Therapeutic Listening for Adults

Stefanie

Stefanie was a 40-year-old artist, photographer, and filmmaker with a history of learning delays and attention difficulties. It appeared that some of her difficulties were related to poor auditory processing. When she entered school, tests revealed a 30% hearing loss. No one was very concerned about the loss because, by then, Stefanie had taught herself to read lips so she could understand spoken language quite well.

As Stefanie grew older, other difficulties began to emerge. She would skip lines while reading, was somewhat clumsy at gross motor games, had no sense of direction, had a constant fear of tripping and falling, and had fleeting, unfocused attention. All of these challenges made school activities, particularly academics, difficult. Her parents and teachers often believed Stefanie was not fully applying herself, and although her difficulties seemed subtle, Stefanie always knew “there were pieces missing.”

As an adult, Stefanie had to make audio recordings of all meetings that she attended because of the vast amount of auditory information. After each meeting, she painstakingly transcribed everything word-for-word. She could only transcribe one word or short phrase at a time.

Therapeutic Listening afforded Stefanie significant results in a short period of time. After listening to one CD for only a few days, Stefanie realized she could transcribe whole sentences at once, making the task far less tedious. After a few weeks, Stefanie reported hearing the refrigerator running for the first time and stated that she no longer feels like she has “holes” where she missed developmental milestones.

Stefanie always loved birds, so when her therapist gave her Nature Pop (with bird sounds as an ambient background to the pop music), she soon found herself going out to take pictures of birds. Her work has evolved into beautiful fine art photographs and prints of birds in flight. For more information about her work, visit her website at: stefanieatkinsonphotography.com.