Music in Healing

Let's talk about music for a moment.  If you are able, please start by checking out this song by Athens Creek. What emotions does this song bring to the surface for you? If you could draw or paint it, what would the emotions and sounds look like? If you were to dance it, what would your steps be, and what would they represent?  To me, it looks like smooth hips sashaying across the dance floor; seductive and sultry, but also issuing a warning: don't live like this.  As it shifts into the second half, we are hit with a song about grace.  Grace that anyone can be saved from their life of misery.  The very end mixes the two, and it comes out still smooth and swinging, but with a different type of confidence.

By comparison, listen to the following song, if you will: Hold Me by The Teskey Brothers.  Having listened to two songs that are quite different lyrically, rhythmically, and artistically, what are you feeling now?  Did you notice a distinct difference in how you felt during each one?  After each one?  I found this one more upbeat, bringing my mood up in spite of the message.  "Hold me, don't hold me down; carry me, but keep my feet on the ground."  It sounds like freedom, the rhythm making my blood hum in my ears, making my shoulders dance as I listen and do art, or write, or clean.  I find myself dancing through mundane chores; dancing through my pain, even if it's simply a shifting of my shoulders or a tap of my toes that wouldn't otherwise be there.

While music can be very triggering for people with PTSD, it is important to note that it is also healing for a multitude of ailments.  For chronic pain patients, it offers either distraction or despair.  For those with major depressive disorder, it offers solace that there are others like us, and that we can make it through this episode of abject numbness.  For those with anxiety, a friendly rhythm or melody can change a new or uncomfortable situation a little more familiar, leading us to be able to get through whatever has us so terrified.

Music has been a big part of my healing.  Whether creating it or listening to it, I have found my depression to last for shorter periods of time.  Instead of turning off the music when I feel annoyed (a sign that I am becoming symptomatic again), I keep trying different channels on my Pandora account until I find something that doesn't annoy me as much.  If I'm stuck in traffic, I turn on something with smooth lines and maybe some heavy bass; often reggae is the perfect fit to lower my blood pressure and make me feel far more calm about people driving like idiots.  Before bed, I turn on modern classical or meditation channels.

In a mood?  Try music, my friends.  Try music.

Healing and Empathy,
Jenny