Music for Processing Grief

Last week, I attended a mental health awareness event called #BeWell at Samsung 837 in Chelsea, NYC. I RSVP-ed knowing little about the event and its presenters – just that Dr. Jess, the main speaker, is a young, Black, female psychiatrist, and that I get excited about representation of all of those traits in the medical field. I couldn’t wait to learn more about her. I hoped to come back to the blog with more insight about the importance of clicking with your therapist, and the related challenges you face when you come from one or more marginalized groups. Because so many mental health professionals are older white males, it can be hard for people of other social groups to find a professional with whom they feel totally comfortable.

Dr. Jess did touch on this a little bit – how in the Black community, there is such a stigma about seeing a therapist or giving attention to your mental wellbeing. Dr. Jess, more formally Dr. Jessica Clemons, is currently completing her psychiatry residency at NYU, and because she is making such a push to put mental wellness in the spotlight for young people (especially people of color), she is already making an impact in important ways. I was thrilled to see so many young Black women in the audience, chatting excitedly about their career dreams in counseling and therapy, noting Dr. Jess as an inspiration. The way I see it, more varied cultural backgrounds amongst medical professionals means more people feeling comfortable reaching out and getting attention for their mental health.

What I did not expect was that I would hear Dr. Jess and her guest, rapper/musician/designer A$AP Ferg, talk at length about the power of using music for coping and mental health. As I am a music therapist, this was, of course, right up my alley! I was so impressed to hear an accomplished medical professional and pro musician speak about music’s healing potential, beyond relaxation and distraction.

Photo by Myesha Evon

When Dr. Jess first sat down with A$AP Ferg, she asked the audience members to respect a short list of agreements about the experience. Among these was this: although we may get something therapeutic out of this, it is not therapy. The conversation she had with Ferg might have been similar to how she would have conducted a therapy session with him, but some important points disqualified it as actual therapy – a huge one, the fact that the conversation was happening in front of dozens of people. I was so happy to hear her make a big deal of making the distinction. I think she is setting a great example for the rest of us mental health professionals by not being afraid to correct misconceptions like this.

Dr. Jess asked Ferg to talk at length about the deaths of loved ones, including those of his girlfriend and father. He talked a lot about ways of grieving, and this is when music came up.

Photo by Steve Crookson

Ferg noted that he felt as though his coping still isn’t done. “I took so long to grieve,” he said. “I wasn’t connected.” When he didn’t cry at his girlfriend’s funeral, he said he “knew something wasn’t right … I had to put myself in a position to grieve again.”

He partially connected his emotional block to the fact that he “wasn’t listening to music” for almost a year, subconsciously trying to shield himself from feeling.

Dr. Jess agreed that music is important and powerful in this way, noting that you can turn on certain music to “feel sadness if you can’t access it” and that this can be so helpful in working through pain.

Dr. Jess praised Ferg for having the strength to notice he needed to grieve, and asked if he had always been the type of person who was curious and mature about emotional expression. He responded,

“That’s why I’m successful in music, because I kind of know what people want to hear. Sonically, but I know what conversations people want to hear too.”

It was so refreshing to hear them connect mental health to music in this way. When I bring up music therapy, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, people often respond with something like, “Oh yes, music is so relaxing” or “makes you feel good,” which can feel dismissive. This doesn’t even begin to cover it. Dr. Jess and Ferg both have huge and growing platforms, and hearing them both give a different perspective about music’s power was inspiring for me. I feel as though this means we are heading in the right direction. They are advocates of the field music therapy, even if they don’t quite know it yet!

Dr. Jess closed the talk by noting several resources for finding mental health help, including ThriveNYC where you can learn about mental health first aid, and NYC Well where you can get connected with crisis counseling 24/7.

“Whatever happens to you, you are not your pain,” she told us all, before sending us back into the real world. “You are love.”

To learn more about Dr. Jess and her work in mental health advocacy, visit her website, and follow her on Instagram.

For more information about how music is related to emotional processing and access, check out this scholarly article about the brain as it processes music.

