Mental Health Music
I am not well, whenever someone asks me how I’m doing, I have never responded with “I am well.” I say “I’m good” like a normal person. People say it especially when they’re not good because they think talking about how not good they are will further exacerbate their un-goodness. Sometimes people need to do that, you don’t have to talk about how you’re feeling if you don’t want to. You should want to, however, because it helps. CAVEAT TIME. I only know my own experience and I can only authentically speak about my own story, I cannot tell other people’s stories but I can talk about things that people have told me they experienced and what I think about that. I am not a medical professional or mental health specialist, consult a professional if your mental health lasts longer than 4 hours.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about talking about it. What is wellness? What is mental well-being? The state of being well mentally? I have no idea what that means or looks like. I’m confident in saying: it depends, it’s different for different people. some might consider feeling generally happy as being well, others may consider being well as just not being generally sad or not feeling any particular way at all in general. Getting by, coping, hanging in there, feelin’ fine, all valid if that’s what you consider your well-being to be. I would say right now that I’m somewhere between not great and meh, which is positive considering seasonal depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, nice backronym) hits me like a freight train on a freshly greased track going downhill. It is during these times of emotional inconsistency that I turn to one of my great loves: Domino’s stuffed cheesy bread. And music, mostly music, but the ratio of music to cheesy bread consumption is not as large as I would like it to be.
Music is a great tool to escape, release emotions, and understand emotions. There is a great series on YouTube called Low Batteries, it discusses mental health representations in video games and the use of video games as a coping mechanism. They talked about how sometimes people don’t have the will to get out of bed and put their clothes on let alone fire up their favorite game. This made me think about music. You don’t need to get out of bed and put your clothes on to listen to a song. In fact, you think about it, we listen to music in the nude more than we realize. Music can adjust your mood and maybe give you the motivation to get out of bed or maybe stay in bed but not feel so bad. Instead of staring at the ceiling trying desperately not to feel, music can help you work through what you’re feeling or help you forget for a little while.
I think it is good to talk about your experiences with mental health. Talk about it with others who are struggling or have struggled. Talk about it with people who don’t know what it’s like to feel the way you do. Music can make talking about it easier, communities form around artists, artists themselves talk about their mental health. I want to talk about the relationship between music and mental health more, so today I started a podcast on the Pierced Poets’ Party Podcast network called Mental Health Music. Only a brief introduction episode is out now, but if you are interested in hearing people talking about music and their feelings I hope you’ll follow along on this journey with me.
