Well, what do you know?

I was minding my own business, journaling away last Sunday morning, listening to (yet another excellent episode of) On Being, where Krista Tippett was interviewing Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist. The aspect of their conversation that caught my attention was this comment: 

Mysteries are what it's all about. In fact, not knowing is much more exciting than knowing, right? Because it means there's much more to learn. The search is often much more exciting than the finding. Mysteries are what drive us as human beings. 

He extended the idea by noting:

One of the values of science is to make us uncomfortable. Somehow that's supposed to be a bad thing for many people, being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is a good thing because it forces you to reassess your place in the cosmos. And being too comfortable means you've become complacent and you stop thinking. 

As I listened to him I realized something kind of interesting: I think not knowing is what has kept me passionately in this field for so long. 

Think about it a second. 

When we think we know (the answer, what's going on, what someone's problem is, how things should look, who someone should be, and so on and so forth) we are no longer learning, no longer curious. We stop at the surface, and, because we know then we presume there's nothing else to think about or to find out.

When we're new professionals we either think we know or we think we're expected to know most of what there is to know about music therapy. What we often don't realize is that all we know are the very basics- that there's a whole world of knowing we haven't even begun to come in contact with yet!

It took me a lot of years (and a lot of clinical supervision) to finally understand that my real job as a music therapist is to go out there and ask my clients what they need me to know and learn in order to better support them. 

So many times in my younger (pre-clinical supervision) music therapy days I went into sessions knowing what needed to be done to "help" my clients. I didn't ask, I wasn't curious about what was going on or why my clients might need to be or do things the way they were being or doing things. They were disabled. There was a list of things I knew about disabled people. There was a list of ways music was supposed to "help" disabled people. 

So I went in with my music therapy interventions, applied them, and waited for the activities to work. This is what I was taught (or at least this is what I understood of what I was taught). And when my interventions didn't work I was frustrated with my clients and wondered, "what the hell? Why isn't this working? This is what I was told to do!"

Somehow I had inadvertently stepped into the medical model of music therapy: "Here are the symptoms associated with a particular population of people. Liberally apply music therapy activities to alleviate said symptoms and to increase skills. Music is, after all, intrinsically reinforcing. Success." 

In other words, I'd go into sessions with the attitude of "I know what the problem is, and I know the solution." Except that I wasn't having a lot of success.

Finally I got myself some clinical supervision, and I learned about process-oriented, relationally-based music therapy. But when I stopped doing activities and began to use an improvisational approach, I was terrified! I had no idea what to do- ever. I was convinced I'd failed as a music therapist, because I didn't know anything any more! 

Add to that fact that I work in an institution, and institutions are notoriously entrenched in the all-knowing medical and behavioral model of understanding people. Sitting there quietly with someone (because I didn't always know what to do) and singing about what that person was doing or what I thought it might be about (as opposed to gathering everyone in a circle- or trying to- and forcing them to play instruments with hand-over-hand assistance) was an open invitation to criticism and "why are you just sitting there doing nothing, Roia?" 

But I trusted my clinical supervisor who told me "trust the process". 

As time went on, I discovered the joy in finding out who my clients actually were and began to appreciate the opportunity to get to know them in a more authentic and human way. I got more comfortable with the idea of going into a session and not knowing - not knowing what was going to happen, not knowing (yet) the person in front of me, not knowing exactly what music would be needed that day, not knowing if I was hearing my client properly, not knowing if what I offered was going to be accepted or even make sense. 

And that engaged me in the work of becoming and being a music therapist like nothing ever had! I began to understand music therapy from a whole new perspective: 

We are artists, and we are scientists, and art and science are not about knowing. They're about trying something out (an idea, a hypothesis, some direction) and discovering, or messing up, making mistakes, and figuring out better questions to ask. They're about not knowing, about wondering and curiosity, and finding out what we don't realize we don't know. 

That's amazing to me! And waking up every morning with the thought, "I wonder what will happen today with my clients," and being completely curious excited about that, is what drives my passion for music therapy. Even after doing this for 26 years!

To borrow from Lawrence Krauss again:

In fact, what's really beautiful is every time we make a discovery in science, we end up having more questions than answers.

Yes! 

Beautiful and thought-provoking quote

From the transcript of the January 15th, 2012 On Being episode in which Krista Tippett interviewed singer/songwriter/author Roseanne Cash.

