I’m feeling depressed and disconnected from things again – it happens this time of year sometimes. Had a good hard workout, which helped, but now I’m listening to the Counting Crows and I honestly can’t tell if it’s making me feel better or worse. Since, as we all know, the plural of “anecdote” is “data,” I thought I’d put it to you folks.
When you’re blue, do you listen to sad/depressing music? If you do, does it make you feel better?
I do listen, because it’s part of the mood. It makes me feel both worse and better; The songs themselves make me feel worse, but they let me get to the lowest point of my depression -faster-, thus I can recover more quickly. So, if I want to get it over with as quickly as possible, the music helps me feel better… By making me feel worse.
I avoid sad music like the plague.
For me, it’s not so much that sad music makes it better or worse, I listen to it just because it’s what I’m in the mood for. If I’m sad, happy music tends to sound wrong to me, for lack of a better explanation. I’ll snap out of my funk eventually, but the music I listen to doesn’t seem to affect how long it takes or how bad the funk gets.
Definitely makes me more depressed. I have to be careful what music I listen to, especially when I’m down - but even when I’m not. If I listen to a bunch of sad or depressing music it drags me down.
My oldest son (22) is this way, too. When he was at home it was something I tried to help him with. He’d gt into a funk and just play this depressing music and sort of wallow in it(God how I hated hearing Papa Roach - Last Resort for the eleventy billionth time).
As he got older he started to recognise what I could see: that when he was down sad/morose/angsty music seemed to KEEP him that way and made regular teen life funk-type periods last longer and made him more bummed than he started out being.
For the record, I love music of all types. I am just aware of what effect it can have on my emotions and so I am careful about how much I let myself be exposed to music that takes me in the wrong direction emotionally.
Yes there are times when we all need to hear the radio
'Cause from the lips of some old singer they can tell the troubles we already know
If someone else is suffering enough oh to write it down
When every little word makes sense, then it’s easier to have those songs around.
So turn 'em on, turn 'em on, turn on those sad songs.
When all hope is gone, why don’t you tune in and turn them on?
(Copyright Elton John and some record company)
No, I don’t listen to sad music when I’m upset – it actually seems a little ridiculous to me. To me it’d be kind of like getting up and walking around when you’re already in agonizing pain from a severely sprained ankle.
If I listen to music at all, it’s happy music, but generally I don’t want to listen to music during a good crying jag.
This. When I was a teenager, my cure for depression was to listen to The Wall (Pink Floyd) all the way through, followed by Black Celebration (Depeche Mode). By the time But Not Tonight came on, I was totally bored with being depressed and would let that song lift me up into hope again.
Back in 1970 I listened to that one Bread song about a thousand times after my first girlfriend broke up with me. She was unmoved by my quiet brooding, perhaps because she was nowhere near me. It did not help.
I find listening to sad music cathartic when I’m down.
Music has absolutely no effect on my mood.
The vast majority of the music I listen to is, if not necessarily sad, then not particularly happy. When I’m depressed, sad music definitely helps, partly because I need music of some sort on, and only miserable music would be tolerable, but also because music that says that I’m not the only person feeling like shit helps with the loneliness that often accompanies depression, at least for me.
Me too.
I actually have a playlist titled “melancholy” with about 100 tracks just for these occasions. Some of the music is sad, or slow, or angry. Some dischordant, but there’s a good mix of “real life” songs that help me focus on a lyric or three and just sort of clean out my head on whatever’s bothering me at the time and get a fix on things again. Actually, a lot of the “sad” music I listen to, usually has a vague message of indignance, or rage, or a different perspective, and hope.
Good music can be very therapeutic.
Otherwise, I have the knob cranked to 14 when I’m in a good mood or need some energy. Yes, mine goes to 14.
This.
Yep, sad music is the only thing that I can listen to when I’m blue. I might go so far as to say it’s actually a need. I have to get down and dirty with the sadness before I can put it aside.
I avoid sad anything when I’m down. I honestly don’t get how it can be cathartic, because it doesn’t bring you back out. The big point of catharsis is not just that you get the bad emotions out, but that you then replace them with good emotions. And if I could make myself feel better on my own, I would have already done so.
I tend to listen to sad music when I’m depressed. I have a hard time getting the emotions to break thru and the music can help that along and actually be cathartic. The only times I’ve ever been close to crying over the loss of my father is when I’ve been listening to sad/powerful music.
I listen to music I find sad when I’m already sad, but the point isn’t to cheer me up. It’s that I’m always listening to music, being well, a musicologist once upon a time, and otherwise just an obnoxious jerk riding the bus, lol. So when I’m sad, I want my music to reflect this as I soundtrack my life.
Other. If I can sing along with the song (I know the lyrics and it’s in my range), singing makes me feel better . . . though not as much as singing with a happy song.
I do have some emergency music (mostly classical) to play when my chronic depression really gets the best of me.