longer stretches of time off. I enjoy three days in a row that include nothing but being on my own at home. It makes getting up early on work days more difficult than it is in the regular school year when I only have one day where I do not work. This past week has been rough. I know that I always feel this way when summer temperatures and humidity arrives. I am tired - not to the bone, but through the lungs. I am taking another ...

Today is an inservice, oh wait - we can't call them that anymore - professional development day at work. We are going to be doing our physical behavior management system recertification, followed by 90 minutes of behavior intervention plan reviews, and then working on progress notes for release this next week. Of these things that have to happen today, only one of them is important for me. The other two are things that have little to nothing to do with my role at the facility as defined by the administrators of the facility. I still have to participate, though. Often, in any job, there are things that you have to do that have nothing to do with your role. The behavior intervention plan reviews that I have to go to are an example of something that does not have any benefit for me but that I have to do. The way we are going to be reviewing these plans means that I will hear about the behavior intervention plans of a third of my clients - not all of them - and will just be sitting in ...

After a two-year (or is it three? I can't remember) hiatus from attending the American Music Therapy Association's annual national conference, I am getting ready for this year's conference which will be starting at the end of this week (for me). I am looking forward to hearing some presentations and seeing what is going on from the inside these days. I took a bit of a more active role in things this year as well - I got to help with presentation reviews and with platform review (though I was lousy at that bit). It felt good to help out, even a little bit, with this conference, and I am hoping that it will be a good one. Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that the cost for conference was far greater than the benefit for me. I am hoping that my foray back into the breach of conference life is something that will reinforce that I need to be part of this community more than I have allowed myself to be in the recent past. It will take lots of gee whiz to help me get bac...

I was able to accomplish yesterday's goal of arriving at work exactly on time - I was on the property, parking the car at 7:14 am! I did not allow any sort of anxiety reaction take over - I had to tell myself quite frequently that it would be fine (especially when I got stuck behind one slow school bus) if I was a couple of minutes late. I always stay later than I have to, so there is no reason why I should be feeling any sort of guilt that I am not at work enough for what they pay me. I am, and more than! I am repeating the process today. I have less responsibilities than usual today because we have closed a classroom due to a COVID outbreak. So, my third class of the day has been cancelled because we have no new students. I have almost an entire afternoon to work on my digital resources for my students. I need to buckle down on that project for October - I've decided to do a presentation about bullying. We spend lots of time with kids on how to identify bullies, and not as mu...

This is the seventh week since my Father died, and I am in a mood. My mood is comprised of many different emotions, and I think I will name this mood something that has never been part of my consideration before - this mood shall be called, droplet. This word is making ripples in my mind right now (pun intended) because my emotions seem to be doing the same thing. One thought starts lots of feelings and responses and those feelings and responses ebb and flow and emanate from that one thought. When that one thought reaches the end, another begins. It is an interesting mood to be experiencing. Now, not all of these emotional ripples are negative or based in mourning. Many of them are pleasant and positive and areas of growth, but some are sad and tough to experience. For those, I cry a bit and then dry my tears with a small prayer of thanks for the lives shared with me. I allow those ripples to move across my body and then lose energy until the next thought starts the next ripple. I am r...

Yesterday, I gave myself a day away from content production and allowed myself to work on non-video projects. I also allowed myself to wallow in any emotions that arose without worrying about whether my red, swollen eyes would be distracting on camera. Today, though, I need to get my content production up and going again. I have posted four of my videos this week, and I want to finish up four more by the end of business today. For me, I find that the best way to create content is to just sit down and do some singing into the camera. Some of the things that come out of my mouth are old, familiar songs that I have know forever, and other things are completely new! Since most of the therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that I do with my clients incorporate lots of client direction, most of our "regular" interactions are not easily transferred to preproduced video segments. I have had to think about what I am doing for all content to avoid situations where my clients cannot respo...

It is 6:31 am and I have been working on my clinical documentation since 5:15-ish. I had to get two sets of sessions finished because I forgot my cheat sheet at work last weekend, so it took a bit more time than it should (usually) this morning. I'm sitting here with another hour left before I need to go to work, but I am feeling pretty good about what I have accomplished so far. I had a (duh) realization that by putting in hours before work for documentation, I don't have nearly as many hours that I have to do after my time at work to make up for lost time for my employers. Rather than having to do 4 hours after my time at work in more work from home, I am down to only needing to find about 2 more hours of work. This is much more manageable to my brain and my schedule. I was trying to figure out four more hours of work after an early morning session and four hours at work doing sessions, and another 2 hours of commuting. That's a bit more than I could actually fit into...

I really should know better than to set myself a creative goal and then publish it for others to see. That's always the time that I get caught up in my own issues and can't get things accomplished, but I do this over and over again! This is a lesson that doesn't stick in my brain for some reason. So, I relearn this lesson and then go out to do the exact same thing again...and again... I have made some progress on my current Composition File Folder project. I've put together two examples, have filmed almost all that I need to film, and tried to figure out how to take time lapse photos of the process. That last bit didn't work out as well as I would like, so I'm going to try some more photos as I work on the third example (there are six all together!). The actual project is coming along. I am almost to the laminating part! I still need the still photos for my TPT file, but that's the only thing that is keeping me from publishing the entire file.  Here are ...

