Music is a powerful, accessible memory cue. Therefore, I am setting the shuffle loose again for another round of music roulette to resurface my deep memories. This has been helping me recall personal experiences and process the emotions that are clogging my memory storage. Especially since I don’t have my journals on hand for me to scour for memory triggers. Part of a midlife renewal plan, the music based therapy part of my sabbatical. I’m going to let the music do the heavy lifting again. Here we go.

There is a close link between music, emotion, and memory. I recently read somewhere that there is a major link called “music-evoked autobiographical memory”. Who knew my music roulette explorations had a name! And that there were so many studied done on the subject. In that vein, let’s continue digging into my mental archives via a randomly selected song list pulled from all the songs I have listened to and liked on Spotify. In the words of the defunct Navy slogan: Let the journey begin…

You know the drill. Set the shuffle loose and see what comes up this round of Music Roulette. If you missed all the other episodes, here’s three and four to get you up to speed. I’m on a journey of self-discovery and self-soothing to beat depression. They say that music enjoyment often returns as depression improves and music therapy can be a helpful treatment for some people. Maybe this round will shake something loose that is lingering in me? Smells like midlife, or is that just your teen spirit?

Research shows that the level of personal enjoyment, not whether the music is happy or sad, is what matters for potential therapeutic benefits. This is an important distinction for me because music for me is all over the place. Symptom of my Gen-X-aphilia. If you’ve missed some of the earlier installments, you can catch them here, here, and here. I’m all about the self-healing and showing improvement of any depressive symptoms. Let’s see what we get this time around:

I set the shuffle loose again, and this round of Music Roulette resurfaced some deep, deep memories. An even more uncurated playlist than the first round or the second. I read somewhere that music and smells are tied to memories in the brain. That hearing one or smelling something specific will trigger the recall. They say the same thing about trauma, in particular about PTSD. That you’re not recalling the trauma, but instead your body is reliving it. Music can elicit strong emotional responses, too. Let’s see which way this one goes.