Play It Again, Seratonin

I might get myself in a bit of trouble with my daughters with this post, but I recently sat in on the Brownie’s session with her therapist (she’s learning disabled). We were discussing ways to regulate moods. She used to have anger issues, and although those days are behind us, she still doesn’t know what to do with strong, negative feelings like disappointment, irritation, and frustration. I can’t recall exactly how the topic came up, but I used my“Heartbroken” playlist as an example to make a point.This playlist used to be a point of contention for my older daughters. After the divorce, I filled this playlist with all the most painfully sad love songs I had in my vast music collection. I labeled it“Heartbroken”. Not surprisingly, most of them were country. On bad days, I would hit play and dive deep into the music before I could come up for air again. It was cathartic.But my girls hated it.Because of our current living arrangements, the Brownie wasn’t familiar with this“controversial” playlist. I listen with headphones on. She’s the youngest, so using the playlist as a positive example was a novel experience. I tried for years to get my older girls to understand how the playlist was actually helpful, but all they could see was that I was hurting —or more specifically, hurting myself.What I, and the therapist, pointed out to the Brownie was that letting myself feel sad helped me deal with those emotion...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Depression Family Goodreads Suicide Source Type: blogs