{"id":101663,"date":"2025-07-29T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T09:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/101663\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T09:00:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T09:00:12","slug":"why-its-time-to-reclaim-that-bad-breakup-song-rather-than-avoiding-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/101663\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it\u2019s time to reclaim that bad breakup song rather than avoiding it"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Everyone\u2019s got that one song<\/a>, haven\u2019t they? (Or perhaps it\u2019s more than one, depending on how many traumatic experiences are lurking in your past.) It acts as the musical equivalent of a defibrillator<\/a> \u2013 as if a device carrying an electric charge had been stuck straight into your heart and then dialled up to max power. You only need hear the opening notes for roiling waves of emotion<\/a> to crash over you with increasing force. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lag time between thoughts and feelings as your brain scrambles to catch up; while those neurons are still conscientiously flicking through your internal filing system to locate the precise memory<\/a> associated with the sound, elsewhere in your body a short-circuit switch has been flipped. You\u2019re trembling and aching and \u2013 geez, surely not… crying?! \u2013 without quite knowing why.<\/p>\n

Then, at last, you have it \u2013 the flashback that joins the dots. You are not \u201ccrazy\u201d for suddenly breaking down in the middle of Boots. No, you\u2019ve simply been triggered by the harmless four-chord melody<\/a> currently playing over the speaker system, because this was the song. The one that belonged to you and someone else, once upon a time. Without even registering what\u2019s happening, you succumb to the overwhelming impulse to press the skip button, change the radio station, or, indeed, hotfoot it out of Boots faster than you can hum Savage Garden\u2019s \u201cTruly Madly Deeply\u201d. It\u2019s a Pavlovian response, hardwired to sidestep the inevitable onslaught of grief.<\/p>\n

But maybe we shouldn\u2019t be so quick to avoid the music<\/a> that takes us back to our darkest times. So say scientists, who posit that we can reclaim music that\u2019s bound up with bad memories by \u201cactively engaging\u201d with it, according to a report in The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Emotions play a key role in long-lasting memories, and music can evoke strong emotions<\/a> \u2013 put these two elements together, therefore, and \u201cit is likely that music can enhance the memory related to an event\u201d, says Ilja Salakka, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki\u2019s Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain. \u201cThis can also work in reverse: an event itself may be emotional, and strengthen the memory of a situation that involves music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Stephanie Leal, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California specialising in the neurobiological mechanisms underlying memory processing, has found in her research that the type of emotional response we have \u201ccan really dictate what we\u2019re holding on to in our memories\u201d. <\/p>\n

For example, music with positive associations is linked to more general memories; music that prompts negative feelings is attached to memories relating to specific events.<\/p>\n

\"Florence<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Florence and the Machine doesn\u2019t forever have to be associated with your first heartbreak (PA)<\/p>\n

It makes sense, then, that we don\u2019t particularly like listening to songs that send us hurtling back through time, forcing us to relive the exact moments that hurt us most with unwanted clarity. It\u2019s powerful stuff, after all \u2013 15 years after the fact, I only have to hear the tinkling harp of a particular Florence and the Machine song to be instantly transported back to my first proper heartbreak<\/a>, the memory almost as high-definition as the original experience when it\u2019s amplified by a musical resonator. <\/p>\n

However, simply cutting certain music out of our lives completely won\u2019t necessarily help us to heal from that past pain, whereas reframing it \u2013 and reclaiming it \u2013 could actually help us to move on. Sure, if a song comes with an irredeemably bad emotional connection, it might be something you\u2019ll struggle to get over. But one method is to embrace it, not run from it, so that a song becomes linked with positive feelings; by \u201crepeating it with new events that do make you happy\u201d, says Leal, there\u2019s a strong possibility that the music \u201coverpowers and kind of reconnects your brain, and rewires it to this new association\u201d.<\/p>\n

This approach \u2013 intentionally seeking out songs we associate with previous anguish and trying to rewrite the narrative \u2013 is also endorsed by Renee Timmers, a professor in psychology of music at the University of Sheffield. \u201cRather than seeing the music as something that is there, you can\u2019t do anything with it, and you are the victim of it, you can actually actively engage,\u201d she says, advising that one could sing along and even switch up the melody or harmonise, so that the music \u201cbecomes the active thing that you\u2019re engaging with, rather than the memory\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

The sting of those original feelings was first dulled, then numbed, then neutralised<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s worth a shot, surely, if only because the soundtracks to our sadness are frequently songs we used to adore. It\u2019s rare that you pick a potential first dance number that you weren\u2019t keen on to begin with, earmark something as \u201cour song\u201d that you secretly hate, or say your first \u201cI love you\u201ds while something genuinely awful blares out in the background. <\/p>\n

I recently reclaimed a previously loved album that I\u2019d listened to while falling for someone who, as it turned out, hadn\u2019t been falling for me. I\u2019d spent years dodging those songs, afraid to stir up old feelings, but when a track played at random on Spotify I resisted the usual urge to fast-forward. Headphones on, I opted to go back to the start and listen, intentionally and attentively, to the entire record. I stomped to the beach, a place that unfailingly makes me happy, and made a point of really noticing how handsome the scene was: dazzling shards of sun slipping between cartoonish clouds, adding a touch of drama as they caught the churning waves of a turbulent sea. <\/p>\n

When I got to the end, I played the whole thing again. And again. And again. I let the emotions come, but I also let them go; that music didn\u2019t need to remain surgically attached to the ghosts of longing and rejection. The sting of those original feelings was first dulled, then numbed, then neutralised. Over the following months, any negative associations became almost entirely replaced by fresh sonic ties as I carefully layered positive memories on top, one after the other. There is nothing painful lurking in those blameless bars any more.<\/p>\n

Yes, music is powerful stuff. But we are powerful, too: powerful enough to stop swerving our suffering, shake off that Pavlovian response, and even teach an old dog new tricks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":101664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-101663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114935708307022583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}