Author: Erin

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In sadness

I am so sorry for the loss that the families and community of Newtown, Connecticut has experienced.

I cannot imagine their pain.

I had a session with a small group of elementary schoolers this morning. I didn’t know what to expect with respect to whether or not they’d be feeling anything in regard to the violence that happened on Friday. They didn’t speak of it at all, nor did their paras mention it; we spent a good deal of time improvising about what they liked during this time of year. I am aware, however, that my clients throughout the rest of the week may need to address what happened.

If they do, I will try my best to be there for them.

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Perhaps I’ll give up sleep

I was posed an interesting question today. “What do you do for self-care?” Well, I have a clinical supervisor and a therapist, and I also have the pleasure of seeing a music therapist for GIM sessions. All of those things amount to a lot of self-awareness. Day in and day out, though? I think it’s hard to say. Because I have the luxury of creating my own schedule, I can also figure in pockets of time that I can use to do whatever I need or want to do. The hardest question for me, though, is, what do I need, or want, to do? If not something directly related to productivity, then there has to be something indirectly related to productivity that I can manage in my between-time.

Currently, life revolves around traveling to see clients, seeing them, documenting the sessions, and then moving on to the next client. Where else is there time? Should I give up sleep? I could try. Oh, to have a scheduled recess like I remember in elementary school.

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A thought on Thursday

I had another enlightening supervision session tonight. Thursdays are my really busy days, and I’m always a messy pool of goo when I finally make it to 6:45 and talk with my supervisor, but regardless, I took away a great thought:

“The therapist’s job is to say the unsayable.”

I’ve been noticing one of my clients offer resistance in regard to potentially uncomfortable emotions she seems to be experiencing. I say “potentially” and “seems to be” because alas, we haven’t gotten too far into some of these issues. (Which is not to say that we must; just to say that I’m aware of her blocking certain subjects.) Anyway, the above quote is valuable to me because I could actually speak the words “I’m noticing you don’t seem to want to talk about this anymore” (or anything else along those lines), as opposed to drifting over the silence or the displacement or however else that discomfort and unease is manifesting itself without acknowledgement.

That’s my very brief thought on this very big idea. Happy Thursday.

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Christmas instrument wish-list

I could go on and on about what instruments I think I need, but I have to say that I am preoccupied by needing and even wanting a 3/4 dreadnought, also known as a “baby” Taylor or Martin. 

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Teaching me the lyrics

My favorite part of the week thus far: When one of the elementary school kids I see in a special education class teaches me the lyrics to a song, and then goes on to add harmony before creating a song of his own about the Chinese New Year, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Man, that kid made my week. Or month, even.

I love what I do.

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And it’s winter

Out the front door

Yesterday, we here in the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas experienced snowfall for about 24 hours, amounting in 15 inches or so in my neighborhood. This is a shot out the front door.

Luckily, even though I schedule myself rather tightly, I still lumbered my way through the streets and made it to nearly all of my sites. My big concern this winter is what to do when a storm like this hits in the middle of a weekday. I’ll have to pick and choose, and then probably re-schedule sites and clients for the weekends.

Snow. Lots of it.

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Motivation

Working in private practice offers its set of challenges. One such challenge, for me, is finding consistent motivation to KEEP UP ON MY PAPERWORK. I’m actually pretty scheduled and somewhat determined, and definitely goal-oriented. But, my lists and post-its and planners and web-based calendars amass entries much faster than I can strike them (or recycle them, in the case of my post-its).

Today, I figured it out. Today, I felt productive. Today, I drank twice the amount of coffee as usual — and continued drinking it well into the dark of mid-afternoon (I hate these short days) — and today, I see a space in the lineup of paper product piles assigned to to-dos.

Today, there was coffee.

 

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Mixed groups

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work with large groups of adults with developmental disabilities. This particular facility is unique in that I go to a different room each day. However, there are a few clients who are brought to whatever room I’m in that day, regardless of whether or not it is the room in which they’re stationed on a regular basis. Honestly, this is difficult for me to negotiate. I have trouble learning about those clients whom I don’t see often, and I find that I treat the groups as community music instead of music therapy. But, there are those few individuals who do make it to the music group on a regular basis.

I’ve decided the best term for this particular site is “mixed.” A sub-set of the larger group is with me each day I’m there, and with them, I can work therapeutically. Because I see the other individuals on an irregular basis, I view them more as a community music group. But I work with everyone simultaneously!

I had thought I would write about something altogether different tonight, but alas, this is what came up. I wonder if anyone else has a similar situation.

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Books in abundance

I was listening to Janice Lindstrom’s latest episode of The Music Therapy Show today, in which she interviewed Barbara Wheeler, PhD, MT-BC, and decided two things:

  1. Maybe I’d read more music therapy research and texts if they were available on an e-reader (and oh hey, at Barcelona Publishers, texts are available in abundance in that format).
  2. Maybe I could do with starting a music therapy book- or text- or research- or novel-reading club. Any interest?