Jennifer Sokria uses music to soothe and heal. She's the founder and CEO of Connecticut Music Therapy in Watertown, and her team of therapists works with individuals and groups with developmental and mental health needs. Good at Heart host Randye Kaye sat down with Jennifer at WSHU studios to learn why she became a music therapist and how she uses music to help people improve their emotional well-being.
WSHU: Now I've known you for a few years. In fact, you played my sister in a play.
JS: Sure did.
WSHU: Quite some time. And you know, it's funny when you do a play. I still feel like I'm in a sisterhood with you because…
JS: Correct! You create new family and new connections.
WSHU: Right. So you know you are what you pretend to be in theater, but you know part of Good At Heart is talking. Oh, we talk to all kinds of people, but I love talking about the arts because sometimes they reach us in places that aren't logical. I know during rehearsal you told me you're a music therapist, and I have to tell you, I don't really know what you do, so let me ask you the first question: who do you help, and how?
JS: Sure. So I personally, in my private practice, help people who have a very wide variety of needs that are what I would call in the developmental health area and in the mental health area.
Music therapy is a very wide-ranging profession, and interventions and strategies can help many different people in many ways. In my practice, it was initially founded to help kids with disabilities improve their lives by using music to support communication, gross motor skills, overall cognitive learning skills, creativity, and their ability to participate inclusively.
WSHU: Do you work individually with kids, or do you come into group? And I know there's all kinds of music therapy…
JS: Yeah!
WSHU: …but in your practice, you started out working with kids.
JS: Sure.
WSHU: So is it more individual?
JS: Yep, individual and group. So it depends on the setting.
WSHU: So talk me through like a typical individual session.
JS: Yep, a typical music. Well, there isn't a real typical music therapy session because it's always client-centered, so the therapist and client develop it together based on the client's musical and life preferences. It also depends on their age, what works well for their age, and our clinical knowledge. So a music therapy session could look, depending on who you're working with, could look different. But often it begins with some kind of opening ritual or song, and then some type of series of experiences. Depending on the client, these are more or less planned ahead of time, but they're always oriented toward the client's goals. So it could include something like improvisation, right? Which is actually really great for building nonverbal communication.
WSHU: So musical improvisation?
JS: Correct!
WSHU: So is your client going to have an instrument?
JS: Improvisation with instruments, piano, guitar…
WSHU: OK.
JS: Lots of percussion instruments. In my practice, my therapists usually bring a guitar, sometimes a keyboard, and then a big old bag of all kinds of stuff. Like our cars are entertaining because you'll hear an ocean drum swishing around in the trunk, and you'll hear, you know, a tambourine you know rattling when you go over a speed bump. So often a lot of different options in terms of instrument play, singing, sometimes precomposed songs, songs that already exist. We have a kid who's a Swiftie. Guess what we're doing? And guess what we might be rewriting too, to help them learn a specific skill, right? If we have a student who needs a specific type of learning reminder or mnemonic, we might rewrite that song in collaboration with their teacher, and then they can have that as an additional way to support their learning. So it can look like a lot of different things. The main thing across settings and across the kinds of people we work with in music therapy is that we're using music in a client-centered way to help them meet the goals that they have in their lives. No matter whether that is something very specific to how they live in the world, based on, you know, who they are, or maybe what's going on with their mental health, or sometimes things that have happened to them, right? I have a lot of background in trauma.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: I spent some time, several years, following the Sandy Hook school shooting. Working at the Resiliency Center of Newtown and providing trauma-focused music therapy there.
WSHU: Oh, I didn't know that.
JS: Yeah, yeah, that was something I did in my career. So using music to actually provide an opportunity to build a relationship with the therapist. Between the therapist and client, which is what we sort of know across the board, that client-therapist relationship, no matter what kind of therapy it is, is going to be one of the main factors in whether it's going to work.
WSHU: Right, you know, it's chemistry too.
JS: Absolutely, it's chemistry. It's absolutely that too. But that relationship impacts our chemistry.
WSHU: Very true.
JS: It’s all connected.
WSHU: Speaking of that, I mean, I'm sure you're familiar because obviously you've had a ton, a ton of training with the theory of multiple intelligences, and that some people are mathematically smart, and some people are people smart, and some people are musically smart. With that theory, music can reach places that talk therapy can't reach.
JS: 100% true. I would agree, and for some people, talk therapy is a wonderful way to do the work. We also find that sometimes, for whatever reason, whether that's relational or another reason, we need another way in, right? And what we know about music, it lights up the brain in all kinds of ways that just talking to someone does not. Right. So we can take advantage of that. In music therapy, we actually think of music as our co-therapist.
WSHU: Wow.
JS: So it's really kind of three things in the room going: client, therapist, and music at the same time.
WSHU: I love that. So I want to talk for a second about the group experience, sure, because you know, as a musical theater actor myself, and sometimes in the choir when my larynx is not a problem, I know that music can connect people in ways that we can't really explain. We want to dance to it. We want to sing along to it. We want to create it. In the groups that you do in your practice, is music used as a connector for people, human connection?
JS: It is. Absolutely.
WSHU: Can you say more about that, or tell me a story?
JS: Sure. So often people might be in a therapy group together because maybe connection is hard for them, right? Or because there's something common going on with the people in the group. They're working on a similar goal.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: So either way, having something in the room with us that sometimes requires us all to breathe the same way, or play the same way, or use our senses to figure out how we fit our music in with the other people who are musicking at the same time with us. All of those activities are happening at the same time, and naturally move us towards being together. Right? You would know this from being in choir. The way that you move from, like, oh, we've started the rehearsal and everybody's kind of all over the place, and suddenly we're all the same. We're a shared voice, or we're voices together, in a way that does have a different kind of interpersonal sense.
WSHU: I love that. I mean, it's true of improv acting, and it's true of theater acting as well. And I imagine being in an orchestra is that same sort of everybody warms up, and you feel the energy just scattered all over the place. And then when the piece begins, led by the maestro, then everything sort of comes together. And for me, I mean, I don't play an instrument well enough to be in any orchestra anywhere. But I did get to do the young person's guide to the orchestra with the Bridgeport Symphony last year, and even having my voice, my spoken voice as an instrument in the orchestra, you could just feel that connection in a way that I can't logically explain.
JS: Absolutely, not that I can fully explain it either. There, of course, are these energetic and ineffable aspects to this. Some of the science takes a look at the idea of entrainment. So entrainment is when, let's say, two things are vibrating at a different frequency, but when they come close to each other, they start vibrating closer and closer to the same thing. And so we have some science that shows that that happens. Certainly with breathing, with heart rates. I'm not positive on the brainwave piece, but it wouldn't shock me if that was actually something else that was happening. So it's all- again, all connected.
WSHU: And music is all vibrations, too as well.
JS: Yeah.
WSHU: Wow! So I've learned a lot. I want to ask you the second question, which is: why you? What's the story that brought you to do what you do?
JS: Thank you. I have a very stereotypical music therapy entry myth, right? My story. I found out that it was a possible career.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: When I was at choir camp, the summer between my sophomore and junior year, which was also…
WSHU: Of high school.
JS: Of high school. Which was also the time period, of course, where many, you know, young people start to think, "Oh gosh, what am I going to do with myself?” And I had been in the mindset of maybe social work or psychology. I really felt pulled towards a helping career, and then of course. Like, as you know, I love to perform. I love to sing. I was also really pulled towards singing and performing, but also not pulled towards perhaps making my livelihood only in that way.
WSHU: Yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough field.
JS: Yeah. So I had no idea it existed. I thought maybe music ed, but I didn't at the time feel pulled towards education, and I was at choir camp, and they had a career moment, and someone said music therapy, and I was like, "Aha! That's it.”
WSHU: That brings everything together.
JS: Right. And you know, to become a music therapist, you have to go to music therapy school.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: To get an undergraduate degree or its equivalent in music therapy specifically. It's not a made-up thing that you know psychology and some music, and you put it together. You actually have to go through an approved program to become board certified. So if you're not lucky enough to hear about it when you're going through high school, it can impact how you're going to come into the field later,
WSHU: Right. So you had to pick a university that did this program.
JS: I did. I went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and following that, I did an internship in upstate New York. And I landed in Southport, Connecticut, at a school called Giant Steps, which sadly closed during the pandemic. But it was like a whole extra degree. My students there taught me so much about being a music therapist.
WSHU: Were these like preschoolers?
JS: These were… No kids of all ages, 3 to 18.
WSHU: Oh wow.
JS: Or maybe three to 21, with a variety of things going on. It's an out-of-place, state-approved outplacement school at the time, and most students were somewhere in the neurodiversity kind of spectrum, autism spectrum, and other kinds of related things going on in their lives. With other significant impacts that made them more complex. So we had tons of one-to-one work and a really strong team environment that helped. But one of the great things about there was that every student had the opportunity to have music therapy every week.
WSHU: Wow!
JS: So it was pretty cool first job.
WSHU: Amazing. So you're a mom. Has this career fit in with raising a family?
JS: Sure. Yeah, it has. It's been interesting too because when I first started, I worked with kids. And as I moved from my first job into starting my private practice, Connecticut Music Therapy Services, I was also doing a lot of public school-based work, and a lot of that was happening in integrated preschools. And a lot of that also started happening when I was also raising my kids in their young child phases. So it was a very interesting thing for me to be spending time all day with my three- to five-year-olds, and then coming home to my three- to five-year-olds. There might have been a couple of times where I said to my husband that I am not sure I should do this all day. And just the way life sort of, you know, I'm a fan of go where you need to go and follow what shows up. And so some things happened to open the door to different types of work with different ages of kids. And then I'm working with teenagers, with young kids at home. But my work with teenagers sure helped when I had my own teenagers as my kids caught up to that age too.
WSHU: I taught drama in third to eighth grade when my kids were like in first grade and preschool, and I'm like, I don't understand this age group. But when my kids get here, I'm going to totally understand.
JS: Yes, you are. It gives us experience. And now, guess what? I work primarily with adults and personally in my practice. I'm ready.
WSHU: You're ready. Okay.
JS: I'm ready to go.
WSHU: Question number three is: Is there a particular, you know, inspiration or quote or philosophy that you live by that kind of lights your fire? When you have days when, like, I'm not sure I want to do this, or just anything?
JS: I don't know if it's like a light-your-fire kind of thing, but maybe keep me in check, kind of thing.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: One of my professors at Temple University in my master's program, Darlene Brooks, would always say to us, "Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way.” And I think for myself and a lot of people who had her as a professor, it's a little bit of a touchstone because as a therapist, you have to be real clear between your own baggage..
WSHU: Yes.
JS: …and what's going on in the room, and sometimes our own baggage makes things a little, can make things a little unclear. So, and I also think about that kind of in certain clinical moments too. There are times when it's like, okay, you can really kindly help your clients move towards, hey, like, is there something going on here that maybe is an easier solution than you realize. So that that “get out of your own way” philosophy I think works really well. And also to the point of, and I teach a lot about trauma-informed music therapy, and that actually was my research focus. When we're working with clients in general, certainly in trauma work, we can't ask our clients to go places we're not willing to go ourselves.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: So as a therapist, as a music therapist, we need to do our own work in therapy too. Again, because the self we bring to therapy is that therapeutic tool. No matter what other techniques we're using, that is a huge part of the mix. So we have to be able to do that, and we'd be very disingenuous to ask somebody to go places we're not willing to explore ourselves. So, very important to me.
WSHU: So before I get to the last two questions, let's just say the website again. It's ctmusictherapy.com. Right?
JS: That's right.
WSHU: So actually, the fourth question I usually ask is: how can people help you? So I don't think it's a donation situation, but you know, how can people be aware of you? How can people spread awareness of music therapy? Is there anything that comes to mind?
JS: That's a great question. It's a small field. About 10,000 music therapists work in the United States.
WSHU: That's it?
JS: Yep.
WSHU: Wow.
JS: And that's huge. It was like 3000 when I was first starting.
WSHU: Wow.
JS: So it's actually grown quite a lot. I think some of the things that people can do to help the most are to educate themselves, as well as be clear about what it is and what it isn't. So to educate themselves, they can take a look at the American Music Therapy Association website, which is musictherapy.org.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: So that's our national organization.
WSHU: No, American, just musictherapy.org.
JS: And you can get a sense of the profession from there, and where we are, you can find a music therapist anywhere you are. In that way, I think that another thing to know is, and here in Connecticut, we're actually a licensed profession, which is a wonderful thing. We advocated for many years, and a license allows us to work in a way that the public is aware that we are qualified to be doing the work that we're doing, because as much as music is so universal and well accepted and well loved, there are ways that music can be used that can actually be quite harmful, either physiologically or psychologically.
WSHU: Okay.
JS: And the public also deserves protection from that. In the same way that I…
WSHU: Board certified…
JS: Correct, board certified. So we're nationally board certified, and then various states in the United States license music therapists. Connecticut is one of those. So unless you have that board certification that comes from getting the actual music therapy degree, you don't wouldn't qualify for the license here in Connecticut.
WSHU: Gotcha. Is that different from state to state?
JS: It's different from state to state.
WSHU: Okay. So, quick round. It sounds like there are definitely moments that are fulfilling. Is it also sometimes fun?
JS: Oh yes. For example. Okay. As a music therapist, when I worked in Newtown at the Resiliency Center of Newtown, we had several camps, and one of our day camps was called Camp Creativity. I got to not only run our music therapy groups, but I also got to do the Silly Songs in the morning; I got to be the Silly Song Leader. How great is that? Reliving my glory days, you know, in middle school as a camper, and so you never know. Like occasionally, even Miss Mary Mack and Boom Chicka Boom show up in a music therapy context. So
WSHU: I love that. Fantastic, and thank you. So, my final question I ask of all my Good At Heart folks is: Why do you think we're here on Earth?
JS: I think that we're here to help each other in any way we can. So, to use what we've got to make someone else's life just a little bit better.