Ms. Cash: Sure. You know when I first became a performer, I was so anxious about it and it took me a long time to grow into it, because I thought that being a performer was about getting a lot of attention and I didn't want that much attention. I liked the writer's life. I liked the privacy and the solitude and being inside my own little mind cave. And over time I realized that it's not about the attention, it's about the energy exchange. I'm doing something for them, but they're doing something for me too, you know? And there's no hierarchy really. It's — and some nights that exchange is so beautiful, you know, I can feel my own energy stretching out to the far reaches of the room and theirs coming back. And there's something sublime about it, and also the temporal nature of it that at the end of the night it's over.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Cash: It's like a monk's sand painting, it's wiped clean. And so you can't grab it, you know, which is part of the — the mystical beauty of it. You can't repeat it. You know, the next night might be just awful, like, your energy might not expand beyond two feet beyond you and they are not giving you anything and it doesn't work, but you know, that's the way life is.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, it's that spiritual discipline of knowing impermanence.

Ms. Cash: Knowing impermanence and showing up even though you don't know what's going to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love that! 

"...showing up even though you don't know what's going to happen." 

Isn't that gorgeous?

Aside from the fact that it was just...overall, a beautiful conversation about creativity and music and spirituality and how it all melds together, this particular snippet just captured my attention instantly. 


Here's what I loved about it:


First, it is so absolutely descriptive of my daily experience as a more or less psychodynamically-oriented, relationally-focused music therapist. I am not (really, I am NOT), by nature, what one would call a "flexible" human being. However, many years of practicing music therapy using this approach (and taking part in my own therapy, of course) has gotten me to a point where "showing up even though you don't know what's going to happen" has become okay. It's a concept I've grown into and have come to embrace with a comfortableness I would never have imagined for myself. 


Second, I was drawn in by Roseanne Cash's sharing of her struggle, as a musician and as a writer (basically, as an artist), to come to terms with her art- playing, performing, being musically present, which artistic voice to choose, and what all of that means to her. 


Periodically, people will ask me, "Does one have to be a good musician to be a music therapist?" And, until very recently, I've always responded with what my clinical supervisor has said to me, which is: "Well, the more accomplished you are as a musician, the more you have to offer your clients." And that still makes sense to me. 


But, in a recent email conversation with my colleague, Brian Abrams (who just had a terrific article published in the Arts in Psychotherapy journal), I realized that not only do we, as music therapists, benefit greatly from this type of engagement with our experience as artists and musical beings, but, on some level, maybe because of our chosen professions, we actually need to go through that kind of a struggle. 


Put another way, I think a willingness to come to terms with our own sense of what it means to be a musical self and building an identity as musicians and artists enables us to be present to our clients in a more profound, authentic, and meaningful way. 


You might even say it prepares us to  "...show up even though [we] don't know what's going to happen."

Journal Prompt #5: A person of interest

Image by On Being via Flickr
...And are we not of interest to each other?


The very last line of Elizabeth Alexander's poem- to which I'd only been half listening as I prepared breakfast with the radio on- came into my consciousness in such a profound way that I literally tripped over the garbage can, knocking it over, on my way to the computer to go and find it and re-read the whole thing.   


And I again came to rest on the last line:


...and are we not of interest to each other?


How beautiful!


You are by now, I'm certain, well aware of my love of good questions. So, as you can imagine, on principle, I love Elizabeth Alexander's ideas about poetry and how it leads to inquiry. Here is what she had to say about the matter in the interview she did with Krista Tippett from On Being:


I was thinking about the act of asking real questions in poems as a kind of spiritual practice. I ask questions relatively often in poems and I ask them because I don't know the answer. And I ask them because I think that poems are fantastic spaces with which to arrive at real conundrum kinds of questions, to go as far down the road as you can of understanding something and then sometimes that road ends with a real question.


I wonder if one might describe the process of music therapy (and, indeed, maybe someone already has) as a form of collaborative poetry-making and inquiry- an effort to create an evolving piece of relational art- one that often ends with more questions than answers. And one that invites deep self-reflection and, as my mother (who is a poet) often points out, frequent editing. 


...and are we not of interest to each other?


Elizabeth Alexander elaborates:


[The question] ...to me isn't about, oh, you know, I like her shoes or ...he has a fascinating job. It's much deeper than that. Our human beings who are in community, do we call to each other? Do we heed each other? Do we want to know each other? And I think reaching across what can be a huge void between human beings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you consider your work as a music therapist (and as a participant in life), you might ask, not only do we interact with each other, but how do we interact with each other, who are we to each other, and in what ways are we with each other?


