How Music Can Help Reduce Stress And Ease Anxiety And Depression

One of the most important skills to have when it comes to communication is emotional intelligence. This gives you the ability to be aware of the emotions that you and the people you are communicating with have, and to empathize with the emotions of others. Working through your own emotions is a great way to increase emotional awareness. During a therapy session, your music therapist may use different techniques in order to help you work through your emotions. One of the ways to do so is by listening to music and then discussing the memories or emotions that the song brings up. More active approaches to releasing emotion include writing song lyrics or singing; both of these methods can allow a patient to process emotions in a less direct way if needed.

It makes my home a refuge rather than a prison, and my son has mentioned he likes it, too. In the first few minutes of playing I feel a Great since of wellbeing, could be endorphins release, it is significant. I sleep with a CPAP that has diagnostics on it for Sleep time, Sleep depth, and Length of depth of sleep. I have noticed all three have Improved by just playing Kalimba for an Hour or so before bed, it is like taking a sleeping pill The shift in the nervous system is very apparent. I have several other instruments I play Saxophone, clarinet, Harmonica, Recorder Flute, NONE of these other instruments react the same way as the Kalimba does. I think the Kalimba is a Great tool for Sleep and manipulation of the Autonomic Nervous system.

People have used music for its powerful effects on mood and emotions for a long time. There is also evidence to suggest that those undergoing music therapy experience reduced anxiety immediately after the session, which indicates that music therapy could be a convenient way to reduce symptoms quickly. Music therapy does not rely on verbal communication, so it can be better for people who struggle to communicate verbally.

Eric Clapton penned and sang Tears in Heaven, a heartfelt expression of grief after the death of his son. Some people feel that the lyrics and instrumentals of a song can appropriately and succinctly say what they cannot. A song has the capability of sparking a prior memory of where you were when you once heard it. Sweitzer currently runs a therapy group via Zoom for COVID-19 survivors and says that playing music has helped patients open up about their struggles with the virus.



Music heard as a child can become a source of security when listened to as an adult. If music was originally paired with feelings of refuge or safety, it can have strong impact on present day anxiety. Certain songs or lullabies that soothed during childhood child can help an adult block out and ignore anxiety and stressors. Music shows great versatility and can be a powerful outlet for many people. Some individuals have difficulty verbalizing their thoughts and feelings and use music as a means of self-expression.

Finally, the broad majority of previous work has used only one control group , and has not examined whether positive effects of music are due the nature of music itself or due to a calming (non-music) acoustic stimulation. Consequently, the particular effectiveness of music listening on stress cannot yet be determined. It is of great interest that the lowest concentrations of cortisol were observed in the acoustic control condition (i.e. listening to the sound of rippling water).

Whatever music you prefer and whatever it means to you, learning to make music on your own has so much to offer you wouldn’t find from anything else. The ways in which music can enhance our lives are both powerful and abundant. It can transport our minds to new places, inspire us with new ideas, stimulate our creativity, and make us feel alive. Apart from mere poetry, scientific analysis has determined that music actually influences our brain like no other medium.

A music therapy session has a combination of the joy of music and the positive impact of therapy. A major factor that can increase a person’s social anxiety is having to communicate with others, and having social anxiety can only make it harder to communicate. Discussing your emotions with a music therapist will not only help you to work through your emotions, but help you to improve nature relaxation your communication skills as well.

There are a variety of coping strategies that people use to manage social anxiety. Many people also seek professional help and treatment; one option for treatment is music therapy. Prolonged experiences of stress are related to poor individual health and associated with substantial financial costs for the society . As a result, the development of cost effective stress prevention or stress management approaches has become an important endeavor of current research efforts. Music has been shown to beneficially affect stress-related physiological [4–6], as well as cognitive , and emotional processes .

The State and Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to assess anxiety. The STAI consists of two 20-items questionnaires which assess state respectively trait levels of anxiety in clinical and non-clinical populations. The STAI-state was used as a continuous measurement for possible changes in anxiety during the experiment. The STAI-trait was used to control for the effect of anxiety as a personality trait in our sample . Demographic information such as age, education, medication intake, nicotine use and illnesses were collected using a demographic questionnaire.