How Can Music Affect Our Moods?

When writing songs the hope is that it will provide an emotional response to the listener.  There are many emotions experienced when listening to music. Here Gerry Clarkson a musician and a blogger explore the The Relationship Between Sad Music and Depression and how music affects our mood.  Here is his contribution.

From the rhythms of our ancient dynasties to present limitless streaming services, music has been serving as a crucial part of the human experience.Fascinatingly, for teenagers and those who have just crossed their twenties, music seems to have a major role to play. According to different studies, the adolescents listen to the music for around 2-3 hours each day, particularly when feeling upset.You feel what music you listen!

To many music listeners, music entices negative emotions such as sadness or anger. Some seem to just get involved in the music and revel in the emotional roller coaster. Some people even use the music for the purpose of catharsis, to sense the emotional connection with others, think about ways to master difficulties or to assist in overcoming the blues. There is nothing bad at feeling sorrow, as it is a healthy emotion when we are suffering from sad events of our lives. Sadness encourages us to dwell judiciously about our situations, search for that silver lining and eventually and to improve our lives.

Depression is however quite different from feeling upset or sad about things. Rather than feeling motivated to improve things and proves; depression tends to make the sufferer lose motivation. Instead of making the depressant think more clearly, in this state, people experience diminished cognitive functioning on different domains.

Rumination is the affinity to get puzzled with the patterns of negative thinking and having a hard time preventing negative thoughts about life events or certain feelings. Rumination and depression go together. According to some authentic researches, when listeners are ruminators, and they listen to sad music are more likely to continue these cycles of negative thinking, frequently evoking sad memories and negative thoughts.

We found that instead of recovering after listening to sad music, the music listeners with high scores in rumination described intensified feelings of depression.

Effects of music on levels of Depression

A person who’s already suffering from depression might listen to a sad song and think about how things have gone wrong for them. And, rather than feeling better and steaming all the emotions out, their negative thought patterns are just intensified by listening to such songs. Sad people, at times,get more depressed when they listen to the sad songs.

For a healthy person, sadness is nothing more than a minor blip in the entire day and may even assist them in acquiring some important psychological benefits. For a person who is severely and clinically depressed, when listening to sad music,might feel worse could be quite dangerous.

Instead, when you ask emotionally healthy people to listen to a melody that can make them feel happy. The practice is also effective for people with high levels of depression.

To Wrap Up:

People can just listen to the happy music that can make them feel happy. When sad music makes you feel sad or more depressed, there are many counter arguments claiming the music—even sad one— can actually make people happy.

Some people – particularly youth to whom music is an essential – may drive benefits from therapies that can aid them in becoming more conscious of the influence music can have on their life.

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