The big events of my week were my first sessions with clients. This week I got to observe group sessions; three drama therapy groups and six music therapy groups.
Snapshot of me walking out of my first session: I was smiling quite widely, probably like this (yes, that one in the middle of the left pic is me):
Mentally, and a few times audibly, I said "That was so cool!". I was mind-blown. I felt a little more like this:
I was so energized. I had just witnessed familiar theatre games, many of which were similar to those I had used in my directing/acting experience and/or classes, being used for specific therapeutic purposes with tangible achievement of goals. Drama Therapy in action!
I had gone into the session with little to no idea of what was going to happen. This was what I knew:
-This was an adult senior day program
-I was expected to take data on each client in the group, which included filling out a form recording their affect, participation level, and taking general notes.
-I had been briefed by the therapist a little bit about his goals for the group, all of which were based on the psychological needs of a geriatric population
-I knew zero logistics of what the session was going to look like.
When we arrived, the therapist jumped right in. We played some movement name games (which I have used before in group ice-breaker activities) and then, as a group, developed a story which all the clients acted out along the way. We were essentially devising, but the underlying goals of the work were based on academic, researched-based therapeutic goals. On the surface, we were just like kids playing pretend. As the session went on, though I was able to see time and time again the underlying purpose of meeting those goals. After the story telling, the therapist debriefed with a few of the clients and related the role-playing to their every day lives, then asked the whole group to participate in a final theatre game that reflected a theme brought up in the debriefing. Then he wrapped up the session and said goodbye, much to my bewilderment that an entire hour and a half had passed.
By the time I had debriefed with the therapist on the way back to the office, I understood why I hadn't received any details about logistics beforehand; there was no logistics necessarily planned out. He has a bunch of tools in his drama therapy tool bag, and therapeutic goals to work on, but how he achieved those goals was entirely based on what his clients gave him to work with. I understand now why improvisation is such a large part of the audition process for the Drama Therapy master's program at NYU; the ability to listen, create connection, and "yes, and" with clients is key. What's more, the ability to go with the flow and make it look planned made the session I observed that much smoother and impressive.
The second half of the day was not quite as mind blowing at first. The other intern that was with us took data the rest of the day. That time, the therapist told me, was to "soak up the experience" and "take it all in". That was definitely an experience; but not one quite as meaningful because he hadn't briefed me on the goals for the group. The difference with the second and third session, which was a high functioning NDD (neurodevelopmental disability) population, was that every client had a different goal they were working on. Not knowing the goals made it difficult to understand the point of the games we played and stories we acted out. Looking back on it, though, after knowing each clients' specific goals, I have a much better idea of what we were doing. I might not have been mindblown:
But I was content: 
Real Client Sessions Day #2
Music therapy was the next day, and I was faced with interacting with a population I have little to no experience with: extremely low functioning NDD. Most clients were non verbal, and some were wheelchair bound. I observed a bunch of sessions with a variety of levels of speaking and movement capability. I found myself working to figure out the sensory feedback and communication the therapist was receiving from clients. If I really think about it, communication is a message translated by some given method. I am used to the method of 1) Speech or 2) Body language that starts with a "neutral" state of stillness. When a person has a neurodevelopmental disability, they sometimes have involuntary body movements, facial expressions, or vocalizations, all of which I rely on very heavily to indicate mood/temperament/level of engagement in an activity. With so much "white noise" movement, as some of our clients have, the neutral state becomes something other than stillness. In our sessions, it became much more difficult for me to read a client's body language if they had white noise.
Generally, physical communication is something like this: an outside stimulus causes the desire to move. Maybe a loud noise causes someone to cover their ears. The noise happens, the brain processes it, decides it wants to do something about it, and sends a signal to the muscles in the arms to rise up and cover the ears. Even in that extremely simplified version, there are multiple steps. If a person has a neurodevelopmental disability, its possible that one of those steps is dysfunctional. Maybe they hear the sound, decide they want to do something about it, and somewhere along the way the signal to tell the arm to move gets cut off. Some develop other signals, ones that won't get cut off, to respond to stimuli. Maybe instead of an arm movement it becomes a leg movement, or a head bob.
I was feeling a little hopeless about being able to connect with the NDD population after a long day of observing this week. Luckily, my supervisor (who is also the music therapist I observed) saved the day, assuring me that I will continue to get to know the clients over the next seven weeks, in which time I will also get to know how to read the subtleties of how they respond to stimuli and communicate without words and/or traditional modes of physical communication.
Technically, I'm an Admin Intern.
Back at the ITA office, I am settling back into the independent nature of life in the working world. I spent most of my office time this week updating and reorganizing the referrals database (which is full of resources for the therapists for client referrals to other therapies/services/activities/support groups, etc). I was also assigned to help with the venue search for ITA's 40th Anniversary celebration (if you know of any cool event venues in northern Chicago, holler at me), updating ITA's online job postings, and creating an art piece with our art therapist to brighten up one of our spaces, and writing a bio for myself for this month's ITA newsletter about their new intern :) I'm also planning to observe volunteer interviews this week and potentially going to conduct those interviews in the future! Woohoo!
As is a constant process in my life, I will be working on time management to get all of this done in the next seven weeks.
Reflection
As yesterday was Yom Kippur I feel it especially appropriate to talk for a moment about reflecting on my experience. In school, all work I do is aimed at preparing me for the "real world." There is a lot of reflection involved in the learning process, and everything I produce is critiqued by professors, peers, and/or myself. I am immersed in feedback and constantly asked "What do you want to do with your life?" and "How is this helping you get there?" Turns out in the working world, there is no "getting there;" you're there. I do have group supervision with the other interns once a week, which included an assignment for next week of reading a chapter from a textbook and researching a disorder from the DSM-5, so of course, growing and learning never stops happening.
It's a Small World After All aka Cornellians are EVERYWHERE.
I spent Yom Kippur with a lovely bunch of family friends. There are several crazy seven-degrees story that I couldn't resist mentioning, because they proved to me what a great network Cornell is and how small the world is: 1) The father of the family was a college friend of my mom and childhood neighbor of my dad, which is a small world to begin with. Other crazy connection: he is a mediation teacher at DePaul law school, where one of my Cornell alumni friends attends in Chicago, and whose house I am going to for a game night this week.
2) The daughter of the family is a big theatre geek like me, and is interested in drama therapy, which is a cool connection; weirder, though, she worked a summer with my friend Joe, who went to Cornell.
3) She also went to high school with Matt, a theatre alum from Cornell whom I've heard the name of and Molly, my roommate in Evanston, knows.
4) The mother of the family used to work with Joe's mom.
Lots of small world connections in one day.
Answering the Big Question
To all of you nail-biters, this week was full of valuable experiences that made me think, reflect, learn, and grow; but I don't think I've clarified my answer to the question in the title of this blog quite yet. To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment