Secrets of the Psych Unit: Music Therapy

Several years ago, on a sunshiny spring day as blossoms began to fill the treetops, I pulled over to the side of the road because I couldn’t see through my tears. The song playing on the radio was aggravating. Pharrell crooned about being happy. All I could think was I am not happy! I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy again! How dare you be happy?!

I angrily switched off the music, wiped my eyes, and continued driving to my psychiatrist’s office.

One thing I’ve learned is that this illness often tricks me into all or nothing thinking and everything (see what I did there?) seems absolute. Circumstances seem like they’re either always or never. It’s hard for me to recognize that as my mom likes to remind me, “This too shall pass. Maybe like a kidney stone, but it will.”

For me, bipolar disorder also intensifies my feelings. Instead of feeling sad, I feel despair. Instead of happiness I feel exuberance. Instead of being slightly bugged or embarrassed, I feel so irritable and annoyed with myself that I could almost climb out of my skin. Often though, that all is so exhausting that I default to numb.

I was at an event last fall when I realized that numb is where I usually am. A singer belted out a beautiful and emotional song. During the last crescendo my heart melted in gratitude for actually feeling the yearning that the song portrayed. The contrast to the numbness was stunning.

Music is powerful. It’s one of the secrets of the psychiatric unit. Yep. As far as I know, the straightjackets are a myth. But music therapy? That's real.

During music therapy, we all sat in a circle on chairs in a mostly empty room (I'll tell you why in a later post).  When I say we, I mean most of the patients (you can skip it, but your progress looks better if you attend as many group sessions as possible), some of the nurses and staff who monitored our behavior, and the music therapist. The therapist asked us to close our eyes while we listened to each song she played from her phone through a Bluetooth speaker.

She asked us to close our eyes while we listened. She played just under ten songs—a variety of everything from Disturbed’s The Sound of Silence to Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. I took Clair de Lune as a little wink from my late maternal grandparents who listened to the record of that song for their first date. After each song had played, we were to write any emotions we had felt while listening.

Then, as any group in successful therapy does, we each shared what we had written. One of the things that fascinated me was how different each person’s reaction to each song was. Imagine Dragons’ Believer extracted feelings such as disgust, motivation, boredom, and happiness—all that from one song!

Colbie Callait is my go to for when I'm feeling good, but like a lot of people, I have a lot of favorite tunes for different situations. Some playlists are my cleaning soundtrack, and some are for roadtrips. Today, I’m going to share my list of songs that I play when it’s all I can do to tap that triangle button. I think that's the goal of music therapy--to help us realize that turning on certain music can impact our mood, and we can use it to our advantage.

These songs below are the ones that can pull me out of bed when staying there isn’t an option. Why? Sometimes it’s the lyrics. Sometimes is the beat, and sometimes it’s the memories. This One’s for the Girls by Martina McBride reminds of the mornings I spent at the local nursing home in my hometown curling white hair and painting nails on wrinkled hands. I Hope You Dance takes me back to speaking at my high school graduation with the feeling of elation in response to the opportunities ahead. I listen to My Wish by Rascal Flatts and images of my first baby shower flip through my head like pictures in a scrapbook.

The list isn't all country, though. It has a hefty dose of musical numbers, and the last four are instrumental. Tell me what you think number 20 should be.

1. My Wish by Rascal Flats
2. This One's for the Girls by Martina McBride
3. I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack
4. A Million Dreams by Pink
5. Don't Stop Believing by Journey
6. Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
7. Skyscraper by Demi Lovato
8. Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles
9. What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
10. Beautiful Day by U2
11. Let it Go from Frozen
12. You Get What You Give by New Radicals
13. How Far I'll Go from Moana
14. A New Day Has Come by Celine Dion
15. Dare you to Move by Switchfoot
16. Sometimes When it Rains by Secret Garden
17. Gabriel's Oboe from The Mission
18. River Flows in You by Yiruma
19. Cantata No. 208 (Sheep May Safely Graze) by Johann Sebastian Bach

And just so you know, I no longer despise Happy. Less than a year later, my daughter started clapping along at Pharrell's instruction, and it was so dang cute that I turned it on whenever I could--just to see her "feel like a room without a roof." And guess what? It was contagious.

