Where words fail, music speaks.

Posted on in Mindset by Stephanie Coady

therapist in fredericton

Where words fail, music speaks.

Music and mental health – we know what happens to our mood when we put on a song; it allows us to feel it.

Listening to music can have a positive impact on your mental health and wellness. Music can lower your stress levels, such as listening to soft music as you work. There have been studies of how listening to music during stressful situations not only allowed participants to recover from stress faster than the ones who didn’t, but that it also lowered blood pressure and heart rate (which both spike when you are stressed!).

Music can help you feel your feelings. Personally, there are certain songs that I put on that remind me of a time or season in my life and can help us within the grieving process as well. It offers us a container to feel our feelings, and it also can make it easier to talk to others about what you are feeling by having them listen to a certain song.

One thing I also love about music is that it builds community – a shared experience and a collective belonging. Going to see the Taylor Swift Eras Movie in theatre for example, you felt like you weren’t at a movie theatre – that you were there at a concert, with everyone singing and expressing what each song means to them in their own ways. Music can boost your mood and allow for self-expression in many ways (I love a good solo dance party, which is also a great nervous system regulation technique!).

Music can also take us back in time and uplift us. It’s worth a watch – if you type into YouTube about music and nursing homes, music has a beautiful way of accessing memories like no other.

I would love for you to make a playlist (or find one) that you can turn to when needed – full of songs that you can sing in the shower, lay in bed to, or take a roadtrip to.

Stephanie

I’m Stephanie Coady (she/her/hers), a Licensed Counselling Therapist-Candidate (LCT-C) with the College of Counselling Therapists of New Brunswick (CCTNB) and a Canadian Certified Counsellor (C.C.C) with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). I’m a lifelong Frederictonian; completing my Bachelor of Arts at the University of New Brunswick and my Masters of Education at the University of New Brunswick in Counselling Psychology.