music, therapy, and me

It is finally here. The last day before Winter Break. It is also the last Holiday Sing that I will lead as music therapist at my current job. I may be involved in other holiday concerts in my future, but not at my current job. This is it! I am exhausted, but hopeful that I can get through it and then collapse into sleep without stress for the rest of the day. My last two groups are cancelled due to the  Sing, so I have two more groups to lead before I am done being a therapist for 2025!! This is manageable. I need a shower and some somewhat festive clothing that will accommodate getting onto the floor with some of my students. After my sessions, I will spend some time getting my playlist, amplifier, and microphone setup before heading into the world of Sing time. Santa is coming during the dance party part of the Sing. That should throw everything off the rails, but it is something that we can do to help our students and our staff through a rough month. In addition to the usual hol...

There are two good things about this Halloween - first, it falls on a Friday which means that I will be at home when my clients wake up from a fun-over. I do not have to wrangle them into post-holiday music therapy sessions after a break in their schedules. The second thing is that I live in a part of town that does not have many kids, so I do not have to buy any candy to hand out. In fact, my lights will be turned off this evening. I am not a fan of this holiday, so I am thankful it is almost over. My Halloween sessions have gone over with a resounding sigh this week. No one has been really interested except for the last two groups which means that I finally got into my groove during the last two groups. I have ideas for how to make my Halloween carols a bit more interactive for those with limited communication opportunities, and I will put them into place to release on TPT before Halloween next year. I love it when ideas pop into my head this way! I do not have a costume. I think I w...

I am thankful that this week is almost over. Not because of any one thing happening, but just because I need some time away from holding the anger of clients who will not be celebrating holidays with people that they love. I need some time to shed the despair of children who do not understand why they can't go home when they want to go home. I also need to rest up for the sessions next week and the continuation of all of these feelings for the next month. There is something humbling when you realize that you are a safe space for big emotions. I had this realization yesterday when a client became very angry because I turned down the amplifier that was starting to crackle. This client requires very little to get angry, and the anger turns into disruption and aggression really quickly. This is the second week in a row that I was the reason for an emotional outburst while in music therapy. I finally had the thought that music therapy is a safe space to express emotion, and that helped ...

I admit, I am not a fan of this day, and I feel it every single year. I am not interested in dressing up or opening my door to trick-or-treaters. I am just not interested in much of this at all. I thought about doing a costume, but I just haven't done anything for the parade this afternoon. I am supposed to get something to hand out to my students, but I am not sure that I will. Communication about things does not often get through to the people that need to know the information. Also, the week of Halloween is always a rough week in education, and throw in many layers of diagnoses and things get so much more complex. There are things that will happen, and we have some who are forgetting that our students do not have any good concept of cause and effect and do not respond well to threats of taking things away based on behavior choices. So, there have been so many tantrums over statements like, "You haven't earned the Halloween party," and "You just lost your Hallo...

Today is the last day for my students for the 2023 calendar year. Teachers have to report tomorrow for professional development and grade preparation tomorrow, but then we are finished with our work for the same year. Our co-workers, the Behavioral Health Technicians, will be working with our students for the rest of the year. Today is the beginning of the end of the year for me. We have our Holiday Sing today. We are going to sing holiday songs at the end of the school day, usher everyone back to their classes, and then shoo them out the door during our early release afternoon. After this afternoon, I only have one more church service to go before I get on a plane and head home for the first Christmas at home in four years! (Please, weather patterns, do NOT screw this up for me! I really want to go home.) I have to run three groups this morning and then get ready for the Sing. I will be exhausted at the end of this day, but then I have choir rehearsal and music for the Christmas Eve s...

"Tis the season for holiday hype. Can you feel it? If you are like me, you do everything you can to avoid the stores this time of year because of the barrage of holiday music that bombards you as soon as you enter and continues until you leave. There are messages of consumerism every place you look, and it is sometimes hard to see the original purpose of the holiday itself under all the glitter and tinsel and opportunities to "buy, buy, BUY!" The holiday hype permeates schools. If you are involved with school-aged kids or adolescents, then you know that there is a change in learning ability and interactions between October and January. If you work in a school associated with a psychiatric residential treatment facility for school-aged kids and adolescents, then you know that those changes happen in those settings as well, but the responses may be a bit more pronounced. We are in the last week of school before our winter break begins. Students are finished with school on ...

I am a pushover. I do not like confrontations, so I tend to do things that accommodate what others need over what I want to do or need to do. This can be a problem in times like the holiday season where everyone is wanting things and people seem to be more self-centered than usual. So, I set some boundaries and try my best to stick to them. I was called by the plastic surgeon yesterday to set up an appointment for a consultation about my finger. I am not sure why a plastic surgeon is calling, but when I called back, the scheduling person told me they had one appointment available - next Wednesday - at 1:15 pm - right in the middle of my Holiday Sing. I told them I was not available because I am not available at that time. The next available appointment (that was only 40 miles from my home rather than 50 miles in city traffic away from my home) is on January 24th. So, I have to go through another 5 weeks in my splint before I can even get a consultation. This frustrated me more than I c...

