A few weeks ago, I talked about my internship project. The topic I chose for my project is a paradigm that people are starting to implement in mental health care, trauma-informed care.You can read more about it in my post here.
As I touched on in that post, one of the core principles of Trauma-Informed Care involves a shift in the way mental health caregivers relate to their patients. An aspect of this shift involves listening to the stories of trauma survivors and providing them with a safe way to express their stories. A medium that has been proven effective for individuals to express their stories in a safe way has been through creative arts, including music, visual arts, movement, and other art forms. Trauma-informed expressive arts therapy (including MT) is based on the idea that using art forms as a medium for expression is helpful in reconnecting implicit and explicit memories of trauma.
For my project, I'm doing research as well as leading a group that focuses on this idea of trauma survivors sharing their stories. It's a music therapy group, so the way that group members are asked to share their story is through writing songs about it.
This group has met 2 times so far. The first week, we started with a mindfulness excercise with music. We took a few minutes to introduce ourselves, then spent most of the group discussing our expectations and purpose. I felt like it was important for group members to build some rapport with each other and with me, as well as to lay down some ground rules for group members. Most of these ground rules involved things like confidentiality and respect of each other - which most people probably know, but I know that if I was going to share intimate details about my story, I would like some reassurance that I could trust the individuals I was sharing it with. The first week, some people were pretty quiet while others were more talkative. Most group members required a lot of questions or prompts to participate in discussion. At the end of group, everyone filled out a set of questions, including "What does recovery mean to you?" "What comes to mind when you think of sharing your story?" and "What are your expectations of this group?"
The second week, group members began brainstorming and jotting down ideas of what their song was going to be about. My supervisor wasn't there so I led this group solo. After they brainstormed for 15-20 minutes, we spent time discussing it. At first, discussion was hard. I felt like I was having to pull information out of people and like they didn't want to talk to me. I was especially struggling with phrasing one question. I had relayed it to the group 2 or 3 different ways and only one person answered. I was feeling harried at this point and wasn't sure how to ask this in a way that people would respond to.
Then, one of the group members (the one who had already answered) was super forward (which is pretty normal for her) and asked me if I was nervous. I thought about what you learn in counseling classes about self-disclosure: will it be beneficial for the patients? Also, I thought about what I was asking of them... I was asking them to be super honest with me and share things about themselves. So, I decided I should be honest about this. I told them that sometimes internship is hard, but I really love it too. I told them that I'm not always nervous, but sometimes I get nervous leading groups because I don't know whether what I'm doing is working, especially when I'm the only one talking. The patient who brought it up said I should just breathe and ask my question again, so I did.
Giving that little bit of self-disclosure was a huge turning point for the group: everyone in the group started sharing about times when they were nervous to talk to people or nervous that they were doing something wrong, and some of them reassured me that they were in this group in particular because they want to be there (it was an optional group that they had chosen specifically). After several people had shared about that, one person started talking about his song topic, which led to discussion about that, and then someone else did, and eventually everyone in the group was discussing and sharing with each other. Two of the group members said they really want to record the song that they write so that they can include it in books they plan on writing!
This session ended up being phenomenal. Even after I dismissed group members, everyone stuck around and chatted, helped me clean up, and talked about their songs and their ideas.
Anyway, that was my awesome session yesterday. I have a really good feeling about my project now. I am super excited to see what the end product of people's songs are.
As I touched on in that post, one of the core principles of Trauma-Informed Care involves a shift in the way mental health caregivers relate to their patients. An aspect of this shift involves listening to the stories of trauma survivors and providing them with a safe way to express their stories. A medium that has been proven effective for individuals to express their stories in a safe way has been through creative arts, including music, visual arts, movement, and other art forms. Trauma-informed expressive arts therapy (including MT) is based on the idea that using art forms as a medium for expression is helpful in reconnecting implicit and explicit memories of trauma.
For my project, I'm doing research as well as leading a group that focuses on this idea of trauma survivors sharing their stories. It's a music therapy group, so the way that group members are asked to share their story is through writing songs about it.
This group has met 2 times so far. The first week, we started with a mindfulness excercise with music. We took a few minutes to introduce ourselves, then spent most of the group discussing our expectations and purpose. I felt like it was important for group members to build some rapport with each other and with me, as well as to lay down some ground rules for group members. Most of these ground rules involved things like confidentiality and respect of each other - which most people probably know, but I know that if I was going to share intimate details about my story, I would like some reassurance that I could trust the individuals I was sharing it with. The first week, some people were pretty quiet while others were more talkative. Most group members required a lot of questions or prompts to participate in discussion. At the end of group, everyone filled out a set of questions, including "What does recovery mean to you?" "What comes to mind when you think of sharing your story?" and "What are your expectations of this group?"
The second week, group members began brainstorming and jotting down ideas of what their song was going to be about. My supervisor wasn't there so I led this group solo. After they brainstormed for 15-20 minutes, we spent time discussing it. At first, discussion was hard. I felt like I was having to pull information out of people and like they didn't want to talk to me. I was especially struggling with phrasing one question. I had relayed it to the group 2 or 3 different ways and only one person answered. I was feeling harried at this point and wasn't sure how to ask this in a way that people would respond to.
Then, one of the group members (the one who had already answered) was super forward (which is pretty normal for her) and asked me if I was nervous. I thought about what you learn in counseling classes about self-disclosure: will it be beneficial for the patients? Also, I thought about what I was asking of them... I was asking them to be super honest with me and share things about themselves. So, I decided I should be honest about this. I told them that sometimes internship is hard, but I really love it too. I told them that I'm not always nervous, but sometimes I get nervous leading groups because I don't know whether what I'm doing is working, especially when I'm the only one talking. The patient who brought it up said I should just breathe and ask my question again, so I did.
Giving that little bit of self-disclosure was a huge turning point for the group: everyone in the group started sharing about times when they were nervous to talk to people or nervous that they were doing something wrong, and some of them reassured me that they were in this group in particular because they want to be there (it was an optional group that they had chosen specifically). After several people had shared about that, one person started talking about his song topic, which led to discussion about that, and then someone else did, and eventually everyone in the group was discussing and sharing with each other. Two of the group members said they really want to record the song that they write so that they can include it in books they plan on writing!
This session ended up being phenomenal. Even after I dismissed group members, everyone stuck around and chatted, helped me clean up, and talked about their songs and their ideas.
Anyway, that was my awesome session yesterday. I have a really good feeling about my project now. I am super excited to see what the end product of people's songs are.
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