More questions to ponder: 
*Are my clients "of interest" to me? In what ways are my clients "of interest" to me? As in, what do I mean when I think of someone as being "of interest" to me? How do I define "interest"? Is it as "you're an interesting person"? Or is it deeper than that? And how deep am I willing to go?


*Are my clients "of interest" in terms of how I am defined when I am with them? Are they "of interest" in terms of: "This is who I think you are in relation to me"? In other words, is the "interest" defined largely by the roles we play? And how willing/comfortable am I to look beyond the assigned roles?


*Does being "of interest: mean that I know certain things about you as my client? And how does that affect the power dynamics in our relationship? On another level, what and how much am I willing to know about you? 


*What do I, as your music therapist, want you, the person called my client, to know about me? Are there things I wish you could know about me? And whose need am I meeting in wanting that?  


*What if our clients don't hold our interest? What then? 


My deepest thanks to Elizabeth Alexander for her inspiring poem and to Krista Tippett for the willingness to "go there" in her interviews! 


You can read the entire poem and learn more about Elizabeth Alexander and her books of poetry here. And you can listen to (or read) the entire conversation (and many other engaging interviews) with Krista Tippett here.

"Expectant waiting"

Image by thumeco via Flickr

I was reading an article this morning in an old issue of Unity Magazine (September/October 2005) describing  a Quaker meeting attended by the author, Mason Hayek.


Here's what he shared of his experience:

The Friends who have gathered have brought in their feelings from life as it is for each of them today...Each person has brought a bundle of feelings and sits clutching it. (p. 44)

Image via WikipediaAs time passes, the silence deepens, so that any sound  will seem like a rock breaking the window of one's mind. And yet, part of what we come for is the ministry, the message that we or others may speak. The ministry of presence is helpful and the strength that comes from meditation, contemplation, creative thought, or worship will reward our coming. But the words that arise from the honest and open searching for truth by others can open new paths for us. The words can catalyze our searching. (pp. 44-45)

From one's own worship and meditation, perhaps aided by the ministry of others, may come thoughts that are too strong to restrain. When the words beat against our brains irresistibly, we must speak.  (p. 45)

A Friends Meeting for Worship is a gathering in quiet, waiting and listening for the "still small voice within." (p. 45)

The essential elements of worship can all be practiced and experienced when one is alone, but Meeting for Worship has special qualities. It is a shared experience in searching for the truth, a religious experience enhanced by interaction with other persons. That interaction allows us to test reality. We can see our lives, wishes, and fears in better perspective when we interact with others under conditions where we respect our neighbors as well as ourselves. We feel joined to one another. (p. 45) 

In her online article, Silent Worship and Quaker Values, Marsha Holliday notes:

...Friends in the unprogrammed Quaker tradition base our worship entirely on expectant waiting. 

"Expectant waiting." I think that's such a lovely way to put it!


Two summers ago I attended a class at Pendle Hill, which is a Quaker retreat Center, where we were invited to participate in a Meeting each morning. 


I went once or twice, and I reflected then, as I did again this morning, on how similar it felt (to me) to the process of music therapy, especially when working with people who don't use speech to communicate. (I've written quite a few blogs- here and here, for example- about silence as an important aspect of music therapy.) 


In particular I was struck by the idea of presence within the silence and being present to the experience of silence.  


Unexpectedly (or maybe not), as I was thinking about this, I happened to read a blog, also this morning, about the experience of silence from the perspective of a person on the autism spectrum. 


Mike, the author of the blog Journal of an Autist reminds us:

Even silence speaks...Start by listening through all your senses, and you will hear us speak, even in our silence.

I'm not sure whether it's a taboo or not to talk about therapy and spirituality (I certainly don't see music therapy, or any kind of therapy, as a space to conduct one's religious agenda), but it's hard to not see the parallels. We create a sacred space within which the therapist, the client, and the music come together for the purpose of growth. There is complexity within these relationships and an effort to make sense of the complexity.  There is a joining together for a common purpose...all of these seem like deeply spiritual experiences to me.


I wonder what your thoughts are about this.

1/26/10 Quote- Developing a relationship through music with someone who doesn't use speech

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I am slowly reading through a book called, "Music Therapy: Intimate Notes" by Mercedes Pavlicevic (1999, Jessica Kingsley Publishers). It describes, of all things, what it's like to be a music therapist in relationship with one's clients. 

