music, therapy, and me

My regular therapy year is now over. "That" client behaved wonderfully in music therapy yesterday, and today is graduation day at my school.  It is scheduled to storm, which is typical for graduation day, but we gave up on the idea of having an outdoor ceremony MANY years ago since it kept storming on graduation day.  Two principals ago, administration insisted that we go outside, but storms kept that from happening. The current administration is perfectly happy to have the ceremony inside which is more than fine with me. I cannot figure out how to run electrical lines across wet grass safely, and I don't really want to have to do so. That is neither here nor there since we have FINALLY come to a mutual understanding that outside is not the place for graduation. We will celebrate our students today. We have ten young adults who are either aging out of our services or are moving from children's services to transition services. Some will stay with us for the next severa...

It is Wednesday, and I have to face "that" client again. You know the one. The one client that challenges me more than anyone else at the moment. The one who resists every single interaction. The one who would rather not do what others want to do. The one who disrupts the therapeutic process so much that no one in the group gets any benefit from being present. The one who is not able to respond to group therapy due to the extreme behaviors of concern that have become routine. I did some data review yesterday on "that" client. My location is not the only place these behaviors of concern occur. That was good to see, but we have had four significant incidents in the past month that have disrupted instructional time to the point of affecting two classes rather than just one. I am dreading the next two sessions with "that" client because it affects more than just me and "that" client. I do not feel like I can do the job that I want to do when I am hav...

I am exhausted, and this is the "it is almost the end of the school year, but not yet" type of exhaustion, not the "haven't been sleeping well" type. Most of this is due to one client at the moment. Everyone else seems to be doing what they usually do, but that one client... I have been doing this particular job for a very long time, and clients come and go at my facility on a regular basis. I have experienced many different types of people in my years at my job. The client type that I have the most difficulty engaging with is the type that feels that they have control over what everyone does around them. A peer cannot choose what to do because the client doesn't want to choose something. Now, I have nothing against someone deciding that they do not want to do something during my sessions. I champion personal choice in my sessions for my clients. If a client opts not to engage, that is fine with me as long as they are safe and say "no, thank you." ...

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...

Welcome to my corner of the world where it is currently storming. The thunder and lightning is going along with a steady rain. The winds haven't kicked up yet, but it will be a windy day as well as a storm-ridden time, and I am feeling restless. I had one client who cried throughout music therapy yesterday. We don't know why, but the client was presenting with a positive affect until entering the music therapy room when the client started to wail. This client does not do this often, so it was a mystery to us all. The client is non-speaking, so trying to figure it all out was difficult. I always want to change a sad mood into a happier mood, but there are times when we just need to wallow. Have you ever seen the episode of The Middle where Frankie is trying to have a good cry? Everything in her life interferes with her attempts to cry out everything that is happening in her body. I have days like that - the only thing that helps me release emotion, hormones, stress, and grief is...

When I am writing music, I tend to do one of two things. I either start with a specific client in mind and write for that client's goals and objectives, or I start with an idea and let the idea grow regardless of the clients that I am serving at the time. I spend time with lots of hypothetical clients - thinking about the vast number of clients and their unique goals as I develop songs and therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). Today, though, I would like to start with the first focus - that of a specific client and his or her or their goals. Currently, I am sharing a wall with a class of students who are experiencing lots of life and school changes. Two students have transferred from residential care to home care and are now day students. One student is brand new to the classroom. Another student recently left the class. All of these changes have shifted the dynamics in the classroom group, and old behaviors of concern have reemerged as well as finding new behaviors to contribute. ...

