
Deborah spiegel mt-bc , ccht
Deborah Spiegel MT-BC, CCHt, CEO and Director of The Spiegel Academy, is a Board- Certified Music Therapist who has been in the field since 1976, providing music therapy for people of all ages.
She served as a member of a multi-disciplinary treatment team in a Dialectical Behavior Therapy based treatment facility for adolescents as a music therapist and a DBT Skills group leader for almost 12 years, leading to her specializing in the use of music and music activities to teach and reinforce DBT skills and her passion for DBT informed music therapy.
Deborah now runs and offers a variety of DBT related classes and supports through the Spiegel Academy. Her premiere specialty program is the DBT Informed Music Therapy Training program. This is a year long comprehensive training with her team of DBT experts, supporting a community of DBT Informed Music Therapists as they learn the DBT skills and how to implement them with music therapy for their particular population of clients.
She is also spearheaded a research project to validate the effectiveness of DBT Informed Music Therapy. Positive results were published in the Journal of Music Therapy in June of 2022.
Book and CD
Sharing some examples of applying music therapy to the DBT skills, Deborah Spiegel published the book Music Activities & More for Teaching DBT Skills and Enhancing Any Therapy: Even for the Non-Musician (Authorhouse 2010),…
which has been updated and published in a new edition by Jessica Kingsley in 2020.
The new book is called Creative DBT Activities Using Music: Interventions for Enhancing Engagement and Effectiveness in Therapy.
CBMT Approved Continuing Education Provider
Deborah became an approved provider with the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT) in 2011. After a year of presenting live workshops, she began offering her classes online, which evolved into what is now The Spiegel Academy. She is joined here by other qualified professionals in providing a growing variety of quality classes that are approved for continuing education credits by the Certification Board for Music Therapists. Participants rank their experience with the online classes highly.
Presentations
Ms. Spiegel began presenting DBT/ Music Therapy continuing education workshops in 2011 and continues to provide classes, in-services, training and workshops for professionals nation-wide. Participants state that the events are enjoyable and that they are pleased with the experiential style and the amount of useful ideas that they take away with them to implement right away in their practice.
Deborah presented her DBT workshop for 8 State Hospitals in the state of California in 2014-15 as well as at Perkins Hospital in Maryland. She’s presented at Immaculata University, Eastern Michigan University, at private locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, all 8 of the California State Hospitals, and many other locations nation-wide since 2011. Her experiential workshops are well received. If you would like Deborah to present a DBT Informed Music Therapy workshop at your facility contact her below.
Deborah was a presenter at the National Music Therapy Conference 2016 and 2010, the Midwestern Regional Music Therapy Conference 2017 and 2010, Colorado Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conference, the Colorado School for the Blind Conference, at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo, Colorado State University, and for several Mental Health Centers in Colorado.
Business
The process of setting up an online continuing education program has led Deborah to study with many powerful leaders and coaches in the field of the modern entrepreneur, including Michele Scism, Ryan Eliason, Callen Rush, Justin Livingston, Suzanne Evans, Jena Rodrigues, Danny Iny, Frederick Pearce, Alisha Allen, Mary Morrisey, Barb Wade, Tomar Levine, Marisa Murgatroyd, David Draney, Eben Pagan, Rachael Jane Groover, Ray Edwards, Billy Gene, Jeff Walker, Stu Mclaran, Vrinda Normand, Gina Hussar, Paul and Melissa Pruitt,and others.
The Spiegel Academy offers CMTE classes on business topics starting from building a website to starting a private practice, getting more clients, marketing, and growing your business,… Let Deborah know your needs in this area by emailing her below
Therapy Practice:
Deborah has worked with all ages of clients, and especially enjoys working with youth. She uses a range of strategies to support her clients in overcome their stated challenges and gaining tools to enrich their own lives..
For her individual sessions she draws from a repertoire of skills and methods which she successfully integrates for powerful results. She uses techniques taken from Jung, Erickson, Gestalt, Psychosynthesis and Quigley. She combines guided imagery, hypnotherapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, and music therapy.
With credentials as a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, which she has been practicing since 1989, she designs customized suggestion scripts for her groups, to help them reach their stated goals. She also takes individuals on interactive inner journeys around specific client centered goals, helping them develop inner resources to heal emotional wounds and fill underlying needs in the subconscious mind.
She reinforces these inner experiences through song writing and other music therapy interventions, and teaches coping strategies/ DBT Skills through music Her passion is for DBT informed music therapy.
Deborah lives in Paonia, Colorado near her son and her Great Pyranese dog.