Music Impacts How Your Brain Processes Anxiety and Depression. Here’s What to do About it.
Can sad music make depression worse? Does happy music make you happier? Today we’re going to dive deep into multiple studies that not only give insight into how music impacts the brain and mental health, but how it can potentially impact your depression and anxiety as well… for better or for worse. Are you aware of how your music has music been impacting you?
What does music do to the brain?
Over 80% of people have reported using music as a way to cope with negative emotions, stress, and mental health in 2020.
Music has known positive benefits of enhancing our mood and alleviating anxious thoughts; does this mean that music also has the ability to help or hinder symptoms of depression and anxiety? Our environment is a massive factor that impacts our levels of depression and anxiety - included in this are the people you surround yourself with and listen to. In fact, environmental factors are estimated to be the cause of 52-63% of depression diagnoses.
“Environmental factors” for depression and anxiety include:
Financial situations
Education
Housing
Employment and work conditions
Crime levels
Overall community wellbeing
Podcasts, videos, and music are all a part of this environmental pillar, as it makes up part of who you listen to and surround yourself with (even if it’s only virtual)! This then makes you question if listening to sad music consistently makes you more sad and if listening to happy music consistently makes you more happy?
What music do you listen to when you’re anxious or depressed? Do you lean towards happy or sad music? You can leave your comments all the way at the bottom Btw!
Now let’s talk about elevator music.
What Does Elevator Music Have to do with It?
Two groups of people with a fear of heights were taken into a virtual reality elevator ride. This elevator ride went up to 350 meters high: that’s about 100 stories tall. For perspective: there are only 15 current buildings with over 100 stories, so that’s pretty high for someone with a fear of heights! One of the groups listened to absolutely nothing on the way up; the second group listened to some good ‘ol fashion elevator music!
As it turned out, the group with the elevator music both physiologically (body response) and subjectively (perceived stress) recovered from the anxiety much faster than the group without music!
There was a similar study that compared anxiety levels with different music and sound before going into high stress situations. The groups were to listen to one of three options before taking a stress test.
Group 1: Listened to “relaxing music” (this is what they were listening to)
Group 2: Listened to rippling water (like this)
Group 3: Listened to nothing
Group two (water sounds) experienced the lowest concentrations of cortisol levels during the stress test. Once the test was complete, the group that listened to “relaxing music” recovered much quicker from the stress and anxiety than the group that had no music at all.
Both of these studies show that music and sound may help drastically in coping with anxiety-inducing situations and emotions! The researchers believe that listening to calming music prior to a stressful day or event can help the nervous system in recovering and processing anxiety, depression, and stress much faster!
The Vibes of the Music Matter
There’s a reason why elevators, hospitals, and doctor’s offices play the standard “elevator” music; the reason it’s played is to help eliminate individuals from common anxieties and fears (aka doctors and heights). Its not just any music that produces these calm and happy feelings, though! It appears the music must display certain characteristics in order to see a reduction in levels of anxiety and depression.
Another study wanted to dive deeper into this concept: they had participants listen to 30 different songs during high-stress situations. They looked at both the physiological and emotional responses and concluded that the vibes of the song do, in fact, matter!
here are The characteristics in music that they found reduces anxiety:
Slow tempo
Simple melody
Predictable beat and harmony
The genres that are best for decreasing anxiety, which also carry these traits, are classical and soft pop. They also found that being too familiar with a song can actually be unhelpful when trying to reduce anxiety, so maybe you can use this as a way to branch out if you don’t typically listen to these genres!
Many of the benefits that have been seen are primarily in relation to anxiety in this study, but for those struggling with depression it was found that: positive and upbeat music can create a positive and upbeat mood as well!!!
Music LITERALLY Takes Your PHYSICAL Pain Away
There was an experiment where 143 people were given electrical shocks to see how the perception of pain was impacted or changed while listening to music. The key of this experiment was to have the participants use music as a form of distraction to take the mind away from the pain. Participants were instructed to “keep their minds on the melodies” by looking for changes/patterns in the music. This is important to note because oftentimes we listen to music mindlessly, but in order for this to work, you must be actively listening.
Researchers believe that the perception of pain (both physical and emotional) is decreased with the sound of relaxing music because the sensory pathways seem to be competing with the pain pathways! David H. Bradshaw, one of the researchers for the study, says that the type of music isn’t as important in this method, as the main goal is to stay engaged and interested with the song and keep the mind distracted.
In this experiment, those who were the most anxious received the most benefits from this method!!
If you want to give this a try, choose any song that you like, but don’t know too well and then actively listen for changes or patterns in the music. I have some recommendations at the bottom of this blog for you as well if you want to give one of those a try.
So If Happy Music Makes us Happy, Does Sad Music Make us Sad?
Sadly…. Slow and sad songs may, in fact, increase depression.
But another interesting thing was found: sad songs can also make an individual feel understood and comforted in their struggles! It appears that a majority of people who listen to sad songs perceive them to be overall more comforting than depressing when struggling with mental health.
When in need of comfort, sad music may help remind you that you’re not alone and be more comforting and helpful for you! But when you’re ready to conquer the day again, happy music may be the better route to get you back to feeling uplifted and motivated.
The Red and Green Flags for Music
Red Flags: Music that may be BAD for your mental health
Fast paced music may increase anxiety levels
Sad lyrics and music may increase depression levels
Any music attached to bad memories
*Just because a song is fast, sad, or even attached to previous bad memories does not mean that its automatically bad to listen to. It just means that you can make yourself more aware of how you’re feeling when you decide to turn these types of songs on!
Green Flags: Music that may be GOOD for your mental health
Slow tempo, simple melody, and predictable beat for reducing anxiety
Positive and upbeat music for reducing depression
Any music attached to good memories
*Just because a song is slow, upbeat, or even attached to previous good memories does not mean that its automatically good to listen to. It just means that you can make yourself more aware of how you’re feeling when you decide to turn these types of songs on!
Also some fun little bonus facts is that reading song lyrics and analyzing the message can help improve healthy coping and emotional processing! One thing that you can try is listening to a song that you connect with emotionally and analyze the lyrics as you listen and read. Writing out your feelings in songs and poems (or any form of writing!) is also a well-known tool for prevention in suicide attempts and self harm. Listening, analyzing, and writing songs are all so incredibly impactful for our mental health!!! <3
