Keeping in Tune
Music therapist uses beats, songs in practice
Sporting a pair of brightly colored pants and gold sunglasses to hold back her red hair, ANNA KAREIVA tames the wilder parts of her outfit with a fitted white blazer. Kareiva often mixes creative and professional, especially at her office where the therapist pulls from two of her passions as a way to help others.
“I feel like music therapy pursued me. Combining two things I love – music and psychology – it just came together,” she says. “This type of work for me is too natural and creative to ever be taxing.”
Kareiva, a licensed professional counselor, is also a board certified music therapist with training in neurological music therapy. With a variety of instruments, Kareiva offers a form of communication to those who are not able to convey their thoughts so easily.
“There is no other language as universal as music. You can still communicate on a level that is significant to you,” Kareiva says.
“We learn language off of harmonies, singing the alphabet. Each part of our brain is stimulated by music.”
People with verbal/non-verbal, neurological, and emotional issues meet Kareiva in her vibrantly decorated office in Wilmington.
“It is my job to learn and incorporate or surprise them to make them feel heard,” she says.
Kareiva’s music therapy clients –primarily children – learn techniques to pace their emotions by becoming aware of their heartbeat to self-regulate anxiety attacks or to de-escalate.
With vocal cues from Kareiva, those she works with use soothing techniques of banging a drum while focusing on a stress ball placed in the center, repetitively learning the notes of a piano through song, or finessing the fingering of a guitar neck to learn, vent, and redirect their focus.
“Children need advocates to determine where the most problematic behaviors or areas of weakness are,” she says. “It needs to be about feedback. You have to listen to the child’s needs and listen for their command.”
Kareiva is among a group of therapists pushing North Carolina officials to recognize music therapy as a licensed practice.
“We are at a crucial point. If music therapy is to survive in our state, it needs to be known that people are in need,” she says. “Licensure is the key to making music therapy accessible to the families who really need it.”
The state has only granted music therapy certified status, not readily recognized by most insurance companies.
Kareiva is a part of a music therapy task force urging legislators to approve a measure that would grant music therapists licensure status.
“When legislators review the House bill, we will have the opportunity to confront our county reps to push them to pass the bill so that music therapy can be recognized,” Kareiva says.
As a native of South Carolina, Kareiva studied music therapy at a program in Charleston.
“A good day,” she says, “is when you stretch somebody past their limit and they can see, they are capable.”
To view more of photographer Katherine Clark's work, go to katherineclarkphotography.com