Hmm. Where have I heard that before...

Anyway, I'm not sure why I haven't looked at this book until now. It's been around for ten years. I guess books come in to your life when you're ready for them. 


So I just finished the first chapter. Each chapter seems to be organized around a particular story shared by a music therapist. Mercedes Pavlicevic then adds her comments. 


Which is great, because her comments are beautifully put.


Here, for example, are some excerpts in which she very nicely describes the process of building a music therapy relationship, clarifying for readers (presumably not music therapists) what has just been shared in the story and why it's significant:

How do you respond to a child who does 'nothing'? The void that he presents, and his absence from the music therapy room, challenges a deeply natural aspect of human communication: that for communication to happen between people, we need the responsiveness of another person, we need them to show their responsiveness, whether in speech, movements or facial expressions, and we ourselves need to have a sense of their sensitivity to our influence- to mutual influence. We cannot communicate with someone who does not show any signs of being susceptible to us, influenced by us; who appears vacant.

She goes on to say:

     Communication between Oksana and Daniel is a two way process: Daniel begins to vocalize and at first he makes occasional short sounds. Oksana vocalizes too, but not just in any way: she listens to the quality of his voice, how short the sounds are, how high or low they are, whether she can hear any rhythm, any shape in what he does. And she adapts her own vocalizing in a way that is related to him, to his sounds. This is the beginning of interpersonal influence. She is influenced by what he does and by how he does it- no matter how tiny and apparently haphazard his sounds are at first- and her sensitivity to him sounds in her voice. He hears this, and feels her awareness of him in the song that she is singing, and in session four, this triggers something in him. Suddenly, he begins to vocalize much more intensely: he makes longer sounds, and immediately she responds, matching his longer, more intense sounds. In these moments, Oksana and Daniel connect with one another in a way that they have not been able to until now. What is interesting here, though, is that Oksana does more than just match, or mirror what he does. She begins to extend what he does.

     This is crucial: in order for Daniel to extend himself, to grow, to develop, he needs to be shown where he can go with his voice. Now that he and Oksana have 'met', now that each has a sense of the other, through their vocalizing together, Oksana keeps close to what Daniel is doing: she continues to match his singing closely. In this way, he knows- he has a sense- that her singing is related to his. And when she does a bit more- sings for longer, or louder, or quicker- he then hears where he needs to go in order to remain connected to her. (pp. 20-21)

Is that not gorgeously and articulately said?


She so nicely captures why it's so important to have a relationship with our clients. Without the relationship, there is no investment or interest in, heck, no meaning to what we present in a session. 


The very last sentence says it perfectly: "...he [Daniel, the client] then hears where he needs to go in order to remain connected to her [Oksana, the therapist]." 


In other words, the relationship now matters to Daniel, and he now has a reason to learn new things and a context within which he feels acknowledged and heard so he can feel safe enough to venture outside of himself. 


And, that, my friends, is music therapy. 

1/12/10 Quote(s)- Music therapy and power

Image via Wikipedia

I think a lot about power in the music therapy relationship, to the point where I've even presented on the topic. 


So I was thrilled to find an article in the British Journal of Music Therapy by Randi Rolvsjord called "Whose Power of Music? A Discussion on Music and Power-Relations in Music Therapy" . 


She offers a thought-provoking perspective I hadn't even thought to consider. 


Well, I've probably considered it, but right now I can't recall when.


I've quoted her article rather liberally below, but the basic question I think she intended for me to ask myself when I finished reading the article was this: 


Are we taking away our clients' power when we attribute their progress to the "power of the music" or to the "power of our interventions"?


Just in case I'm not getting it right, I'll let Randi Rolvsjord say it in her own words:

In a contextual approach, the therapeutic outcome is primarily related to the client's ability to use the therapeutic context to make important changes in his or her life. With the therapist's help, the client uses the space provided in therapy to activate or mobilize resources for change (Bohart 2000: 130). In a contextual model, the specific "ingredients" (techniques and procedures) are not seen as the main source of change in the therapeutic process.  

She goes on to address music therapy more specifically:

A contextual approach impels us to shift our attention away from the therapist and the perceived inherent capacities of music, focusing instead on how clients make use  of music and music therapy in their efforts towards health and quality of life - and perhaps even towards music and musical experiences and activities. This does not require us to stop considering music as a powerful resource that can be used therapeutically: rather, it requires us to acknowledge the need for a client to make use of it, or relate to it. It also suggests that the client's own use of music is probably more important than the therapist's use of music, impelling us to consider how we can better nurture the client's own resources for health-related musicking. 

