Healing Heartbreak: A Maryland Therapist's Perspective on Music & Emotions
Music can help soothe a broken heart—a Maryland therapist’s perspective.
Broken hearts happen everyday and yet they can feel like the most deeply personal and painful thing in the world. Generation after generation has turned to music for healing, catharsis and understanding. I’m delighted to be able to share some thoughts about this within Yahoo’s In The Know article by Neia Balao “The Reason Swifties On TikTok Are Using ‘NOW THAT WE DON’T TALK’ To Meme Their Heartbreak”. Continue below for my thoughts on this and check out Balao’s full article here.
HeartBreak Beat: Neuroscience & Music
The intensity of the feelings of heartbreak can flood and overwhelm someone of any age, but especially a young person that may be grappling with it for the first time. The deck is also stacked against young folks biologically--the part of the brain that is responsible for our most nuanced thinking, where we can make sense of things and get perspective, is still under construction until around the age of 25. Adding insult to injury, getting swept away in big feelings, like heartbreak, makes it hard to even access that part of the brain. That happens to all of us--when we get really emotionally swamped our best thinking goes offline temporarily.
Go Your OWn Way: How Music Helps The Healing Process
We can piggyback on to the processing that is happening inside a heartbreak song to reap the benefits of it for ourselves. That part of the brain that has our most nuanced thinking? Language is also processed in there. So, a good set of lyrics gives us language for the swirl of feelings and emotions that are crashing around inside us, and having that language, in turn, gives us a bridge to the part of the brain that helps us understand, process, and take perspective. Plus, a great song is doing this at the same time as it opens us up to viscerally feel the feelings around the heartbreak and loss. So, we are, in real time, feeling the feelings AND putting language to them. The brain and nervous system are syncing up to help us process this intense experience and make some sort of sense of it.
Cry Me A River: You Are Not Alone
Heartbreak can feel so devastating that it can feel like nobody in the world has ever felt this way, this much, before. A great heartbreak song reflects the intensity and depth of our experience and we have the small comfort of knowing we aren't truly alone, that someone else in the world actually gets how truly devastating this feels. This goes for the whole range of feelings that go with heartbreak--it's not always sadness. There's also intense anger (Many Gen X-ers will always have a soft spot for Alanis for giving us You Oughta Know), regret, wistfulness, and even relief. In hearing our experiences reflected back to us in song, we aren't outcasts from the world in our misery, but more like passengers in a very big and crowded boat of all the folks that have loved and lost so hard throughout space and time. Feeling connected like this soothes our hearts, our brains and our nervous systems.
I Will Survive
Every generation has their own take on processing heartbreak through song, but the same principles apply--the music takes the chaos and tumult of intense emotion and gives it shape, structure, language, and connection so we can get our hands around it and let it begin to guide us down a path to healing.
Listen Along To my Heartbreak Playlist
While it’s only a sampling of some great heartbreak songs, I hope you’ll enjoy some of the selections from across a few decades.
A free consultation With A skilled Maryland therapist
Whether you are navigating a transition in life or are looking for other kinds of support, please reach out if you’d like to connect about working together. I see folks in my office in College Park and anywhere in Maryland online. You can explore more information about my services as a Maryland therapist throughout the website.
