Midland counseling center offers music, expressive therapies

MIDLAND, Texas (KOSA) - Healing to Wholeness now offers music therapy alongside its other unique counseling services, like somatic experiencing.

Cameron Whittenberg’s counseling center goes beyond traditional therapy to help clients of all ages manage stress. Whittenberg is a clinical social worker specializing in somatic experiencing.

“Sometimes we don’t really have the words for how we’re experiencing life,” Whittenberg said. “And so working with the body, and working with music and art, can give us different avenues to express what we’ve kept so closely inside.”

That’s one reason why Healing to Wholeness is offering music therapy to West Texans through telehealth with Cynthia Moore, a licensed social worker and music therapist.

“Music therapy is just using different elements of music in the counseling environment to address different goals,” Moore said. “Some of them musical, some of them non-musical.”

Moore says it goes beyond singing and instruments. It can be spoken word, analyzing or writing lyrics and movements to music.

She hopes West Texans can find ways to build emotional regulation skills through music.

“Some of those people that can’t just articulate it in words a lot of times, maybe they can use background music and they can write it,” Moore said.

The center offers other unique expressive therapies in an office that used to be a home, which Whittenberg hopes is a more comforting environment.

Whittenberg says her center is the only place offering somatic experiencing in the Permian Basin.

This therapy addresses an accumulation of trauma in the body, such as stress, shock and overwhelm.

“A typical session would look like bringing the client in and starting with expanding their awareness of the sensations that they’re experiencing in their body,” Whittenberg said.

She helps clients use movement and touch to release stress and complete fight, flight or freeze responses.

The center offers services for mental health care and chronic physical conditions. Music therapy is available at the center now.

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