She notes:

When music therapy "works", it is primarily because clients are able to access music as a health resource. To support this process, it is necessary to hand back the "power of music" to our clients and enable them to use their musicality and musical competence, their musics, and their musicking to promote health and quality of life. 

And she repeats:

With a contextual approach to therapy, the focus of therapeutic effectiveness is shifted away from the expert-therapist implementation of effective interventions, and instead toward the client-therapist collaboration concerned with access to music, with enablement and empowerment. I have argued elsewhere (Rolvsjord 2004) that such a process of empowerment implies focus upon the nurturing and development of strengths in a mutual and collaborative relationship. 

I have to admit I don't know a blessed thing about the "contextual approach to therapy", but it sounds interesting, and I believe I'll have to go do some searching to find out more.


Anyone else out there have any opinions to register about this form of power within the music therapy relationship?

12/22/09 Quote- a patient defines music therapy

Florence Tyson is one of the foremothers of music therapy. And, happily, I've been at this long enough to remember her presence at  conferences back when I was a baby music therapist (she died in 2001).


Her book, Psychiatric Music Therapy: Origins and Development, (1981) has a quote from a patient at the Creative Arts Rehabilitation Center (which has since closed). I put it up over my desk at work, because I think it captures the essence of music therapy so beautifully. Evidently, Florence Tyson felt the same way, because she included it in her book (pp. 71-72).

In music therapy, the music therapist, by the very nature of musical accompaniment, makes a profound psychological statement to the patient. He says: 'With this musical experience I will journey with you from the beginning of the piece (your struggle) to the end (transformation). I will go with you through anxiety, rhythm difficulties, fantasies, whether you finish or not. I will listen to you speak, even musically.' The good therapist becomes aware of this statement and when warranted becomes a guide, brother, sister, the good friend. There is the basic reality of patient and therapist coming together, one human to another. 

With accompaniment assured, the patient can explore strengths and weaknesses, realize his or her own potentials, and define problems. A patient even may become, in a monumental step toward maturity, responsible for his or her course. This reality also may occur in a highly structured session as long as the structure is always realized by the patient to be directed toward his growth, stability and self-discipline -- as long as the demand aims at the patient's eventual responsibility and individuation.

I think that pretty much captures it, don't you?

12/16/09 Quote- effortlessness, waiting, self-awareness

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From an article by Wayne Muller, "Effortlessness", in Unity Magazine, May/June 2003, pp. 4-6:

Deep within all things there is a natural rhythm, a music of opening and closing, expansion and contraction. Our heart, our lungs, the seasons, the oceans- all life expands and contracts, opens and closes, softens and hardens and then goes soft again. This potent opening and closing cannot be forced to happen, nor can it be stopped. It is simply the way of all things.

We need only remain clear and awake to listen for how things really are, to feel how the smallest changes of energy and attention move in us, in our relationships, in our work. We can learn to follow the spaces between things. Not to fight and push and cajole, but rather simply to wait until the true way reveals itself easily and clearly in this moment. 

My thoughts as I read this:
This seems to me a wonderful (and poetic) reminder of why it's so necessary for us, as music therapists (as any kind of therapists), to examine and to be aware of our own issues and motivations in our work. If we're not aware then we run the risk of "pushing, struggling and cajoling" our clients into getting better (behaving better, functioning better) instead of simply being with them and trusting that they will move forward at their pace. 


When I notice myself reacting in a session with a sense of urgency and "I must do something right now"  this passage reminds me: sometimes I just have to wait and be with my client(s) until s/he/the group is ready to move forward.


When I'm not willing to do that I know my focus has shifted to myself and to my own fear that I'm somehow not fulfilling this idealized (and delusional) notion that I have to be "the perfect therapist who can fix it all for her clients."

12/8/09 Quotes: Music therapy, observation, paying attention

The process of observing in a music therapy session: noticing what's going on with the client, with the music, how I'm reacting and responding, and the sorting it all out...this is the process of music therapy. 


And Ken Bruscia captures it beautifully:

Once therapist and client enter the therapy room, a steady stream of rich, complex encounters begins, encounters that invariably stretch and challenge the therapist.  Flowing in the steady stream are messages and cues from the client for the therapist to process, multiple physical and emotional reactions that the therapist has, and an unending current of thoughts and questions to ponder, relevant and irrelevant, lucid and fragmented. 

