music, therapy, and me

On Thursday, I had a meeting that kept me busy during the first half of a targeted goal group session. My interns, on their own, went and got our students for the group and engaged them in music making. I finished my meeting and hurried down to the music room. When I entered, everyone was engaged in music making in one way or another. One client was playing the conga drum, one was playing the guitar, and the third client had chosen to listen to an Elvis karaoke CD and was mouthing (his form of communication). When I entered, I greeted everyone and asked them to tell me what we were doing. Elvis's song, Love Me Tender, came on the stereo. I asked the young man who simply mouths for communication if I could sit next to him. He started smiling and moving his mouth rapidly, indicating that I could. I found my fake book, sat next to him, and started to sing the words to the song. He leaned towards me and kept moving his mouth along with the words. The song ended, and we repeated the...

Back to Self-Esteem I continue to have feelings of inadequacy surrounding myself and my profession choices. I look at people and think, "I should be doing that." I need to submerse myself in what I am able to do and what I do better than anyone else! So, here goes. I am a creative person. I enjoy making things with my hands and watching others use those things. I love the effect of music on behavior. I am good at finding the music that will help people get to their goals. I am a good supervisor. I help my students get to entry-level professionalism by blending my wishes with their wishes. I can see their skills realistically and can get them to the next level of development. There are many things that stand in the way of becoming the best person that I can be. I can be jealous. I work on this continuously. I hold grudges. I take on more than I can feasibly do at any one time. I want to do it all! There are many more things that I need to work on through...

Thoughts and Musings... After a two day forced hiatus from blogging (Thanks, blogger!), I have several thoughts about things. Forgive me as I indulge in some random thoughts and musings about music, therapy, and me. Probably mostly me. Sorry. I have been on vacation for the past nine days. I have ten days to go. While I feel that vacations are essential for the health and well-being of every therapist, I find it difficult to be away from the music therapy world for long periods of time. I always make a list of things that I want to do, and I never get those things done. This vacation's goal is to steam clean the carpet in my bedroom. I am almost to the point of being able to move furniture to clean the first half. I had to do the great laundry mountain first. A friend of my family died this week very unexpectedly. This has hit my father hard as this friend was one of his best friends. He was shocked and deeply grieving. He was not able to talk to me for long periods of time when...

Focusing on What Makes Music Therapy Unique Well, duh, music. There are many things that music therapists do well. We help clients, patients, residents, persons-served, whomever to reach their goals using music as the primary treatment modality. We often do not let folks know the effect of music on human development in a way that makes sense to our audience. It is not just enough to say that music works well. We have to be able to talk about the effect of music on the human being in terminology that is familiar to our audience. In order to do that, we, music therapists, must know what neurologists, music psychologists, and behavioral psychiatrists are finding out about what happens inside the brain when music is in the environment. We know how folks respond on the outside, but the specific reactions occurring in the brain are not often visible or accessible to the average music therapists. In the past week, the music therapy listserv has been in an uproar due to the coverage o...