Lemonade Stories

I've been thinking about lemonade and grandmas lately. Somehow they seem to go together, even better than kids and lemonade stands do.

My paternal grandmother has been on my mind. She had bipolar disorder, and unfortunately, hers remained untreated for most of her life. Whenever people talk of her, it usually includes a comical yet tragic story, like the time she purchased all of the worn out dolls at the thrift store because she felt bad for them. Or the time she nearly paved her yard so it wouldn't require mowing. I will say, that one's tempting! Or the time she decided playing her harmonica dressed in a clown costume downtown was a good business plan. Or the time she shaved her head and wore a wig strictly out of convenience. Memories are not often separated from her mental illness.

In most families, stories get passed along for a few generations, sometimes over a glass of fresh lemonade. I've noticed that the further apart the generations, the fewer and foggier the stories. It makes me wonder which stories of me will be passed down to my great-grandchildren.

Maybe they'll talk about how much I love Mexican food. Or maybe they'll talk about the dozens of hours I spent making coordinating Halloween costumes for our family each year. Perhaps they'll joke about the huge variety of crafts I dabbled in from felting to quilling to zendoodle. Of course they're not the typical ones! I'm sure they'll remember my mental illness. And if the only thing they remember is my bipolar disorder, this is what I want them to know.

When I was diagnosed, it was nine months after the birth of our first daughter who'd been conceived with the help of fertility treatments. The last year or so had been a roller coaster of feeling betrayed by and impressed by the capabilities of my body. I remember sitting alone in my hospital room in the psychiatric unit feeling betrayed once again.

My faith pulled me through when I found a quote I had tucked into my scriptures years earlier.

“Everything, no matter how dire, becomes a victory to the Lord. Joseph [of Egypt] although a slave and wholly undeserving of this fate, nevertheless remained faithful to the Lord and continued to live the commandments and made something very good of his degrading circumstances.”

The next morning I was thinking about how the hospital therapist, Jane, told me that it was okay to feel sad about my diagnosis because in some ways it is a loss. As I was getting out of the hospital shower, and considering Elder Rector’s quote, I said to myself, “No, this is going to be a gain.” And the pity party phrase of why me, became my battle cry—in the sense of, “Why me? Why am I going through this—and what good can the Lord do with this?”

With those thoughts, I stepped forward to attempt to make something very good of a terribly unexpected circumstance. That is what I want those who come after me to remember about my story. That I was a lemonade maker. That I took some sour lemons of life, and with the sugar of perspective and the water of learning, I offered goodness back to the world.

Three and a half years ago, I stopped sharing my lemonade. I suppose I thought people were no longer interested in my recipe. At times I felt like I had more lemons than I could handle, and needed to wait until I could find some sugar and water. And then I started thinking about my grandma and others who have survived sourer lemons than I have. And those who haven't survived them.

I realized their stories weren't just for them.

One of my first memories of my grandma is from the later years of her stability. She gave our family a piano when I was eight so I could take piano lessons. When I was fourteen, I played a song I had arranged at her funeral. I had played it for her a few weeks prior when she'd visited for Thanksgiving and tears of joy had streamed down her face. She was so proud.

I like to think of my Grandma's life as a similar gift. My heart aches, thinking of her unmedicated daily anguish for so much of her life. However, if her life had not been the way it was, I wouldn't be able to learn from her experiences. I think of her now, free from her mortal condition, and I imagine we would all be in awe of her compassion and creativity.

And I think she is in grateful awe that her story was not just for her, no matter how poorly or well she dealt with it. It was for me too.

And so I'll write again, sharing my lemonade with anyone who wants to read.

After all, it's not just for me. Lemonade is meant to be shared.