Welcome back to routine, everyone! I am hoping and hoping that we will actually be able to get places in my part of the world tomorrow. We had a snow week last week (one school day, but I had to take personal time because there was too much snow on my driveway for my low-slung car), but I am now ready to get back into a work routine. That hasn't happened for a long time - I have not felt ready to get back to work for years and years. So, let's hope that the roads are cleared and ready for us to head back to school tomorrow morning! ANYWAY... It is Sunday, so it is time for me to think about songwriting. Today's topic is chant. I am not a rapper. I can make up rhymes for a bit of time before my brain freezes and gets overstimulated, but I can chant with the best of them! What's the difference? There really isn't much different on a structural view, but there is lots of difference in my brain! Chants are wonderful for music therapists - they are ways to incorporate rh...

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 have today and tomorrow off for a medical procedure, so it is time to do some reflection to keep myself from going into an anxiety spiral. The next two days are going to be lots of "hurry up and wait" situations, so I have to spend some time engaged in distracting myself so I don't eat and so I take what I need to take when I need to take it. So, I am going to focus on what is happening in my music therapy space right now. This week is my music education focus week. I have a different focus for every week to help me organize and to give us all a starting point. Within those foci, I tend to vary my treatment to reflect what is happening with each group that comes into my space. I figure a session is a success if clients leave in a calm manner after their time with me, so I use that as my focus for treatment. I do what I feel I need to do to get clients to that point. There are times when I throw out my determined focus the moment the group enters the room. There are othe...

I am trying something rather new in my music therapy room this school year - leisure-focused sessions rather than just music therapy. Here is the deal - my students do not know how to occupy themselves in their leisure time other than with screens. They can watch television, movies, play video games, but they do not know how to use blocks or Matchbox cars or dolls or puzzles or crossword books or balls. Take away the screens, and my students cannot figure out things to do. This is not something that I have ever experienced. My life has been full of opportunities to get bored, to be away from screens, and to be turned outside to keep myself and my siblings occupied along with all the other kids in the neighborhood. We were supposed to be as safe as possible, but other than that, we had no real guidelines about what we should (goblin) be doing with ourselves. If I had been given a choice in the matter, I would have remained inside, reading, but I did not get that choice. Mom turned us ou...

Does anyone else remember the television show, Changing Places ? It was on HGTV for a time in the 2000s (I think - it might have been at another time, but I am too lazy to switch to a new tab and find out). I used to love watching that show. Friends would work with interior designers to refresh a portion of each others' houses - all in secrecy and with interesting results. I was always opinionated about what they were doing in the spaces, so I enjoyed watching. I am not changing places right now. I have left one part-time job, so I have a bit of extra time that I have not had since 1998. For some reason, though, I keep thinking about this show. (I might be getting sick - constant rumination on very narrow, very specific topics is one of my body's ways of showing me that germs are taking over my life.) I keep thinking about how you expect something to turn out but that things often go out of your realm of imagination when you bring in other people into the equation. My life is n...

This has never happened before, but today's selected post is a Sentimental Sunday post. Post #3360 was written on October 1, 2023 , and it was all about a post I wrote back in 2011 (there is a link in post #3360 to the original post). Rough weeks happen, and they tend to happen quite often at my job. They seem to be happening more often these days, so it is nice to be reminde d that things really haven't changed much - I might just be more attentive to the continuing issues of the people that I work for and with right now than I have been in the past. All of these posts are concerned with figuring out what I need to do to engage my clients in their music therapy treatment process. I still struggle with this with some of my clients, but those clients are the ones that do not engage in any sort of education with any sort of enthusiasm, so I know that music therapy is not the only thing that they hate about school, but it still bores into my brain. I want people to love music and ...

Here is today's random number post - #1209 from June 12, 2016 . Over the years that I have been writing on this blog, I have changed the focus of the Sunday posts many times. During 2016, I was using my Sundays to show how to use some of the visual aids that I have generated over the years. Today's glimpse into the past shows a bit of how I teach my clients something about rhythm notation. Now, you may be thinking, "Mary Jane, you are not a music educator, so why are you teaching about rhythm notation?" My answer is pretty simple. Most of my clients have not had good experiences in general music classes. Most of my clients will be returning to music education rather than music therapy services when they leave our facility. Since their futures will not be music therapy, I try to give them some knowledge about music education so they have an idea of what is going on in music education - a VERY abstract part of education when you think about it. So, I try to teach them s...

