Songs that get us through….

Editors note: We are pleased to add a third voice to the contributors here, Rachael Benjamin. Rachael is a psychotherapist and trained musician who joined our practice in 2012 as the second therapist after our founder and director, Matt Lundquist. Rachael speaks best about and through music, and has decided to feature many of those thoughts and songs here.

NYC Therapy: Songs that get us through...

"Give me a reason to be constantly ignored, give me an angle that I haven't tried before, guaranteed for being honestly compared"
--Whitest Boy Alive--Norwegian dancer, lyricist, thinker.

"O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind"
--Lenard Cohen—lyricist, music maker, thinker, feeler.

Have a listen:

These are just two songs that are in my brain. For some of us songs are in our head day in and day out. This lyric above made me think of therapy, and made me think of the process of sorting through life. Some songs we keep with us in depression to let ourselves be sad. Some songs are made of hope to help us not lose sight. Some songs we need to find new meanings of because they have been used to persecute, control us, and harm us.

The nice thing about songs and music is that is ours to interpret or if we add a friend, therapist, partner, or collaborator to the mix we create the meaning together in process.

I encourage in therapy speaking not just through talking but also through song. By sending songs back and forth in email or through playing and sitting with them in session. Or by having a song lead us.

Do you have a song that inspires you? Do you have a song that speaks better than you can right now about your emotions? Do you want to have more music flowing through you? Can the emotions follow once the music is turned on? Let us see. Periodically I’m going to post more about music: listen.