music, therapy, and me

I put together a couple of file folder choice systems for an animal theme yesterday, and I enjoyed the process. Of course, I stopped before I started the laminating and cutting things out part, but I still enjoyed making the animal themed choice boards. These come on the heels of the dinosaur choice board that I made a bit ago and are an extension of my major goal of increasing communication opportunities in my music therapy sessions. I am also almost finished with an animal system similar to the one that I have for food choices - several pages of animal pictures with corresponding labels for storage purposes. That file is just about ready to print out and laminate and the cut out again and then put into a binder for use in my clinic. I also need to print out another food item (the one small card that got soaked through with spittle because the client was enjoying being asked to put it back and wanted a reaction. I prompted and ignored and the client just sucked on the picture for the ...

It is almost the start of a new school year in my area of this world, and as a school-based music therapist, I am getting myself put together enough to face this year with the same type of uncertainty that I faced the start of last year...and probably with good reason. At this time last year, I was uncertain that the pandemic outlook was as rosy as others seemed to think it would be, and my skepticism won out. Last year was a time where my work situation changed radically about every six-eight weeks, and being a therapist for students who could not be accessed was difficult - to put it very mildly. We went from full-time, in-person school to hybrid for some clients and live for others, to complete lockdown due to an outbreak at my facility, to back to full-time, in-person school for some and hybrid for others, to full engagement with all clients but in segregated classes (residents with residents, day students with day students), to full mixing of our two populations. I had to scramble...

This is probably going to be a rant - a rant about social media and the choices that we make when interacting with the world at large. It will probably be a rant that I've been on before - one that I cannot change but that I feel is detrimental to how we work with each other and to the profession at large. This is not something that I choose to engage in actively often, but that I think has to be brought up every so often. Here's the situation. Often, I find that music therapists are taking to social media to post their personal beliefs, ideas, and situations with hashtags that identify these personal beliefs as part of the music therapy community. Those personal beliefs are then sent out to the world as representative of the music therapy world. At times, these personal beliefs mirror my own but just as often, they do not represent me, my beliefs, or what I want my profession to be. Oh dear, I am slipping into judgement here, and that is exactly what I am ranting about. I need...

Now, I make no secret of the fact that I am dedicated to MY way of writing things into therapeutic music experience (TME) plans in my life. I make my interns use my form as a way to indoctrinate them to MY way of thinking about how WE should (goblin alert) be producing materials and ideas for each other to use in music therapy settings. I share MY way of doing things with others as often as I can, so I am hoping that MY ideas have spread to other people in ways that help them plan and implement strong TMEs. There you go. This dedication to a particular process is something that is a bit pedantic, but it is also how my brain organizes TMEs, so it is what it is. I do not insist that others do things exactly like me (except, of course, for my poor interns during their first four months with me, but I don't insist that they do things MY way after they turn in their TME assignment file in month four), but I do find immense value in my way of doing things. When I was a student of music t...

It is almost the start of a new school year, one that brings with it a new boss, new focus on what we do as a faculty, and lots of new questions that don't have any answers as of yet. As always, this is the time when I start to think about goals and objectives for the next school year. The first thing that I try to do every year at this time is to read last year's post about goals and objectives. Last year's post was about not making goals for this year due to the uncertainties of the last school year. I guess my focus was more on survival than anything else at this time last year - rightfully so! Of the things that I have mentioned in this post from last year, I have a retirement plan in place (Hooray) and have not had an exhibit yet. I have sold more things this year than in any other year so far, but still have not had a table at an exhibit hall. I won't be doing this particular thing until early next year at the earliest. I wanted to start off by having an exhibit ...

Sooooo... I didn't do any reading ahead of time this week, so I am going to read and write at the same time right now. I am starting Part Two, Chapter Four - Psychophysiological Foundations of Emotions in Emotional Processes in Music Therapy by John Pellitteri, published by Barcelona Publishers in 2009. The chapter starts on page 65 and ends on page 96, but I doubt that I will read that much this morning. Let's get started... Thoughts as I am reading Chapter 4: "emotions are complex multidimensional processes that depend on the interplay between" psychological and physiological components (p. 65). There are connections between emotions and musical experiences. Music therapists can use a deeper understanding of how emotions interact with music to assist in understanding the role that emotion plays in clinical responses and interactions within session work.  Lewis, 2000 - topography of emotional processes - 1-emotional elicitors, 2-states, 3-expressions, and 4-experien...

It is the first morning of my break, and I already have thought that it was Tuesday for some strange reason. I sat down, looked at the empty page and thought, "Time to figure out my TME since it's Tuesday." Sigh. This may be a long week. Fortunately, I remembered that it is actually Friday, NOT Tuesday, so I am writing a less structured post right now. I am going to go house hunting this afternoon with my very patient realtor who continues to try to find a place for me to move into. We both find the same listings and contact one another about then, which I find pretty funny but also find a good indication that she knows what I am interested in. Anyway, we have two places to go see today, and who knows? It is time to start my day, but I have very little idea where to start. The only task that I put on my list for today is the dishes, so I guess that will be a good place to go. Once the dishes are done, I can put the rest of the groceries away. That will uncover some of the...