Wow. Today's look back into my thoughts and blog posts has hit me hard. Check out this post from July 14, 2011 to see what I was thinking and writing about back then. It is definitely a concept that I am still living, thinking about, and trying to figure out - 12 years later... The past week was a difficult week - seems like the same sort of week that I had back in July 2011. This time around, I don't think that I did anything wrong. The students that had a bad time in music therapy came in that way - they had decided that they were going to hate every single thing that they were provided before they even knew what was g oing on. There isn't much that I can do when students are bound and determined to hate what we do - I believe that music therapy is most effective when the client is interested and invested in the process - when clients are unwilling to participate, then are the things that happen in a session actually therapy? My intern is going through this situation wit...

Here it is, Wednesday again. We are still all messes at work - kids are not doing well on the whole. Everyone is tired and crabby and just plain old mean to one another and to staff. It's taking a toll on us all. Even though it is Wednesday and we don't have a day off until October 20th, I am determined to be less likely to complain about Wednesdays than I have been in the past. I have written two complete TMEs so far, spending a total of 90 minutes on both. I have three TMEs to go to get to my goal of five TMEs written in a week. I don't have much time to write TMEs today, but I might be able to get one in during my limited breaks on this busy group day. I am not expecting to write one today though. I think it is fine to save three TMEs for the next two days - I have lots more office time on Thursdays and Fridays than I do on Wednesdays and Tuesdays. I am feeling pretty good about my accomplishment. In addition to finishing two TMEs in my new database format, I also have t...

Here it is, Wednesday again. I had to leave work yesterday after an asthma attack that started after an incident. I couldn't stop coughing and that led to wheezing which led to more coughing. I had to sit in the back of a classroom group and cough and cough. I felt like I wasn't able to do what I needed to do, so I used up 4 of my sick time hours to get home for my new asthma medication. I am on it now, but I am not entirely happy about it. I have a real problem with some sorts of medications - and this is one of them. I don't know why I don't like this type of medication, but I don't like it at all. I think this one has something to do with the attitude of the doctor who gave it to me... Anyway... I head back into my part-time job tonight after my full-time job. I will be teaching Sunday School before the church service and leading the choir in some singing. My choir has shrunk significantly in the past three years. We are now a quartet most weeks as my choir membe...

I just finished watching a show that I am enjoying and there was a MAJOR twist at the end of the episode that just left me stunned. No details here, but I am stunned! I didn't see that twist coming, which is pretty unusual for me. I can generally figure these things out, but not this time. Music therapy is often like this for me. There are twists that happen that I have never imagined. There are moments when I sit and think, "Man, I was never taught how to handle this in music therapy school." For me, these twists are what keep me intrigued and working with people. I figure that I will stop being a music therapist when I stop feeling a bit of surprise each week with how the people who come into my sessions respond to music and to music therapy and to me. I had my two groups with the newly formed class at my facility. I focused on play during this week - I wanted to see how these five children played with toys and with each other. I also observed some preferences and encou...

During holidays, my sense of time gets scrambled, and I live in a state of time fugue which is simultaneously refreshing and terrifying. This happens no matter where I am and no matter when I am doing holiday time. So, this blog series is helpful because it grounds me in a routine. Today, apparently, is Tuesday, so that means that it is time to write about therapeutic music experiences. During the Advent season this year, our theme was "I'll Be Home for Christmas." We sang or listened to the song every week for the past four weeks. That song is always a bit bittersweet for me since I live away from my family and always feel that song a bit more than I am comfortable sharing with others. I had to sing it, and it was a bit rough to get through. Now that I have not been home, I feel like this song's meaning resonates more and more. So, let's talk about taking this song and making it something to use with clients. We have looked a bit at how I take an object or materi...