One of the most difficult things for new music therapists (in my opinion) is learning how and what to pay attention to in music therapy sessions. 


Someday, when I get myself organized enough to write an article about this topic, I'm starting it with this quote.


Reference
Bruscia, K. E. (1998).  “Techniques for Uncovering and Working with Countertransference” (pp. 93-119) in Bruscia, K.E. (ed.) Dynamics of Music Psychotherapy.  Gilsum, NH:  Barcelona Publishers.  

Quotes I have known and loved: Coming soon to a blog near you

It's been a long time since my first posting of quotes I have known and loved. And that's a shame, because there are so many quotes from so many wonderful writers whose work has inspired and taught me over the years. 


You know? The more I think about this, the more I think it's time to start a weekly quote in this blog. 


Of course, knowing me (and I do), it will be awfully hard for me to limit it to one quote. But I'll do my best. At least I'll try to stick to just one author...or maybe just to one topic. 


Oh, who am I kidding? It's impossible for me to behave when it comes to quotes. 


So there. I think it's an official decision. One day of the week (since I don't blog all that regularly anyway) is dedicated to quoting some of my favorite authors on some of the subjects I spend a lot of time thinking about.


Comments? Opinions? 

More on "not knowing"

I have been slowly making my way through Mindful Therapy: A Guide for Therapists and Helping Professionals by Thomas Bien. I have mixed feelings about the book, but every so often I come upon some passages that seem quite relevant to me. This is one of them:

An attitude of not knowing is, I believe, extremely valuable for the mindful therapist, as it is in Buddhist practice. When you think you know, you stop being open. Not knowing helps us remain open to the patient before us, seeing this person as a unique individual in a unique situation rather than another 'case' of depression, or anxiety, or marital difficulties. Not knowing, while the opposite attitude from what we learned in our education, is our best friend in the therapy room. The wise therapist respects not knowing, is comfortable with it, and even cultivates it. We cannot understand if we think we already know. And to know you don't know, taught Confucius, is the beginning of knowing. (p. 138)

I write a lot about uncertainty. It seems an integral part of my work. I've also written about the state of "I don't know" and about getting lost. 

I suppose it all boils down to different ways of acknowledging, with some humility, that we music therapists often don't know, in a session, what's best, what's going on, and how to proceed. But we are present, and we trust the process and the music.

Quotes I have known and loved

I was reading through some notes in preparation for a radio interview I had today, and I found all these quotes that I wrote down.  Many of them, in my mind anyway, relate to being a music therapist.  Actually, I have pages and pages of quotes I really like, but I’ll start with this one:

“If I were to force open a rosebud by peeling back the petals, the results would look nothing like the beautiful flower it could have been had it opened naturally.”

(from the Daily Word, March 26th, 2003)

You know how you read something, or you see something, and you instantlyknow that it was meant to give you some sort of guidance?  Well, that was what it was like for me to read that passage.  

At the time I was coming to an awareness that I wanted my clients to move forward already- to grow (if you will) and flourish.  I also noticed my tendency toward rushing to interpret.   I wasn’t quite getting (yet) the idea that people will come to their realizations in music therapy when they’re ready to do so, and it will mean more because they came to the awareness  on their own.  

I can’t say that I’ve completely let that go, but the image of forcing a rosebud to open was a powerful one for me, and it helped me to see why my approach wasn’t that helpful.  

A variation on that theme would have to be a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”

So we impatient folks, yet again, have an opportunity for learning in our work.  I certainly have, over the years, had to (regularly) ask myself what my hurry is, why am I so invested in the outcome, and whose need am I meeting here...not just in my work as a professional but in my personal life as well.   Hmm.  These are all good questions, and I think it’s time to reconsider them now.

 

"Don't forget me when you go..."

You may (or may not) recall that on Saturday I was busy feeling awful and sad after a frustrating end to a session in which I was trying to stop my client from trying to eat parts of his clothing.   Well, I think that what I neglected to focus on in thinking about (or, more accurately, reacting to) his session was the fact that the drama occurred at the end of the session...shortly after I let him know we had about five minutes before we needed to stop for the day.  A-ha!