There was a strong scent of strawberries in the air in the education wing yesterday. I had to travel down there three times yesterday, and this morning I woke up with a goopy eye - sure sign that that scent was put into the air by some sort of aerosol - one of the things that others can use that causes me to have an allergic reaction. I get allergic pink eye when I'm around things sprayed in the air - air fresheners are a double whammy because I also have scent-induced asthma in addition to my eye reactions. So, I am heading into classrooms to do music therapy where I am supposed to breathe so I can sing, and I can't because someone else decided to spray stuff all over the environment. I'm currently coughing up a storm and am only able to see out of half of my head because of the goop. It is time for a gentle reminder to others that scents are not the best thing to share. Everyone has excuses for why they need to add things to the air that we all breathe. I understand t...

As I keep investigating this idea of culture and what it means to me as a music therapist in my midwestern town with my clients from all over the country, I find myself going in circles. There are so many different things to consider when you start to look at culture, that I think I may need a course in sociology to help me figure things out. Hmm. I may look into a MOOC to see if I can find such a course. I bet I could, and I could get CMTEs because this has a definite application to my work as a board-certified music therapist. I digress. As I am thinking and experiencing cultural awareness, I am finding that I really don't know that much about it. I mean, sure, I understand the basic concepts that our culture is shaped by many influences. I know that my experiences are not the same as others who have not had the same influences in their lives as me, but there is so much to consider outside of the idea of basic cultural influences. Here are some of the terms that I am starti...

Everything under the sun is piling up on me right now. The cat's not eating as much as usual, I have a hang nail that's bothering me, I can't seem to type a sentence without having to go back and backspace, my mouse stopped working and the replacement isn't here yet, I am exhausted and can't seem to get less exhausted, it is a long day at work today (class work time - something I really need), but I have to go to my other job so I don't get the work time, I've started this blog post about 10 times and haven't found a theme to go with, I'm feeling like other people are trying to force me into doing things that I don't want to do, I'm tired of being the punching bag of a particular client who will be coming back to the music therapy room today, and the list goes on and on and on. Now, not all of these things are important. In fact, outside of my own brain, most of these things aren't important at all, but they do add up to a overall way o...

My brain is still not working the way I think it should, so I am not going to try to synthesize my current text this week. Instead, I would like to direct your attention towards some FREE resources written and distributed by our friends in the AMTA - not the American MTA, but the Australian MTA. (From now on, I'm going to indicate this as the AusMTA just to help those of us who are American-centric and just cannot imagine life outside of this country - tongue FIRMLY in cheek here, and LOTS of SARCASM in that statement, okay?) I follow the AusMTA on my facebook social media feed, and I enjoy seeing what is happening with music therapy in Australia. Today's post offered some free resources that I was able to download without being a member. I thought I would share the links to those readers who are interested in getting free stuff and some clinical and advocacy enrichment.  DISCLAIMER: I have not read these documents completely at the moment, but I am looking forward to doing...

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...

A couple of days ago, one of my friends asked her friends,  "What is your superpower?" That question made me stop and really think for a moment. See, I believe that everyone in the world has something positive to contribute to the greater good, so I do think that we all have specific talents, gifts, and jobs to do as a part of our small lives that will affect the lives of others outside our small circles. So, I totally believe in superpowers. It was a good thing to think about during this week of working long hours and feeling like I am falling behind on every task I have to do. I had to stop and think about her question. What is my superpower? What do I bring to the world that no one else can contribute? Of course, I can always use the idea of being "unique," and "one of a kind," but that seemed to be a cop-out to avoid the thought process and the questions. So, I thought. ...and thought. ...and thought. This was a good question for this week ...

I've changed my quotation box this morning. It felt like it was time, so I did. When I change things, I usually just feel where the cards split and use that as my way to select a new card. Today's card has the following quotation: "Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are."     ~ Chinese Proverb It's amazing, isn't it, how much we put upon ourselves by thinking what we should be? Perfect woman, perfect mother, perfect therapist. The list can go on and on, but the reality is that most of our concepts of perfection are those that we place upon ourselves. All of my music therapy entry-level education, I compared myself to my co-students. As an entry-level clinician, I compared myself to my co-workers. As a music therapist, I still compare myself to other music therapists, and I often find myself lacking. No one forces me to see these things in this manner. I just naturally go there - to self-criticism and doubt. When I feel mysel...

Last Friday, during my preparation day (I swear, I keep TRYING to get music therapy scheduled on Fridays, but teachers just don't seem to want extra music therapy on Fridays...), I made some calm-down bottles. "What are calm-down bottles?" Well, interested fellow therapist, these are things that I found on Pinterest. There are many different ways to make these bottles, but I decided to use glitter and water to make mine. I also made something similar with rocks and water, but I decided that this version would be the glitter based bottle. Here's the idea. The bottle gets shaken by a person approaching a crisis emotional state. That person then has until the glitter settles down to be in "time away" or "cooling down" mode. Here are mine. The first picture here is the glitter bottles in their more relaxed state (I'll explain the glitter concentrations in a bit) and the second picture is what the bottles look like when they are shaken (ag...

This week, we are going to play with our new instruments. Last week, my music therapy department was the recipient of a very generous donation of string instruments. In total, I received 15 new instruments and two new amplifiers. This is the week that I introduce my students to our new instruments. I am not exactly sure how I am going to do this. There are lots of instruments and not enough time to share them all. I may need to bring out some the first session and others the second session of the week. I need to be able to supervise (closely) the use of the instruments so we can keep them around for a very long time, but I also want my clients to use them. I'm in a bit of a thought loop about this - my thoughts go around and around. Do I bring them all out? Do I focus on just a couple each time? What to do? I think I will stagger the introduction. These instruments have made things a bit more crowded in my office. I don't have a good place to keep them safe from the folks w...