5 Reasons Why You Need To Process in Music Therapy

I was off listening to a terrific podcast on processing over at the Music Therapy Round Table (and I highly recommend you go over and give them a good, solid listen). Well, I wanted to make a comment, but it turned out to be, like, six paragraphs, so, um, I figured I'd better head back to my own blog home and write it all out here and link it back to the hardworking Round Table folks: Kimberly Sena Moore, Rachel Rambach, Michelle Erfurt, and Matt Logan! 

As Michelle mentioned (either in the Round Table podcast or the Music Therapy Pro podcast), this business of processing (especially in clinical supervision) is kind of my "thing" (which makes it all sound a little...suspect) (but, really, it's not). I mean, if we're going to be honest (and I think we must), this whole blog is about me processing my experiences as a music therapist. 

I'm determined (determined, I say!) to convince the  music therapy world that we need to make processing a regular part of our work routine. And, yes, I'm sure I've probably said all this before, but I'm saying it again. And this time I'm going to try to be more succinct (stop snickering, I can do this). Okay. Here goes:

5 Reasons Why You Need to Process in Music Therapy:   

1. Processing helps you move your work to a deeper level.

Put simply: processing helps you move beyond observation to trying to understand what you’re seeing, experiencing, hearing, noticing in a session. Matt Logan wisely pointed out that a part of processing is looking at the relationships between the therapist, the client(s) and the music. It's so easy to get caught up in “what do I do? What should I do next?” and completely forget to look at what’s there in the session in a deeper way.

 2. It helps you gain a better understanding of what you're doing and why. 

Thinking through your sessions and trying to understand what happened in your sessions helps you get a stronger grip on the ever-present question:

 What is music therapy?

The longer you practice, the more your understanding of the work you do evolves and your answers to that question change and grow more meaningful. Processing asks you to consider: what is the role of music in my work? What is therapy? Who are the people I'm supporting? 

The more deeply you understand your work the better able you are to communicate why a client, a facility, an organization, a state, a country, the world needs music therapy.  

3. We all have feelings about our clients, and it's important to consider their impact on the therapy process. 

You have feelings about your clients, I have feelings about my clients. It's a normal part of therapy called countertransference. It doesn't matter who you work with (infants right on up through elders) and it doesn't matter how long you've been working and it doesn't even matter what approach you use. It's all part of the process. 

And the things is: just because you aren't necessarily having strong feelings or reactions you might think of as being "negative" (sad, angry, frustrated) it doesn't mean that your feelings aren't getting in the way of your clients' growth. Of course, I'm not saying that they are - just inviting your awareness that they have the potential to do so. 

I'll use myself as an example:

When I pause and reflect on the folks who are in my caseload, I notice there are some clients who stick with me all the time, because the work with them is difficult (or because they appeal to me in some particular way), there are some folks who I avoid thinking about, some who I forget about entirely, and some whose sessions I truly enjoy. 

Processing helps me step back and look at the larger picture of what’s happening. Otherwise, I can easily get bogged down in the "session notes version" of things (you know...what happened first, then what happened) and never move beyond it. 

Processing means I start to be curious and ask questions: 

Hm, why do some of my clients appeal to me more than others? Why do some not? What is it about some people that makes me completely forget about them until I see them in a session? Why is a particular client frustrating me so much? What's my role in this? Is s/he reminding me of someone else in my life? Is my complete joy in working with a particular group of clients making it hard for them to explore feelings of anger they may be feeling toward me (whether it's about me or not)? Is my discomfort about a specific topic obvious to my clients to the point that they're they avoiding looking at it to "please" or protect me? 

4. Processing helps you realize that music therapy doesn’t usually happen in one single session 

Well, okay, depending on where you provide services, sometimes it does. In general, though, processing helps you start to put things together (from one session to the next, over a period of time of working with someone, etc.). If you’re someone who tends to use an activity/therapeutic music experience approach, it’s important to think about what’s going on from moment to moment in a session that you might not have thought to look at. A process paper can help you do this and encourages you to ask questions, such as:

What happened? What patterns am I noticing in our sessions?  Then you move on to: What was I hoping to do with this particular person/group? How did it go? What do I think about that? 

5. Processing with a clinical supervisor helps you see your blindspots.

You don’t see your blindspots. That’s why they’re called blindspots. You don’t know what you don’t know! And, like anybody else, you don’t think to ask yourself something you wouldn’t have thought or known to ask yourself.

And that's okay! That's why there's such a thing called professional clinical supervision!  Yaaay!

Processing with a clinical supervisor helps you begin to see things you might not have looked at before. It doesn't mean you're a bad therapist. It just means that having an extra set of eyes and ears (who happen to have more experience) will help you think about things you hadn't thought to think about before. (Shout out to Michelle Erfurt for your great point that you didn’t really look at stuff to the extent you did until you had supervision!)

So, lovely music therapists: What new and unexpected thoughts are you thinking about your clients and about your work? 

