Music as a Coping Technique

I had an interesting session on Monday morning with a client. She's fairly young, in her late 60s, and had a rough weekend. One of her medications causes some blood thinning and she got a cut that would not stop bleeding. It had slowed and stopped by Monday, but emotions were still raw for her. She was very anxious and, literally, afraid for her life. Another bleed like that could be her cause of death. When I got there, I saw that she was attempting to convince me [and possibly herself] that she was doing okay. One thing I do feel I excel at, however, is reading people's emotions, and I was picking up that she was not feeling positive about her situation.


We talked for a bit and I began to offer song choice for her, which is one way that I've found to read people's emotions. This client, generally, chooses the song that reflects how she feels. I would offer a "happy" song and once that I felt seemed to reflect what she was feeling. She always chose the reflective song. After a few of these songs, I began to make reflections on the songs and "pry" into her emotions. After she realized what songs she had been choosing what she perceived to be "sad" or "negative", she began crying. I let her cry, without interrupting, and, when she had finished, I said, "It seems like the music is helping you cope with your emotions, but not in the way you thought it was." She agreed and discussed how she used music to "help me when I'm really down", but hadn't realized that by reflecting what she felt, she was coping. 

I think a misconception of using music as a coping technique is that if you play happy music, it will make you happy. Conversely, in this scenario, if you play sad music, it will make you sad. People do not want to be sad, generally, so people may only play happy music. This coping technique, sometimes called avoidance, may be useful for some people, but they do not realize there are other ways. Reflecting the emotions, and owning up to them, can also be an effective way to handle emotions.


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Blog for the week is Music Therapy Source. It's run by a great hospice music therapist out of Iowa City.