Tag: music therapy
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How Saying “Yes” Leads to Advocacy
In the music therapy world, there’s an unspoken feeling among colleagues of being movers and shakers and big risk-takers in the healthcare world. Conversation between music therapists eventually lead to discussions of program proposal dreams, advocacy work, and general convincing of music therapy’s effectiveness to others. It’s with our advocacy that we create opportunities for […]
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Mental Health Session Ideas #4
Last week, I posted some additional therapeutic revolution ideas for the mental health settings. Read below for some more of my original and adapted ideas. THERAPEUTIC REVOLUTION #17 “Mood Playlists“ Goals: Elevate mood; increase positive coping skills; increase emotional awareness; increase mood regulation Therapeutic Revolution: I borrowed this idea from a colleague, and adapted her […]
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Mental Health Session Ideas #3
It’s been a busy year for me, despite having finished my masters degree. I took on some additional non-music therapy related projects at work, which took most of my creative juices, but I’ve still been hit with the occasional “revolution-ary” idea for session plans and therapeutic revolutions. I’ve found that session ideas have proven to […]
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The Realities of Inpatient, Psychiatric Music Therapy
I’ve had the opportunity to work within the same acute inpatient psychiatric facility for two years. It’s not a long time in the grand scheme of a career, but it’s enough to collect some insight on how things work in our world. When I started this particular job, I had a certain assessment of who […]
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The Original Musician
I often don’t listen to a lot of music at the end of my workday, allowing myself a break from my musically analytical mind. It’s something that I do that is specific to me, but is what I’ve learned that works for me to allow for some separation from my work-mind and my home-mind. My […]
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How Music Can Be Harmful
In my last post, I discussed questions I received from high school students during a Q&A. One question that stood out to me was: You said in your TED talk that music can be harmful. How is music harmful and why? This question caught my attention because it addresses a big misconception about music therapy – that it’s […]
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Music Therapy Questions Posed by Students
In December, I had the privilege to speak with some high school students from Franklin, Wisconsin about music therapy. I was contacted by a teacher who had seen my TEDx talk and was showcasing music therapy to his students as a career path. He asked if I would be willing to video conference call with them […]
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Being a Music Therapist with Shortcomings
Working in mental health, I don’t disclose a lot of personal information about myself to my patients. This population already deals with a mixed-up understanding of personal boundaries. It’s part of who I am as a therapist to define what I do or do not reveal about myself that keeps these boundaries therapeutic. The question I […]
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Be the Expert in Your Own Thinking
Recently, I went back and began to re-read older posts of mine, surprising myself with some of my own words of advice that I had forgotten over the last year of blogging. I found that many posts surprised me so much that I almost didn’t believe I wrote them, just because they still applied to many […]