Music in Therapeutic Practice by Ready Trisha;

Author:Ready, Trisha;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model

Chapter 7

Wrote on Your Wall Before Leaving

I never listened to music with Alyssa; I never met her. She rented a studio a few doors down from a journalist friend. Before the night Alyssa fell from her window ledge, she had posted several entries on Facebook about childhood sexual abuse. She wrote, “Thanks everyone for your concern. I had a rather emotional breakthrough regarding molesting that happened in my past. I’ve dealt with it and you should hope to see really great things from me” (Frizzelle, 2012). A few days later, she posted: “I’m dealing with things. Maybe we could start a chat group for people who have been through this experience.” This was followed by an entry in which she offered to give coping tools to other molestation survivors. She suggested people message her privately or post on the comment section of her page (Frizzelle, 2012).

This chapter is a fantasy and a case study about potential uses of music to build rapport and establish human connection—with people on the brink of suicide. It is possible that music as gesture and tool could help a person in crisis contain overwhelming feelings and metabolize trauma. Music, beginning with an authentic, empathic voice might help a person tolerate intense affective states, including emptiness, until the threat of self-harm has passed. I am also asking us to ponder the importance of making a cultural shift toward mental health recovery—wherein we consider the perspective of a person experiencing psychosis (which may have been born out of trauma) and how we could engage, include, and listen to her within our communities (Davidson, Tondora, Lawless, O’Connell, & Rowe, 2009).

Emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals have become central portals where re-enacted traumas are received (Owens et al., 2010; Szegedy-Maszak, 2004). As this trend increases, we will need to discover what hospital best practices might calm rather than re-stimulate trauma for vulnerable patients. At the same time, we could bolster health professionals who may become vicariously traumatized while providing triage treatments for patients in disorganized states. In the midst of layers of chaos, how do professionals hold steady in transitional spaces? In high-stress environments like acute psychiatric hospitals, safe rapport may need to be built within the brief span of one song, or in the gesture of one pink geranium or one calming voice. We clinicians sometimes bear witness to a terrible internal dissonance of abandonment.

We uncover Seneca’s clues left where language has been undone, or decode Anna’s gestural narratives of abuse. Alyssa, who inspired this chapter, re-enacted an earlier traumatic scene through a suicidal gesture—what Ferenczi (1929) called “an aversion to life acquired at a young age,” or “the confusion of being a sexual being before a sexual age” (p. 127).

Alyssa had recently relocated from Alaska. The journalist who lived a few doors down encountered her for the first time when he heard screams coming from her apartment late one night. He found other neighbors gathered in the hallway outside Alyssa’s door. Earlier, when two neighbors had knocked, Alyssa,

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