This particular gentleman truly dislikes saying “goodbye” at the end of our sessions.  While he doesn’t use speech he can be quite clear in pushing himself (or me) away (sometimes literally, sometimes emotionally) when I begin to prepare him to leave (i.e., helping him with a jacket, getting the foot pedals back on his wheelchair, singing “goodbye”, etc.).   I guess we can now add “chewing on his shirt” to the list of ways he uses to create distance and to make endings a bit more tolerable for himself.  Of course, while it’s less painful in some ways to end angry (or to create a reason for my leaving- something to the effect of “you must be leaving me because you’re angry with me”), it still doesn’t take away the distress and pain.

So, when I went to pick him up for his session today he didn’t seem all that enthused about going with me.  At the same time, he wasn’t exactly adamant about not going with me, so we ended up getting to our session.  When we got there it took me a while to assemble myself, because I was nervous and not certain that my guess about why we were so upset with each other on Saturday was correct.  I presented him with my thoughts- specifically, the fact that our difficulty seemed to happen right when I let him know we’d be ending our session.  I also noted our long history of his expressing frustration and anger toward me when it’s time for us to sing “goodbye”.  

His response? We went from minimal eye contact to his practically staring at me.  It seems I was on the right track.  

We have often used the song “Don’t Forget Me When You Go” in our work together.  It’s a song I wrote, inspired by just this sort of a situation.  Here are the lyrics:

Do you have to go?

You know how I hate this part

You know how I cherish the time we spend together

Why so soon?

It seems like we just started

I swear it was just moments since we said “hello”

Do you see how it matters to me that you be here?

Will you remember to come and see me again?

I wish I could be with you always and forever...

Don’t forget me when you go.

Just one more thing

Please, I know, it just can’t wait

Just let me say this one last thing to you

Yes, it’s true

I didn’t want to leave just yet

I’m searching for a way to make this last a little longer

Do you see how it matters to me that you be here?

Will you remember to come and see me again?

I wish I could be with you always and forever...

Don’t forget me when you go.

When I’m with you I’m singing

And I forget for a little while

I’m learning how to mend my own heart

But it’s so nice to have you beside me for the ride

Do you see how it matters to me that you be here?

Will you remember to come and see me again?

I wish I could be with you always and forever...

Don’t forget me when you go.

©Roia Rafieyan, 1999

[Note:  You can give an actual listen to this song by clicking here.  Just give it a minute to load the player.]

I was all set to play it, but Phil Collins’ song “Against All Odds” kept singing loudly in my head (I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to describe it-  basically, this is how I often experience countertransference in music therapy sessions with clients).   Here are some of his lyrics:

How can I just let you walk away

Just let you leave without a trace?...

How can you just turn and walk away

When all I can do is watch you leave?

‘Cause we’ve shared the laughter and the pain

We’ve even shared the tears

You’re the only one who really knew me at all.

So take a look at me now

‘Cause there’s just an empty space

And there’s nothing left here to remind me

Just the memory of your face

Take a look at me now

Well there’s just an empty space

And you coming back to me is against the odds

And that’s what I’ve got to face

I wish I could just make you turn around

Turn around and see me cry

There’s so much I need to say to you

So many reasons why

You’re the only one who really knew me at all...

...But to wait for you is all I can do

And that’s what I’ve got to face.

Take a look at me now.

©Phil Collins, 1984

Powerful, huh?  Talk about your maternal transference.  This man is someone who has barely (if ever) seen his family since they institutionalized him as a child (he’s in his 40s now).  The fear of abandonment is always there.  Always. 

I had actually used this very song (the Phil Collins one, I mean) in his session a week ago, and, while he was definitely listening at the time,  there was some serious shirt eating happening toward the end of the song (interesting that it was hard for him to come to the end of the song as well).  At any rate, if a song is playing that loudly in my mind I usually figure it’s there for a reason, so I played through it again.  This time he listened straight through to the end.  His hand was poised on the collar of his shirt to start biting at threads, but he didn’t do it. 

There were heartbreaking moments in our session, but, judging by the amount of eye-contact he offered and the fact that he hardly chewed on his shirt it seemed as if we were on the right track in terms of having some insight into what was upsetting him on Saturday.   And there was the relief that comes with re-connection.

One of the my favorite quotes is from L.A. Pearlman and K.W. Saakvitne’s excellent and helpful book Trauma and the Therapist:  Countertransference and Vicarious Traumatization in Psychotherapy with Incest Survivors (1995):

“...psychotherapy does not promise perfect attunement or mirroring, but entails repeated cycles of connections and disconnections and then repair and reconnection.” (p. 17)