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Music Therapy, Explained

I’m a music therapist. And announcing my occupation, most of the time, requires an explanation. The thing is, there is really no short explanation, which is pretty much the only thing that frustrates me about what I do.

I was at a friend’s birthday party recently, and as always, the dreaded question came up from new acquaintances.

“What do you do?”

Usually I make something up, or I just say “musician” or “therapist” or “barista.” It’s just not the setting where I want to be addressing ALLLLL of the inevitable follow-up questions, comments, and unsolicited explanations of my own job. Here are some actual responses I’ve gotten from people.

  • Music therapist?? Is that real?
  • Does music therapy really work?
  • Oh my gosh, your mood is all about [frequencies/wavelengths/harmonics]!
  • Oh, so you like, help injured musicians get better? (Spoiler alert – NO.)
  • My [mom teaches piano lessons/friend writes songs/sister teaches yoga] – she’s totally kind of a music therapist too. (Spoiler alert – also no.)
  • What exactly does your day to day look like?
  • Oh. Well, I’m an astronaut.

Listen, come to my office tomorrow and I’ll address all these when I’m on the clock and not trying to socialize and turn my mind off for a bit.

(Hello to all the people who said one of these things to me at a party and got the link to this post from me in response!)

I love what I do, because yes, it works. 

And it really changes people beyond helping them feel relaxed. 

And the science and rationale behind it is fascinating.

Like I said, music therapy has no simple or single explanation. It’s multifaceted and complicated and if it took me 8 years of training to fully understand it, then it’s going to take more than one blog post for me to be able to explain it adequately. I can’t wait to get to all the current research and uses and applications, but I’m going to start with two of my favorite basic research points that I feel set the foundation really well for understanding why music therapy exists and works.

Music therapy is an entire field based on the changes we see in the brain when we are processing music. People found these few phenomenons and decided to test them and apply them to helping people through real life situations. The first point is this:

Music facilitates neurogenesis.

Fukui, H., & Toyoshima, K. (2008). Music facilitates the neurogenesis, regeneration and repair of neurons. Medical hypotheses, 71(5), 765-769.

This means engagement with music literally makes new pathways in your brain.

The article quoted is theoretical, but it cites real findings that scientists found in the brains of rats and birds. (Makes sense, right? Birds are always singing, and they’re super smart.) This is my favorite article to cite to people who are newly curious about music therapy. Our brains control everything we do, so if something makes our brain function better, it’s a good indicator that it can help us improve just a ton of things.

The second point is this:

Musician brains are different than non-musician brains.

Gaser, C., & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain structures differ between musicians and non-musicians. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(27), 9240-9245.

A few of my favorite differences to note – musicians have an enlarged corpus callosum – a structure in between the two hemispheres credited with connectivity and communication within the brain. Basically, helping everything up there work well together. Also, the hippocampus, a little oblong structure near the center of the brain that is regarded as a long-term memory converter, has increased plasticity in musicians. This means it has an easier time adapting and changing.

These two things may seem strange and abstract, but for scientists, it’s very exciting, because a lot of things that make life hard for humans have to do with brain changes or abnormalities. The fact that something as noninvasive as singing or music training could address that is a little bit mind blowing.

There is still a lot of work for music therapists and researchers to do to find out exactly what is happening here. As far as the amazing things we have found already regarding music, rehabilitation, and healing – I’ll be sharing some of those here on the blog! I can’t wait to introduce you to it all.

Remember to send me questions about music therapy, brain science, and allied health! Tell me what you want to know about music therapy, and I’ll see you in the next installment.

Here are some more citations for the research mentioned here:

Schlaug, G., Jäncke, L., Huang, Y., Staiger, J. F., & Steinmetz, H. (1995). Increased corpus callosum size in musicians. Neuropsychologia, 33(8), 1047-1055.

Herdener, M., Esposito, F., di Salle, F., Boller, C., Hilti, C. C., Habermeyer, B., … & Cattapan-Ludewig, K. (2010). Musical training induces functional plasticity in human hippocampus. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(4), 1377-1384.

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