There I am, in the middle of Fret's music, vibing near the front of a small crowd as a band performs right in front of me. I'm tapping the beat out with both hands on the sides of my legs and shaking my head side-to-side to match my groove. I start thinking about something I was upset about earlier, but in this moment, it feels much easier to handle. I think through everything that bothered me so much before and find a resolution to the jumbled feelings that had been bubbling all day, all while keeping up with the band's performance. When the song ends, I feel a sense of renewal and relief from the stress that had been overwhelming me. I'm not surprised, this isn't the first time I've been able to reprocess things at a concert. Wait…reprocess…huh, yeah that was reprocessing. The way that I reprocessed my earlier distress felt almost exactly how I feel when I'm doing EMDR therapy. Met with this revelation, I continue connecting the dots as to how listening to live music has helped me in the same way as this exhaustive therapy practice.
For anyone reading this who's wondering what EMDR therapy is or why I do it, it's because I have CPTSD, also known as Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's somewhat different from PTSD; one of the main differences being that the origins of trauma are repeated / have an ongoing history, rather than singular events (at least that's the way I understand it). Not to flex, don't want anyone to be jealous that my mental disorder is complex or anything.
You don't have to have CPTSD or PTSD to do EMDR therapy, but people with those conditions often turn to EMDR to work through their trauma. Standing for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, this kind of therapy uses bilateral stimulation (like looking left and right, tapping both sides of your body, etc.) to reprocess repressed memories and traumatic events. The goal of EMDR is usually to work through these memories until they are no longer disturbing to the mind or body.
I was at first shocked to realize that I had been unknowingly utilizing the techniques of bilateral stimulation in concerts. However, the more I reflected on this, the more that I realized going to concerts allowed me to overcome difficult emotions and personal struggles that I had previously found suffocating and at worst, unsurvivable. Introspective thinking during concerts often leaves me with the same resolved feeling of calm that I feel after a productive session of EMDR. Most significantly, starting points of recovery from periods of my worst trauma symptoms has been consistently marked by times I’ve attended concerts. While it might seem like a random correlation or coincidental, concert-going has been essential in my experience of having CPTSD.
To ensure that I wasn’t attributing meaning to something that has no actual standing, I discussed this with my therapist. I was expecting maybe a polite nod or some feeling of affirmation that maybe didn’t feel genuine, but my therapist enthusiastically agreed with what I found. She described that music does have healing qualities, and that some trauma therapists even utilize music itself in EMDR practices to provide an additional layer of engaging auditory stimulation. It’s not ridiculous to say that tapping along to a band’s beat, looking back and forth at all the performers on a stage, shaking my head side to side to match a song’s rhythm, and letting my mind freely flow through a train of thought all allow me to practice healthy forms of trauma re-processing in my personal life outside of a therapy office.
If it’s not evident, I am not a therapist. I am not saying EMDR can just (and should) be freely practiced by going to your local show or seeing your favorite artist live. However, it’s pretty fascinating how my own experiences with EMDR therapy and trauma allow me to connect to music on such a deeply positive psychological level. Going to more indie shows over the past year has not only allowed me to develop my love for music and make new connections with others in my community, but also find greater hope and meaning in a life that I had lost motivation to be part of. It’s quite amazing and beautiful how deeply music can shape who we are as people.
To wrap this up, I’m going to credit some of the artists whose live music gave me the chance to work through issues and times of difficulty I was convinced I wouldn’t survive. I don’t think it’d be productive for this post to include the situations and thoughts I was experiencing, whether they were light days of stress or month-long periods of dissociation. Instead, I want to focus on the musicians whose performances impacted me in a uniquely special way. Thank you for quite literally saving my life.
Lunar Riptide (in bold because hearing them perform live helped spark my will to live again after a month of hopelessness and feeling out of control)
Lodea
Chloe Antoinette
Lawn Darts
The Paper Cutouts
Samson Oats
Thinking
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