We’ll be having another peer group meeting for those Minneapolis and St. Paul board-certified music therapists who are interested. Our next meeting is Monday, November 25, at 7:00 PM. Please contact me directly for more information.
Rest
Yesterday I posted about consistency, and being present for my clients, and then today I’ve been really ill and had to cancel my whole day. How poorly timed these sicknesses always are.
However, in order to be more present and available and well for my next clients, I had to take today to sleep and save my voice. Finding value in rest is pretty difficult when I have so many things to do, but hopefully I’ll have gotten this out of the way of the rest of the week.
rest
a period or interval of inactivity, repose, solitude, or tranquillity: to go away for a rest.
mental or spiritual calm; tranquillity.
Monday matters: Consistency in practice
I have been receiving clinical supervision for one year now. Around this time last year, I was beginning this slow transition into working a process-oriented approach. My supervisor has let me repeat myself while I struggle through the same issues over and over again with different clients. What do I do with this person? Am I using the right language? Am I using too much language and not enough music? Am I using the right music? What am I doing? Am I doing what I’m doing the right way? and so forth.
I’ve learned I don’t have to do things. I have to observe, listen, and support. I don’t have to be right in terms of correctness, but I have to be genuine. I have to uphold my role in the therapeutic relationship.
My role is to practice being consistent. I need to be the most genuine version of myself every time I show up to see a client. This means, to me, that I acknowledge where I am in my emotional spectrum and use it to best observe, listen, and support my client where he or she is. To be consistent also means to enforce the same boundaries that I always have, especially when I’m working with my younger clients.
Recently I saw a client with whom I work very hard not to direct. This client uses minimal language, and I believe the client, as an adult, has lived her whole life in an environment that decides her behavior. I think she expects to be told. I try very hard not to tell. Slowly, each week in therapy, we’re getting to the point where I hope she expects to have autonomy with me, where she can guide the session. I usually have a sense of unease about these sessions, but I continue to show up and to try to be consistent. I imagine I’m getting the unease from her as much as I’m feeling it myself, but the hope and the goal here are to find a way to consistently let her lead.
Creativity inside the box
I love this TED Talk.
Preparedness
As a therapist, I feel stretched and challenged and delighted several times a day. Every day I approach sessions with questions, many of which can be really difficult, and leave me wondering how prepared I am. When I consider preparedness, I sometimes let myself think that I can never be fully prepared, that I am never going to facilitate and support as well as I should. Lately, I’ve repeated to myself, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
At times I let my definition of perfection cripple me. I sabotage myself; I will never know my standard of perfection. I don’t have enough repertoire. I need to learn to play more instruments. I should study mental health more in depth. I need to read a certain number of journal articles each month. If I can’t accomplish all of these things, I shouldn’t bother with anything at all.
Being prepared means knowing, predicting the future, right? To be prepared means to assume that I have the answers before I know the questions.
I’ve been thinking about this post in the blog, “What a Shrink Thinks,” by Martha Crawford. I love the last lines, “No answers please. Deeper questions.”
Now, to work on defining “preparedness.”
Not an expert
Two and a half weeks ago, when I started back to work full time, I was trying to be cognizant of all of the changes that being a new mom would bring. I have to say that I am frustrated with myself for not being expert at this new life yet.
I love working for myself. However, I have a long list of tasks to accomplish in any given day that weighs on me. I thought I was being clever in my scheduling, setting aside the morning hours to be with the baby, and then going off to work in the afternoon. I forgot, though, that I need a certain amount of time– so much time, really– to be uninterrupted while working at the computer or organizing or sending out invoices or doing any other administrative task. I forgot about the amount of work there is to do that isn’t done with the client.
I am surprised at how scattered and messy my days seem. And yet, my days come and go, just as they always have. As much as I’d like to fit every piece of the day into a special little compartment, I can’t. I have a new appreciation for flexibility, since the baby doesn’t care what my timeline is.
I have a new awareness of relationship, as I’m finding that therapy lies within the relationship. This is a concept I’ve been considering since I’ve been back to work, and one I hope to elaborate on in future posts here. I hope to do so soon!
Monday matters: Finding space to listen
While I am working through this long transition into process-oriented music therapy, I’ve come up upon some obstacles and struggles along the way. Luckily, I have a clinical supervisor with whom I can voice my frustrations with the fact that I think I’m not doing it right at times. In the times I feel this, I can remind myself to come back to the client and come back to what is happening in our therapeutic relationship in that session and to come back to being truly client-centered by listening.
In the past two weeks I’ve had two sessions with one client that have been both difficult for me as a therapist as well as enlightening. This client and I have known each other for months now, but only very recently have I felt that progress is being made. My focus with this client is to provide ways in which she can communicate her needs to me through the use of music and musical instruments. This client does not use speech, but has solid receptive language skills. Oddly enough, these past two sessions have had a fair share of silence and space. I can sense resistance on my client’s part. I can sense that the client is contemplating how to respond to my questions of her. I can sense more now because I’m allowing for that time to elapse. I am hoping that I listening in a more effective manner. Perhaps this is why these sessions have been so challenging for us both.
Working with change
This summer seems to be all about working up to slowing down. Because I am now seven months pregnant, I am focusing on scheduling clients and determining whether or not they’ll have a substitute music therapist in my absence. Some of my clients prefer to continue therapy with the substitute, and some do not. I leave this decision up to the parents and caregivers of my clients.
I am surprised that with my upcoming schedule change and lifestyle shift, I am nevertheless generating all kinds of ideas for the business and my work in music therapy. I wonder if this is because I am having trouble recognizing that I simply cannot, and should not, take on anything new at this point. I have a fear that my professional identity will be lost somehow. So, I was relieved that another music therapist in a similar situation addressed this “down time,” as she put it. You can find Michelle Erfurt’s posts about this subject here and here. I was happy to come across this relevant (to me, at least) writing.
Acceptance
I found this TED Talk to be inspiring and thoughtful, as most of the talks are. In this talk, I resonated with the speaker’s main sentiment that people don’t need to be changed, they need to be loved.
Tuesday podcast share
I have been listening to WNYC’s “Radiolab” podcast for years now, and I always love their episodes that have to do with music. “The Septendecennial Sing-Along” is no exception.
As a short description, I’ll say that the story is of a man who plays clarinet with animals. One species he interacts with musically is the cicada. This is a really fascinating episode, and you can find it by clicking on its title (above) right here.