Okay, I have officially started my winter break countdown because I have two weeks from today that the Holiday Sing has to happen for my clients. I am not going to be in playing shape by then because the hand specialist has not called me yet so I can't start rehabilitation until that happens. So, I have to figure out how to accompany our singing this year where I cannot play the guitar and I'm not able to trust that my intern will be able to provide us with appropriate accompaniment. So, it is time to get creative and see if I can find karaoke versions of many of our songs to help us with singing.  Tonight is the start of all the extra things that happen during this week - our Angel Tree Service of Remembrance. It is also the annual holiday party at work - something I do not engage in because I have to provide student services during the "party" time and because I cannot eat anything in the facility without knowing where it is produced. (I have a strange infection tha...

It is time for the November pinnacle of holiday hype. We have two days before we go on our Thanksgiving break in my part of the world, so kids and staff are excited, terrified, and jealous of others. Our significant behaviors of concern peaked (hopefully) just over a week ago, but they are continuing with different groups and students. I have been talking to my intern quite a bit about holiday hype and that most of the things that have been happening in our sessions is pretty normal for this time of year. We are working on what to do when your population is very emotional about everything that is going on around them. We are focusing on simple, easy, and motor-filled therapeutic music experiences for our students because they really can't seem to focus on anything else. The biggest problem with the holiday hype is that it doesn't end when this holiday weekend is over. Nope. It keeps going until the middle of January in my facility. So, how do I combat the holiday hype? We don...

I am sitting here, at the computer, an hour later than usual, just not able to think about anything. I think this is my medication still in control, so I am taking a later start time this morning and trying to jump start my thinking process. This is not a pretty picture. My fingers are going all over the keyboard and even typing is difficult at the moment. Today will be yet another interrupted day for us. We have the annual holiday dinner which is a fundraiser for one event that our students participate in later in the school year. I am on food duty this time, so I will have to find a chair to sit in because standing for long periods of time is not something I can physically do at the moment. So, we will be doing holiday dinner things in between music therapy groups today. This day is more about the staff members being busy than the students - most of the students will not be involved in this at all - but, the dinner will interrupt our regular schedule. After today, the only holiday ho...

Oh. It is December, and my students are demonstrating that it is December through every atom in their bodies. Kids cannot focus - or will not focus - in some cases, the former - in others, the latter. To add to the chaos that is December, my administrators have decided to switch kids all around into different classes, so all classes are different right now. We are all in a constant state of "picking our battles" and "going with the flow" and "be patient because we aren't fully staffed." This means that all sorts of stressors are showing up in the music therapy room, and, being a humanistic therapist, I then respond by attempting to provide a place to release those emotions.  Next week is a week of interruptions to our schedule. This will both exacerbate and relieve some of the stress and holiday hype happening. I will get a chance to cancel some sessions since the festivities are during the school days. That will complicate my life because I live by my...

Yesterday was the second anniversary of my Dad's fall which led to his death six weeks later. I woke up this morning feeling a bit stressed because my sleep test stopped recording itself at some point overnight. That didn't happen the night before - when I woke up, I had to stop the recording. I have no idea what happened, and that stress kicked me into remembering the events of 2020 and into full out grief. I don't always get into grief this much, but it has hit me pretty hard today. There is so much happening right now that is contributing to my ways of dealing with the world. I have avoided influenza so far, but my current intern has not. I want to take a day off, but guilt is running rampant, so I will take myself into work to run the three music therapy groups and one individual session that are scheduled for Thursdays. I haven't done any work on task boxes lately, so I am planning some task box construction this afternoon. My last client on Thursdays left the faci...

Oh boy. It is that time of year again. We go back to work today in our school program for children and adolescents with developmental and psychiatric considerations after our Thanksgiving break with 18 school days until our Winter Break comes around. Our Behavioral Health Technicians (BHTs) worked over the Thanksgiving break so they are tired and missed out on family traditions because they had to be at work, caring for the kids. I am returning to a situation where some of us have had a long weekend while others of us have been working through holidays and have had no break. This is, traditionally, a difficult time of year for our students and our staff members. Many BHTs will decide that working holidays is not really worth it and will disappear - at least, that's the way things have happened before. So, what does this have to do with being an internship supervisor? If you ask ANY school teacher about this period of time in this country, they will all say the same thing - it is di...

I called the jury line last night to see if I needed to report to the courthouse today and was told that there were no jury trials scheduled for the next week and a half, so I was released from my civic duty. I am not sure how I feel about this. I was hoping that I would finally get a chance to do this jury thing, but I was also not looking forward to the complications that would come from having to be on a jury at this moment. Now it is no longer an option. So, I head out of my home today to go to the assembly (which I don't think we should be doing, but no one asked me, so here we go) and then get ready for washing dishes at the Holiday Dinner on Friday. I am tired already and this is just going on top of everything else.  Yesterday's music therapy groups went better than I expected. I was quite surprised to see that the student who usually disrupts my groups on Tuesdays did all the things that I asked without protest yesterday. It was a great change and something that really...