Celebrating National Psychotherapy Day

It's National Psychotherapy Day today- the first one ever- and I'll be celebrating by heading, just as I do every other week, to my therapist's office. Why? Because I firmly believe getting my own therapy is an important part of my job as a music  therapist. 

Knowing who I am and what kind of emotional baggage I'm carrying around with me helps me be present and attentive to the clients I serve when I show up to provide music therapy.

When my clients do their best to avoid hearing me invite them to look at a belief they're strongly committed to (sometimes even going so far as to literally stick their fingers in their ears), when they fall asleep mid-session because something we're addressing feels way too overwhelming, when they fight mightily against change...I have a pretty good idea of what it's like. I've felt and done the same (okay, maybe I don't actually stick my fingers in my ears or fall asleep in therapy, but I can be pretty darned noisy if I don't want to know something). 

I'll be honest with you: I am uncomfortable recommending any music therapist I know who hasn't spent at least some time looking at his/her own issues in therapy. I mean, what are we communicating to our clients if we think we're above getting our own therapy? If we, essentially, perpetuate the attitude of stigmatization associated with taking care of one's emotional and mental health? 

One of the (many) reasons I loved the HBO show In Treatment was that the writers made sure the therapist, Paul Weston, went (even though he was kicking and screaming the whole way and was more of a pain in his own sessions than any of his clients ever were in theirs)  for his own therapy! 

Psychotherapy for therapists goes beyond the usual nice, self-care sorts of things we tend to talk about in music therapy circles (you know...the whole getting a massage, taking regular vacations, taking a bubble bath and the like). It's an ongoing commitment to self-discovery, a recognition that, yes, we can and do get in our own (as well as our clients') ways, and figuring out how to (much as we may bravely resist) make changes in our perceptions and ideas about our selves, our lives, and our relationships. 

So, good people, with a grateful nod to Ryan Howes (a blogging buddy who shares his insights over at the Psychology Today blogs as well as being a contributing editor at the Psychotherapy Networker), I invite you to consider how you might join in the acknowledgement and celebration of National Psychotherapy Day. 

After all, mental health and self-awareness are most certainly worthy of celebration!

Thank you!

I want to interrupt this (not so) regularly scheduled blog to thank you, kind readers! My follower list just hit the big 50! 

(And, with any luck, in five more years, so will I!)

Image via Wikipedia

Welcome to all of you, and thanks so much for supporting the Mindful Music Therapist!

Thank you and a preview

Well! 


First, I want to express my deepest appreciation to all you kind souls who follow my periodic blather. I am humbled by your willingness to allow me to share mental space with you- especially in this world of perpetual information and overwhelming amounts of weblife! Truly. Thank you!


Second, as some of you who are music therapists in the United States know, the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) and the Certification Board for Music Therapy (CBMT) have designated January 2011 as the month in which they've invited those of us who spend way too much time online to make a commitment to address music therapy advocacy in our various blogs and podcasts.


Neat, huh? 


What the heck is "music therapy advocacy" (you may well be asking)? Well, here are a whole lot of blogs you can go to in order to find out:

• Beyond the Music (blogger: Michelle Strutzel)
• Developmental Community Music (blogger: Kalani)
• Eclectic Guitar (blogger: Sara Sendlbeck)
• Key Changes Music Therapy (blogger: Natalie Mullis)
• Listen & Learn Music (blogger: Rachel Rambach)
• Mindful Music Therapist (blogger: Roia Rafieyan) (Hey! That's me!)
• More with Music (blogger: Amanda Ellis)
• Mundana Music Therapy (bloggers: Megan Resig and Kimberly Thompson)
• Music For Special Kids (blogger: Pamela Ott)
• Music Sparks (blogger: JoAnn Jordan)
• Music Therapy Drumming (bloggers: Bill Matney and Mike Marcionetti) 
• Music Therapy Maven (blogger: Kimberly Sena Moore)
• Music Therapy Research Blog podcast (co-hosts: Blythe LaGasee and Andrew Knight)
• Music Therapy Round Table podcast (co-hosts: Michelle Erfurt, Rachel Rambach, Kimberly Sena Moore)
• Music Therapy Source (blogger: Matt Logan)
• Music Therapy Tween (blogger: Michelle Erfurt)
• Revolution Rhythm (blogger: Jason Armstrong Baker)
• Rhythm For Good (blogger: Kat Fulton)
• Rhythmic Mind (blogger: Stephanie Kuester)
• The Music Therapy Show with Janice Harris (host: Janice Harris)

I invite you to read our blogs and listen to our podcasts and find out ways that you too can be a music therapy advocate. 


I'll be posting my thoughts and ideas about this topic tomorrow (I know! Two posts in a row? Wow! It's a miracle!), so I'm going to go and write that now, and I'll see you back here shortly!

What autism "awareness" really requires

The thing is this: if we as music therapists are going to be of any use to the folks we serve who are autistic, then our level of awareness must include (from the beginning) paying attention to what autistic people have to say. 

Yes? 

Of course, yes!

Here, for example, is what Asperger Square 8 (aka Bev) has to say:

Asperger Square 8: Autism Awareness!!!