Neither of us is really all that into this holiday... I am such a holiday Scrooge sometimes. I am not a fan of holiday hype of almost any kind, but I really don't like Halloween or Valentine's Day. I don't know why, but it's probably based in years of having to celebrate in an extroverted way - cards for everyone! Costumes and opening the doors and going to people's houses - not really something that I like a whole lot.  I don't really get into too much celebration in the music therapy room. This may be because I really don't care about the holidays, but I also justify it in the fact that kids often get REALLY wrapped up in strong emotions around the holidays. (Wow, three "really"s in one paragraph...I need to get out my thesaurus!) If I'm going to spend some time and effort on coming up with something new to do in the month of February, I will usually focus on historical events or Groundhog's Day or something completely unrelated. ...

As one of my jobs, I function as a music director for a small, rural, Methodist church. My job now includes being a Sunday School teacher, and, as part of that role, I am now in charge of our annual Sunday School programs. Our Christmas program was yesterday...in the midst of the first major snow storm of the season...with an ever evolving cast of players...and lots of littles who did NOT want to sing in front of other people! This is part of my role as a music therapist/church musician that I both love and dread. My Sunday School students come and go which make it difficult to plan a program that includes readings and roles and costumes. One of the kids that I was expecting didn't make it yesterday and two arrived that were completely unexpected! Fortunately, I've done this enough that I can be flexible (I thank my therapy training for that) and was able to find roles for the surprise Sunday Schoolers without too much trouble. No one really seemed to get overly anxious...

I spent Halloween evening ensconced in the back of my little Honda Fit, with my head in the hole in the center of this picture - smack dab between Yoda and the tall doll pictured here. The idea was it was supposed to represent my closet, but I'm not sure that came across really well - I need better lighting and better signage for next year. Anyway, I devised a way to, first of all, stay completely in my car all evening. I'm a veteran of Trunk or Treat in the small town where I work as a church choir director, and I usually spend the night feeling completely miserable - cold, crabby, in pain because of how I have to put my body, and just not happy at all. I decided this was the year that would end! So, I made a backdrop (notice the scarves from the Dollar Tree - Trunk or Treat accessory AND music therapy prop!). The concept was the closet in the movie ET - you know, the one where ET hides from the mom? So, I put my head into the display - no makeup or anything - just my face...

I'm not a big fan of Halloween - the hype just gets to me after a while - but I am going to wear a costume and go to Trunk or Treat this evening. I will arrange a small ball game for kids to play in order to get their candy - I believe in earning things rather than just getting things. I have purchased my candy (all 798 pieces of it - I ate two pieces), and my costume is coming together. I've decided to be "The Napper." I can wear my big, comfy robe, my slippers, and some shorts underneath while also wearing my superhero cape. I'm not very good at making up costumes - I don't ever want to spend money, so I'm stuck with things around the house. I went trick or treating as a child dressed as an adult for SEVERAL years in a row - see what I mean? Last year, I went as Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock. It was a great mediocrity. So, I am going out into the world, wearing my costume and getting ready for the post-Halloween crash. Just in case you were wo...

Happy Monday, all. It is a holiday here in the States, so I get an opportunity to stay in my pajamas as long as I want (or until Tuesday morning, whichever comes first) and watch reruns of television shows. Today, I am watching The Office as the cat is lounging across my legs. We have both been up since really early this morning, and we've already watched a movie that made me cry and made her just stare at me in disgust. That's a typical response from her, by the way. I do have some plans for today. I want to go to my part-time job and get some stuff organized. I will be spending some time cleaning out the Sunday School Craft closet so I can use some of the shelving for the Prayer Shawl ministry that I inherited and for the new Sunday School program that I now have to do. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with both of those programs, and I need to spend some time organizing my thoughts and my workspace to make things work. I'll have my tablet for entertainme...

Happy Independence Day to all in the States! Today is a day that brings fireworks, celebrations, good food, and continuing political discourse in our country. If you are someone who lives in a place that is not the United States, there is one thing I want you to know. Not everyone who lives in the United States feels the same way about anything, and there are lots of us who feel that our current government is misguided, ridiculous, and just plain wrong about many things. I do not celebrate much on the Fourth. I have never enjoyed fireworks (the reason behind my reaction was FINALLY explained to me a couple of years ago), so most of what people do on this day is out of my comfort zone. I will comfort the cat when the fireworks start. They are illegal within city limits, but that doesn't really dissuade people from shooting them off all day. I'm going to make spaghetti today instead of barbecuing anything - I don't like the heat and humidity going on outside. I do like...